Happy Equal Pay Day: My Paycheck Makes Me Blue

Yes, in a red state, I still manage to be blue. Especially when payday comes along. I am a scientist, working in a male-dominated field. I wonder why, in these modern times, is my paycheck significantly less than others who entered the same field? It's not performance...I have several patents and national awards, yet make about 35% less than others in the same field. I am not imagining this, it is real.

Today is Equal Pay Day, which is explained in the paragraphs below from NOW. One can try and legislate "paycheck fairness" and a closer balance may be able to be obtained, but I'm not holding my breath. It seems those at the top of the power tower are the ones that respect women and their contributions the least. Case in point is the attitude by those who reach the top, ala Tiger Woods and Eliot Spitzer. Are we expecting our male-dominated government to save us? Again...not holding my breath.

From NOW:

Equal Pay Day Background

Equal Pay Day -- observed this year on April 20 -- is a symbolic date when women's earnings into a second year finally catch up to the salary made by men in the previous year. In recent decades the gap has narrowed only because men's wages have stagnated, and progress is moving at the glacial pace of a fraction of a cent per year. The disparity between women's and men's pay is a huge barrier to women's equality that costs us hundreds of thousands of dollars in our lifetimes. The wage gap undermines women's struggle for independence by compromising their financial security. Equal pay for equal or substantially similar work is more important than ever now that many women are the prime breadwinners during this recession, which has seen many more men lose their jobs. Sex-based wage discrimination is undoubtedly a factor in the high mortgage foreclosure rate, which continues unabated.

Pay Gap Always Present - Several recent reports document that from the moment they graduate from college women are penalized with a lower salary compared with identical male counterparts -- for instance, an average of $4,600 less for female MBA grads. An oft-cited reason for the pay gap is that women take time out of the paid workforce to care for children and thus lose out on promotions and pay increases. The Catalyst study, however, showed that the salary difference existed even for women with no children. Center for American Progress economist Heather Boushey testified at a recent congressional hearing that the pay gap grows over time. One reason is that women are less likely than men to negotiate for a high salary, and the cumulative effect over a working career is great.

Huge Lifetime Losses - A small hopeful change in 2009 was an increase to 80.2 of the earnings ratio for the median weekly earnings for female full-time workers compared to male median weekly earnings, according to the Institute for Women's Policy Research. However, a more important statistic relates to women's annual earnings. In her median annual earnings, a woman working full time made 77.1 percent (this amount has declined slightly in recent years) of the pay made by a man working the same hours, in 2008. The figure is lower for women of color and is a prime reason for the perpetuation of economic vulnerability of these groups.

African-American women, for instance, are paid 67.9 percent of men's wages, and Latinas take home 58 percent of what men are paid. Experts estimate that the gender wage gap costs women between $700,000 to $2 million in lifetime earnings; lifetime losses range higher for women in top professional categories. The gender-based pay gap creates serious economic insecurity for women and their families and is a major factor of old age poverty for women.

PFA Addresses Wrongs - Among the remedies found in the Paycheck Fairness Act is a provision that allows wronged women to collect compensatory and punitive damages -- a standard practice in discrimination cases based on race or ethnicity that is still unavailable to women. The new act will also prohibit employers from retaliating against their staff for sharing salary information with each other; this will allow an employee to freely determine if she is experiencing wage discrimination and take appropriate action. This provision alone might have spared Lilly Ledbetter the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars and the need to take her case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Employers Must Prove Reasons - The act limits acceptable justifications for an affirmative defense, which is "factors other than sex" used by employers to explain lower wages of their female workers. Currently, employers can claim a broad range of reasons, such as women's "weaker" salary negotiations skills, to rationalize paying women less. The Paycheck Fairness Act will require employers to show that the pay gap is truly caused by factors other than sex-stereotyping and relates directly to job performance. The act also establishes a grant program that would train women on how to gain better jobs and encourage them to break out of low-paying job categories. Finally, the Paycheck Fairness Act improves guidelines on the collection and publication of wage discrimination information and research.

The Lily Ledbetter Act was a needed clarification in the Title VII employment discrimination law. Now, we must follow through on the momentum and take the next most important step by securing passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act.

The Misguided, Embarrassing War Against Feminism Rages On

By MOLLY KNEFEL

[via Broadsheet] There’s something that makes me really uncomfortable about people who get nervous and defensive about feminism. It’s embarrassing in its unwarrantedness, the same way its embarrassing when people are violently homophobic. To disagree is one thing, but to wage a war against something as tolerant as feminism with such vehemence just screams insecurity. The same way that people who wage wars against homosexuals are often insecure about their own sexuality.

