When I went to college years ago in America, I took a constitutional law class with a professor so fanatic and bloodthirsty that she made me feel uncomfortable as a male to attend the lectures (I passed it by cramming with the help of an arch-feminist who later became a lesbian – see, I don’t despise feminists and find many of them really enjoyable). The professor was so batty I couldn’t make sense of half of what she said – I labeled her legal theory “post-legalism” – but I remember with horror one argument about discrimination. Her definition of “discrimination” was that discrimination is any situation in which one group of people benefits while another group doesn’t. For example: in an office, the average female salary is x and the average male salary is 2x – that would be discrimination. Quite beside the fact that this is not what the word “discrimination” means in the English language, it also makes no sense. Discrimination requires choices and it requires those choices to be systematic. If you can demonstrate that women are all earning less than men because they’re women, you’ve proven that discrimination against women is present. If not, you can speculate that discrimination might be the cause of the difference, but you’ll prove nothing.
That was a long time ago, when I was still brainwashed and thought discrimination was negative.
Now, since I’ve been writing in this blog for a short while and perhaps some people reading it feel like they know me a little bit, there’s something about which I’d like to come clean: I discriminate. In fact, I like to think I have rather discriminating tastes.
When it’s time for breakfast, I discriminate against cereal and in favor of eggs; when listening to music, I admit to discriminating against techno and in favor of music created with recognizable instruments. In literature I discriminate against the English and in favor of the Russians, against Dostoyevsky and in favor of Tolstoy, against War and Peace and in favor of – gasp! – Anna Karenina (but at least Nabokov would be proud).
My discrimination is so pervasive that I feel it in every sphere of my life. In today’s legal climate, I could probably be sent to prison for my 100% discriminatory record of never having dated a man. Ok, ok – when hitting on girls, getting their numbers, asking them out and sleeping with them, I discriminate against ugly, annoying girls and in favor of cute, pleasant girls. I don’t think there’s anything wrong in this practice. I’m also aware that girls discriminate in favor of dominant, high status men and against beta males. Just as women have some tools at their disposal to become more desirable to men (fashion, cosmetics, plastic surgery – if you’re into that), I’ve also learned that there are things I can do to increase drastically my appeal to women … so I can afford to be more discriminating.
I also prefer to live with girls and not with guys. I won’t tell a male prospective roommate up front that I’ll not consider him, but he’ll have to pay more to live in my apartment. Among girls, I prefer the attractive ones as roommates – not because I’d sleep with a roommate, but because attractive girls have attractive friends, and attractive friends are fair game. If I ever owned a business, I’d probably discriminate in favor of talented, hardworking, attractive, pleasant, committed people too. And so on.
So. Now that I’ve made it clear that discrimination exists and that I’m comfortable with its existence, I want to discuss its presence in businesses. Shomer Shekalim here lists several possible reasons for discrimination against women in hiring in Israel:
- fear of losing employees to maternity leave
- residual anti-female sexism from eastern Europe
- a national priority to focus on ending discrimination based on national origin
- military culture that doesn’t promote women
- women don’t demand enough for themselves
These are all wrong.
Sam Scott says the pay gap is a result of women working fewer hours than men. He’s not wrong, but I don’t think he’s quite right either.
An article in Haaretz (actually it seems to have been reprinted from the Forward) asks: Why do Jewish groups pay women less than men? Its writers, Jane Eisner and Devra Ferst, offer some of the same old re-hashed non-answers:
Along with the oft-cited reasons for the salary gap – that women tend to cluster in lower-paying jobs, take time off to give birth or to raise children, and are reluctant to demand higher salaries – other factors specific to the Jewish world are cited to explain the difference in pay. One is what communal insiders describe as the familial, sometimes paternalistic nature of Jewish organizations.
On the question of pay for women at Jewish community organizations, I have some insight: my mother works at a Jewish organization for pay (barely). What can I say about her? She’s very bright, has several masters degrees, and she’s capable and creative. Since she never complained about work at home, I can only assume she never complained about home at work. She’s one of the sweetest, nicest people I’ve ever met. That all being said, she has never held a private sector job in her entire life. Since her work has never been evaluated based on its value to a company, she’s never been driven to expand her skill set. She has no interest in acquiring a practical education (her degrees are all in humanities subjects). And, let’s face it, she’s never shown any interest in working hard. That’s not to say she hasn’t worked hard – I know she did raising my siblings and me, and taking care of the family, and making a great home for us. And she of course always had a full time job since she graduated from university. But there is a difference between having a hard job and working hard at it.
