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The Unfeminine Feminism of the “Pay Gap” Debate
We begin with an anachronistic soapbox derby using laughable safety equipment on a course no rich-piggy liberal who drives an Audi would let their kid within a mile of. The voiceover begins: “What do I tell my daughter? That her grandfather is worth more than her grandmother… Her father is worth more than her mother… she will automatically be valued as less than every man she ever meets…” Then ends with the words on the screen, “Audi of America is committed to equal pay for equal work. Progress is for everyone.”
You’ve got to wonder what country (and what century) Audi is talking about. The ad executives and writers of this idiocy have obviously never had any contact with any real daughters, mothers or fathers, or grandparents. Let me tell the story of a typical family — mine. In fact, it’s a stereotypical family since a cop being married to a nurse is almost a cliché.
When my wife graduated from nursing school, I had been on the force for three years. She immediately got a job that paid 25¢ an hour more than me. Think about that for a minute. We each had a BS degree from one the largest public universities in the state. I was in a primarily male occupation with three years of experience and pay raises, and her wage as novice nurse was larger than mine. But she did not earn more than me that year, or for several years afterward. She never worked more than 40 hours a week. I very seldom worked fewer than 50 hours a week.
For me, our home was a respite. Police work is fun and exciting, but it is also tedious and grueling. I needed a place to recharge and reconnect with my family. For my wife, home and family are the center of her life. She looks on work as an annoying necessity. Nursing gave her the flexibility to keep the home as her center. For a couple of years, I had a desk job and she had to work full time. She made a lot more money than I did, but that was probably the rockiest period of our marriage.
During my 22 years as a police officer, I had four assignments — patrol officer, transport officer, DWI investigator, and the aforementioned desk job — all for the same department. In my wife’s first 22 years after she graduated, she was a floor nurse, office nurse, labor and delivery recovery nurse, weekend charge at a nursing home, clinic nurse, nurse-educator and researcher, ICU nurse, nursing-aide instructor, corrections nurse, school nurse and ER nurse — working for eight different organizations. A police officer with that sort of résumé would be viewed with suspicion, but for nurses it is not a particularly unusual work history.
Nursing also provides a lot of non-monetary work enhancements that are not available to police officers. Part-time and as-needed shifts, work-sharing, and variable work days allow nurses the flexibility to take care of their domestic responsibilities. Most of the organizations my wife worked for provided better maternity benefits than the police department.
Why? Because about 9 out of 10 nurses are women, who value work flexibility more than monetary compensation. Police officers are mostly male and thus are focused more on money. Both types of organizations have evolved policies suited for their employees’ gender — not as a result of sexism, but simply to maintain a stable workforce.
That is why the whole “pay gap” debate is unfeminine. It completely disregards women’s choices and uses the male standard of monetary compensation. I knew this was nonsense the first time I heard it. My wife, if she so desired, could have made a lot more money than I did. She didn’t want to. Her choice, and the choice of others like her, is completely disregarded in the debate.
Now I’m a nurse, too. Because of her vastly greater experience, my wife earns about $12 an hour more than I do. I still made twice as much as she did last year. Ask our kids who is more valued.
I also heard that the women who work for Audi don’t earn as much as male employees. When pressed about this fact, Audi executives explained that the women made different career choices. Progress is for everyone.
Published in Culture, Marriage
I saw the ad and read a deconstruction of it at The Truth About Cars. Then I saw the ad with my neighbor during the Super Bowl. She gushed about how terrific it was. I only offered that helmets have to fit to work properly, and that in real life, the dad would have a pick-up to take the racer home rather than a stupid Audi. This was not appreciated by the Super Bowl watchers I was with. The neighbor has a Mercedes, so she is the target audience. She earns more money than I do, and without working! She did well in a divorce from a husband who apparently out-earned her.
Then I walked home, only two houses away. Both houses had identical white Audi SUVs in the driveways.
As far as Audi is concerned, this ad is a home run. I am not the target. I know too much about racers, helmets, motorcycles and cars. I’m going to change the oil and bleed the brakes in my Chevy truck today, so I gotta run.
Great post. Filled with common sense based on real life.
The Left will never understand a word of it.