That’s how I felt when I learned about the group of intellectuals (?) who came together to finally fight back against the faceless, all-powerful monster known as feminism– which, I guess, was getting too big for its lady-britches and needed to be taken down a peg. As described in an article in Inside HigherEd, these “scholars of boys and men” decided to fight back by creating a discipline called Male Studies. Tracy Clark-Flory provides an excellent explanation of men’s studies, which already exists, which is I guess too pansy and feminism-loving for the “scholars of boys and men.” So they created male studies, with the explicit purpose of excluding existing feminist and gender theory. Feminism, as described by ManBoy scholar Lionel Tiger (roar!), is:

“a well-meaning, highly successful, very colorful denigration of maleness as a force, as a phenomenon.”

I am so tired of people’s willful misunderstanding of feminism as a war against men. I’ve written about this before, and Chloe Angyal has a wonderful piece in the Guardian that talks about the systematic misrepresentation of feminist ideals and the resulting reluctance of young women to identify as an f-word. And while, thankfully, gender equality has improved over the years, to call the feminist movement “highly successful” is a misrepresentation, given the powerful stigma against it that still remains strong. And to call it a “denigration of maleness” is just willfully and demonstrably false.

In addition to seeing women’s studies as an “institutionalization of misandry,” the Motherboy scholars also believe that the whole power thing long associated with maleness and masculinity isn’t fair.

“today’s discourse on individual men is not a discourse of power — men do not feel powerful in today’s society.”

Fair enough. But how is it logical to then, in turn, attack a movement whose aim is to empower all individuals, regardless of gender, race, class, sexuality, or ability? Again, there seems to be a lot of willful misunderstanding here:

Primary and secondary schools, as well as higher education, have been so heavily influenced by feminism, Tiger said, “that the academic lives of males are systematically discriminated against.”

I don’t know what primary and secondary schools these Boyz II Men went to, but I wish I had known about them when I was a child. I cannot recall hearing the word “feminism” used in a non-derogatory way ONCE until I went to college. And again, I can’t emphasize this enough: feminism is not about disempowering males. To talk about the changing roles and representations of maleness in society is an important discussion to have. But these BoyMan scholars are so obviously threatened by women that they feel the need to create their own discipline, rather than to operate in the tolerant, already existant institution of men’s studies, just because those men’s studies pussies don’t exist in an exclusive dichotomy against women’s studies.

The final paragraph of the Inside HigherEd article is hilarious:

Edward Stevens, chair of the On Step Institute for Mental Health Research, said he wants to see male studies search for ways to improve male academic performance. “What are the ethical concerns of devoting 90 percent of resources to one gender?” he asked (though without explaining exactly what he meant). “What are the unintended consequences of the failure of our academic institutions to consider the 21st century needs of males?” (emphasis added)

I’m not even going to go into an explanation of how, historically, the “needs of males” have been the default needs of everyone, and that much of education is already male studies due to the, you know, historic and institutionalized marginalization of women. I don’t want to be a ball buster or anything.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, all this talk about the “scholars of boys and men” has left me with a powerful urge to watch the Arrested Development episode “Motherboy XXX,” or listen to some Boys II Men songs, or maybe that Beyonce song “If I were a boy.” And if I were a boy, I hope I would be happy to have women’s studies and men’s studies and a tolerant, interdisciplinary system of talking about gender and difference, without feeling the need to wave my dick around and make my own No-Girls-Allowed club.

The Most Female-Friendly Country on the Planet? Go Iceland!

Sorry guys. No more lapdances in Iceland. I heard on NPR yesterday that there was one stripper for each 100 men in Iceland. They'll have to get their jollies somewhere else...

From The Guardian (UK):

Iceland: the world's most feminist country

Iceland has just banned all strip clubs. Perhaps it's down to the lesbian prime minister, but this may just be the most female-friendly country on the planet

• 
• • Julie Bindel
  • guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 March 2010 22.00 GMT

Johanna Sigurdardottir, prime minister of Iceland. Photograph: Bob Strong/REUTERS

Iceland is fast becoming a world-leader in feminism. A country with a tiny population of 320,000, it is on the brink of achieving what many considered to be impossible: closing down its sex industry.