There’s a reason my mother started out working in the government and non-profit sector all those years ago, and it’s the same reason why, every time she switches jobs (I’m sure she’s had at least six jobs in the past decade) from one non-profit organization to another, she takes a pay cut and accepts fewer responsibilities: she doesn’t like to work particularly hard at her job. She doesn’t want a lot of stress in the office, preferring instead to focus her attention on her hobbies and her home life. And that’s fine. But I want to be clear – it’s not a time issue. She’s always in the office for a full day and a full week. But she just doesn’t try very hard. Consequently, the value she adds to all these organizations is low. I don’t know how low it is, but I’ve got to assume it’s lower than the value added by employees who do care, who are motivated, who have the drive to do a great job. And it’s fair for her to earn less.
Is this a pattern? I think it is. I think a lot of women follow my mom’s career path because they don’t really want to work, so they take crap jobs and do low quality work until they can retire. And I think they get paid low salaries for the low quality work they produce. At the same time, men who go into the public sector, where they’re dramatically outnumbered by women, tend to be really passionate about their work. I have several male friends who’ve turned their backs on the millionaire track – one in lab science (synthesizing weird shit to patent it), one in finance, one in programming – to work for Jewish community organizations. They earn much less compared to their previous careers, but they are so valuable to their organizations that they are all given a lot of responsibilities and are paid relatively well for it within the non-profit sector. This not meant at all to be a generalization about women and men: my direct manager, for example, is a single mother who is highly competent, loves her job, excels at it and will likely take her skills a long way. It is, however, meant to be a generalization about why women earn less than men earn. Yes, there is discrimination: employers discriminate against some employees and in favor of others. But, by and large, this discrimination is driven by business interests – reward the employees who do the best work, or who are most likely to do the best work – rather than prejudice.
By the way, since I’m already on this topic, I thought I’d add a comment about Sam Scott’s explanation for declining wages. He writes: “… the increase in the number of women working also led to a decrease in wages…. When the supply of labor increases, the price will fall. Competition lowers prices.” His contention is right, but not completely right (*). I know it’s not completely right because it doesn’t explain the whole situation, which is that as wages have fallen, jobs have become more scarce (or at least remained very scarce, to which anyone who’s ever sent out 100 resumes and gotten no interviews can attest). In a perfectly competitive market – the example usually given in Econ classes is the grain market – the supply is fungible, identical, etc. and there are no shortages, due to equilibrium supply meeting equilibrium demand at that optimum price level. The labor market is not perfect competition. The producers of labor (employees) are all quite distinguishable from one another, especially the more skilled ones. The consumers of labor (employers) are also distinguishable – I’d take a job at Google Israel over Microsoft Israel in a heartbeat, even for 10% less salary.
Shortages in a market or economy-wide are caused by price controls, namely price ceilings: if the equilibrium price is ignored and prices are artificially set too low, too much of the good or service will be consumed, and some consumers who would have been willing to pay the (higher) equilibrium price will go without. Similarly, surpluses in a market or economy-wide are also caused by price controls, namely price floors: if the equilibrium price is ignored and prices are artificially set too high, too little of the good or service will be consumed, and some producers who would have been willing to accept the (lower) equilibrium price will not provide their services, or their goods will sit in storage.
The latter is what has happened in the labor market. It’s true that, by doubling the supply of labor, women have pulled the equilibrium price for it (wages) way, way down. But, by enforcing nondiscrimination in wages, governments and corporations have treated a complex market as perfectly competitive when it is not. They have created price floors (artificially low wages) and surpluses (excess unemployment) by demanding that women get paid the same as men. Well, be careful what you wish for – it’s not women who are getting paid the same high wages as men; it’s men who are getting paid the same low wages as women, wages pulled down to reflect the low quality of work done by women. And men who can’t, or won’t, accept these low wages are now unable to market their services (ie, they can’t find jobs). In short – wages can’t get higher because there’s a glut of women who don’t do good enough work and can’t be paid more, and employers can’t easily pay men more than they pay women. Note: highly skilled and professional women like my boss also suffer from this situation. But I believe most value tends to be created by men, and consequently men lose the most when wages are kept down.
(*) Let’s suppose the demand for labor is constant, which of course it isn’t. The influx of producers into the labor market actually increases demand for labor considerably: the economy is much bigger now than it was before most women worked; there are many more jobs now overall.