While activists in Britain battle on in an attempt to regulate lapdance clubs – the number of which has been growing at an alarming rate during the last decade – Iceland has passed a law that will result in every strip club in the country being shut down. And forget hiring a topless waitress in an attempt to get around the bar: the law, which was passed with no votes against and only two abstentions, will make it illegal for any business to profit from the nudity of its employees.

Even more impressive: the Nordic state is the first country in the world to ban stripping and lapdancing for feminist, rather than religious, reasons. Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, the politician who first proposed the ban, firmly told the national press on Wednesday: "It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold." When I asked her if she thinks Iceland has become the greatest feminist country in the world, she replied: "It is certainly up there. Mainly as a result of the feminist groups putting pressure on parliamentarians. These women work 24 hours a day, seven days a week with their campaigns and it eventually filters down to all of society."

The news is a real boost to feminists around the world, showing us that when an entire country unites behind an idea anything can happen. And it is bound to give a shot in the arm to the feminist campaign in the UK against an industry that is both a cause and a consequence of gaping inequality between men and women.

According to Icelandic police, 100 foreign women travel to the country annually to work in strip clubs. It is unclear whether the women are trafficked, but feminists say it is telling that as the stripping industry has grown, the number of Icelandic women wishing to work in it has not. Supporters of the bill say that some of the clubs are a front for prostitution – and that many of the women work there because of drug abuse and poverty rather than free choice. I have visited a strip club in Reykjavik and observed the women. None of them looked happy in their work.

So how has Iceland managed it? To start with, it has a strong women's movement and a high number of female politicans. Almost half the parliamentarians are female and it was ranked fourth out of 130 countries on the international gender gap index (behind Norway, Finland and Sweden). All four of these Scandinavian countries have, to some degree, criminalised the purchase of sex (legislation that the UK will adopt on 1 April). "Once you break past the glass ceiling and have more than one third of female politicians," says Halldórsdóttir, "something changes. Feminist energy seems to permeate everything."

Johanna Sigurðardottir is Iceland's first female and the world's first openly lesbian head of state. Guðrún Jónsdóttir of Stígamót, an organisation based in Reykjavik that campaigns against sexual violence, says she has enjoyed the support of Sigurðardottir for their campaigns against rape and domestic violence: "Johanna is a great feminist in that she challenges the men in her party and refuses to let them oppress her."

Then there is the fact that feminists in Iceland appear to be entirely united in opposition to prostitution, unlike the UK where heated debates rage over whether prostitution and lapdancing are empowering or degrading to women. There is also public support: the ban on commercial sexual activity is not only supported by feminists but also much of the population. A 2007 poll found that 82% of women and 57% of men support the criminalisation of paying for sex – either in brothels or lapdance clubs – and fewer than 10% of Icelanders were opposed.

Jónsdóttir says the ban could mean the death of the sex industry. "Last year we passed a law against the purchase of sex, recently introduced an action plan on trafficking of women, and now we have shut down the strip clubs. The Nordic countries are leading the way on women's equality, recognising women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale."

Strip club owners are, not surprisingly, furious about the new law. One gave an interview to a local newspaper in which he likened Iceland's approach to that of a country such as Saudi Arabia, where it is not permitted to see any part of a woman's body in public. "I have reached the age where I'm not sure whether I want to bother with this hassle any more," he said.

Janice Raymond, a director of Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, hopes that all sex industry profiteers feel the same way, and believes the new law will pave the way for governments in other countries to follow suit. "What a victory, not only for the Icelanders but for everyone worldwide who repudiates the sexual exploitation of women," she says.

Jónsdóttir is confident that the law will create a change in attitudes towards women. "I guess the men of Iceland will just have to get used to the idea that women are not for sale."

Time for a Third Party

Judge Orders Rape Victims to Take Polygraph Test

Give Judge Floyd a call and let her know what you think of this...you can find her contact information here.

Judge Alison L. Floyd
(216) 443-8415

Cuyahoga Juvenile Court Judge Alison Floyd orders sex assault victims to take polygraph tests

By Rachel Dissell, The Plain Dealer

March 19, 2010, 8:03AM

Thomas Ondrey, The Plain DealerCuyahoga County Juvenile Court Judge Alison Floyd has ordered four teenage girls who were victims of sexual assault to take polygraph tests.

With Leila Atassi

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Juvenile Court judge has ordered at least four teenage girls who were victims of sexual assault to submit to polygraph tests, baffling prosecutors and upsetting the victims.

Cuyahoga Juvenile Court Judge Alison Floyd ordered victims in separate cases to be examined after she had found their attackers delinquent, the Juvenile Court equivalent of guilty.

Floyd also ordered the teenage boys who were accused of rape and other sex crimes in those cases to undergo polygraph examinations as part of an assessment done before the teens would be sentenced.

None of the teen victims has followed the judge's order.

Floyd did not respond to three days of attempts to contact her for comment.

It is unclear from her orders what Floyd's intention was in having victims take polygraph exams or what questions would be asked of them.

"The situation made no sense to us," the mother of a 16-year-old victim said in a message relayed through Cleveland Rape Crisis Center Director of Advocacy Ashley Hawke.

"I believe even more damage was done by the judge letting the perpetrator know she was ordering the victim to take the polygraph. He apparently took this to mean the judge did not believe her and he used this to tell their peers that the judge did not believe her and was ordering her take a lie detector test," the mother wrote.

"It felt like the blame was back on her and she was being victimized, by not only him [again], but by the system as well."

Prosecutor Bill Mason's office so far has filed briefs in two of the cases, asking Floyd to stop ordering rape victims to submit to polygraph tests.

The judge does not have authority over victims, according to the motion filed by Assistant County Prosecutor Nicole Ellis.

She argued that the judge's order also violated the state's rape shield law and public policy.

"It is clear that the court is attempting to re-investigate the case after the child was found delinquent," Ellis wrote. "The legislature enacted the rape shield statute to protect victims from undue harassment, a tendency in sexual assault cases to try the victims rather than the defendant."

Megan O'Bryan, president and CEO of the Rape Crisis Center, said the center -- which is assisting three of the victims -- does not condone the polygraph tests for sexual assault survivors.

"It violates federal law mandated through the 2005 Violence Against Women Act," O'Bryan said in an e-mail this week. "The practice puts us at risk for losing critical VAWA funding and philosophically is not victim-centered, especially for those reporting rape.

"The practice could be intimidating for rape survivors who already have difficulty in coming forward, and sends a message that their story is not believed," she said.

Robin Palmer is director of The Mokita Center, which contracts with the Juvenile Court to do assessments, counseling and monitoring of juveniles charged with sex-related crimes -- which sometimes includes polygraph testing. Palmer has been trained and has conducted polygraph exams since 1996.

She said the exams in general can be useful for police investigations and for treatment and monitoring of offenders after they have been convicted. But it is not always appropriate.

"You want to make sure you are doing polygraphs for the right reasons and following best practices," Palmer said.

She said she doesn't recall examining victims in sexual assault cases unless it was at the victim's request.

Court administrators told Palmer the court would not pay for the examinations Floyd ordered, leaving the victims responsible for the cost. The examination of victims is not included in the court's contract, court Administrator Marita Kavalec said.

Beyond that, she said the court would prefer not to comment on any matter pending in front of any judge.

Male Inequality

On Lawmakers Controlling Women's Uteruses

My Congressman, Bart Stupak, Has Neither a Uterus Nor a Brain ...a letter from Michael Moore

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Friends,

I live in Michigan, in one of the 31 counties represented in the U.S. House of Representatives by none other than Mr. Bart Stupak, a Democrat. You've probably never heard of him. He's a pretty quiet guy, a former Michigan State Police trooper who boldly decided to run some 18 years ago as a Democrat in a rural part of Michigan that votes almost exclusively for Republicans (yes, I know -- what am I doing here? I'll save that story for a future letter).

His voting record is pretty conservative for a Democrat, but he's had a few shining moments. In the wake of the Columbine shootings, he voted for some gun control, a not-too-popular position to take here in northern Michigan. The NRA came after him with all they had in 2000.

But the good people of this area knew Bart's story and understood: He's been touched personally by gun violence. In a terrible tragedy, his teenage son, depressed and confused from the medication he'd been prescribed, killed himself with the family's .38 revolver. Despite the NRA's best efforts, Bart was returned to Congress by an overwhelming margin.

Yet, here we are, just days before a weak, simple-minded, but now ultimately necessary health care bill has a chance of making it through Congress -- and Bart Stupak is threatening to derail it because he wants to make sure that no woman WHO BUYS HER OWN INSURANCE with HER OWN MONEY is able to have a medically-insured abortion. We're not talkin' about federally-funded abortions -- those were stupidly outlawed long ago. Bart Stupak doesn't like that the Democrats' bill doesn't prohibit private insurance programs, set up for those whose employers don't provide it, from providing abortion coverage if they get any federal funding -- even to an individual woman paying without any government help. That's it.

A group representing most of America's 59,000 Catholic nuns has written to Congress and said that Obama's health care plan should be passed. Stupak, instead, has chosen to diss the nuns. Last night he went on TV and dug his heels in -- he said he intended to stop this health care bill and he didn't care what anyone had to say.

Now, it would be easy for some to just pass this attitude off on his Catholicism -- he believes what he believes and you have to respect him for that, even if you don't agree with him. But it's not that simple. It turns out that Stupak has been living in a subsidized room in the "C Street House," run by the infamous right-wing Christian cult "The Family." It was in this former convent that GOP Rep. Chip Pickering (according to his former wife) carried on the affair that ended his marriage. It's where South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford sought refuge as his marriage fell apart thanks to HIS affair. And then there's C Street roommate Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, who cheated on his wife with the wife of one of his top staffers. (The Justice Department is currently investigating whether Ensign committed a felony while paying off his aide to keep him quiet.)

C Street is where power, money, sex and religion meet. So am I led to believe that Bart Stupak lives in a brothel and belongs to a cult? He says he was just renting a room there. But that just doesn't ring true. Something stinks to the high heavens here, and Stupak sees no irony in taking his holier-than- thou position while living in a house that should be dubbed "Hypocrites' Hideaway."

If Stupak were truly pro-life then he'd vote for this bill. Right now, a mother in the U.S. has a TEN times greater chance of dying in childbirth than a mother does in Ireland. If you really wanted to reduce abortions, you'd have to ask yourself this question: Why does godless France, where abortion is nearly free (it's covered by their universal health insurance), have 20% fewer abortions per capita than we do? What's even more amazing about that statistic is that you can't even get an abortion in America in 87% of our counties because there isn't one single doctor in those counties who will perform one! 87%!! The Right has scared them all to death -- literally -- out of performing an otherwise legal, safe procedure. So, you can say women have "choice" in this country, but the reality is the "choice" doesn't exist in the majority of the nation. "Right to Life" has essentially won this battle. (My personal position: I don't get to have a position -- I don't have a uterus. If a Senate that was 90% female told me I couldn't have a vasectomy or made it a crime to leave the toilet seat up, I guess I might object.)

What is "life"? An egg is life, a sperm is life. Those sperm aren't running on a battery pack. They are living creatures, as is a fertilized egg. But they're not "human beings." A human being is something that can exist outside the womb of a mother. If you think a fertilized egg is a human being, then I respectfully ask you to go down to the DMV today and have them change your birthday on your driver's license to 9 months older than what you've been telling everybody.

So back to my question. Why do we have an abortion rate 20% higher than France's (and more than twice as high as Germany's), especially considering most doctors here won't perform them? The answer is ANY country that has universal health care, where contraception is free, where child care is free or inexpensive, where there is less poverty because people don't become bankrupt over medical bills -- those societies are simply going to have fewer unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.

And there the mask gets pulled off the Bart Stupaks and the "Christians. " If the statistics show that countries with government-provided universal health care and nearly-free abortions are, in fact, the countries with the fewest abortions, then why on earth wouldn't the Right be the first in line to support universal health care?!!

Because it isn't about "universal health care." It's about controlling women, period. It's about sticking your nose in other people's business. It's about pushing your religious beliefs on everyone else because voices in your head tell you your Jesus is The One -- even though YOUR Jesus never said one single solitary word in any of the four gospels of the Bible about abortion or fertilized eggs being human. You've just gone and made it up about "life beginning at conception." Jesus NEVER said that. The little voice in your head said that, the same little voice that wants your grubby paws on women's uteruses. You need help. Please get some help and leave the rest of us alone, Mr. Stupak and friends.

After all, isn't it enough that women can't get an abortion in any of the 31 Michigan counties you represent in Congress? There is not one single abortion provider here in the north of the state, according to Planned Parenthood Mid and South Michigan. Hey, Bart -- you've already won! Women's rights have been stamped out in your entire Congressional district! Woo hoo!

So why don't you leave the rest of the country alone, step out of the way, and let them have the minimal health coverage this bill will give them? You wouldn't really crush the sick and infirm because of your own personal agenda, would you? What would Jesus do?

In the meantime, Bart, my neighbors and I are going to make sure a real Democrat runs against you in August's primary here. One of our religious beliefs in these parts is to never impose our religious beliefs on others.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol. com