Terrific post. My first husband—a state trooper—worked fifty or more hours a week, too. I stayed home. I’m sad to say that I complained a lot about this, even told him he was having a “fulfilling career” while I took care of the babies. Dumb. Maybe I should write about the harm done to me and my relationships by feminist theory? Fortunately, I snapped out of it in time to be a good (or at least better) wife to him in what turned out to be the last year of his too-short life. Bless you, Jose, and your wife for all the ways you have made and continue to protect, heal and serve.
I keep reiterating that I (a guy) could meet demands of jobs that paid more only because Mrs. Tabby was the dedicated homemaker. In other words, I have earned more over my career in no small part because she performed the ultimately more important job of keeping the home going while I worked extra hours to resolve office crises and traveled cross-country to address issues at other company facilities.
Peers who did not have a dedicated homemaker to rely on, and thus could not do the things I did, make about 25% less than I do. So, although the paycheck has my name on it, about 25% of its value is because of the “unpaid” work that Mrs. Tabby has done. That was our decision (together, though mostly by her frustration at not feeling adequate at both a paid job and homemaking, and her view that homemaking was more important work than accounting). Others may make different decisions about how to balance the various factors that go into earning income and keeping the home together.
Great post. The so-called pay gap has been debunked for decades, yet as recently as the last election is still being trotted out. I earned more than my husband too, and it was terrible for our marriage.
Was it terrible because he felt bad about it or because you were unhappy with him? My first wife made about what I did but it wasn’t unusual for her to complain, “Why don’t you make as much as Murray? They’ve got a bigger house than us. Barry has a boat, we don’t even have a JetSki. Why don’t you make more money? Maybe you should get a second job.” My second wife is much better. She makes more money and has better benefits, while working fewer hours than I do and she doesn’t complain about my income.
I made a lot more than my husband before we both retired but it was never a topic of contention. From the very first everything was “ours”, not his or mine. He is mostly self taught and much more street wise than I am. Each of us brings more than money to the relationship.
Man hate and man bashing sells. Audi will gain market share because there are a large group of people that like and believe this sort of stuff. If some men gets there feelings hurt about it well there are a bunch of feminist that live on male tears and fundamentally nobody really give a damn about men. Anyway you look at this it works for Audi.
Audi should be made to bring their female employee’s pay in line with their males. They have pointed out this issue. They need to own it. But since they are a good little left leaning progressive company that donates to the Left they will be given a pass.
And if their board of directors is not at least 50% female, they better fix that immediately.
I’ve worked in advertising, so here’s my theory:
After everyone’s summer vacations, Audi’s agency, Venables Bell & Partners, met with the in-house marketing team in a brainstorm session on Sept. 7. “What will be topical for an upper-middle class, white, metropolitan audience on February 5, 2017?” was written on a white board at Audi USA headquarters in Herndon, VA.
The roomful of upper-middle class, white, metro professionals pitched what every Beltway denizen was thinking. “Well, Hillary will have just won a landslide election against that evil old cis-male hetero brute Donald Trump. Remember all the ads about African-Americans during the 2009 Super Bowl? Heck, Pepsi even changed their logo to look like Obama’s. So every right-thinking American will be overjoyed that they elected the first female president in a 45-state sweep. And we don’t sell many Audis in Wyoming or Alabama, so who cares about those deplorables?”
All 22 people praised the conventional wisdom and said in unison, “Pay Equality!” Hearing not a single dissent, Audi’s VP of Marketing gave the order to the San Francisco ad agency, “Have an ad on my desk by November Friday, November 3!”
I have never understood the line
Every many she ever meets? Assuming we’re talking pay for jobs, is the premise that the narrator can find no woman anywhere, in any job, who is paid more than the lowest paid man anywhere, no matter what the job he is doing?
Thanks for a great post Jose. Life is much more complicated and interesting than feminist theory allows.
That’s right. If she becomes the president of General Electric she will still be paid less than the male minimum wage.
Great post. And yes, most of the Left will not get it because they only look at money (or whatever they have to look at to win).
Funny, my situation was different when I was married. My wife was a teaching assistant in the local elementary school, made around 20K. She had set hours, a fixed schedule, and a boss (the District) to satisfy.
I was (am) a self-employed electrical contractor, made around 80 – 100K, but scheduled my time according to the needs of the business . . . . and the needs of the family (we had two sons in grade school).
Because she could not be flexible at all, short of taking allowed leave days, which were limited, I was the one who was always called to run to school if the boys needed something, pick them up for dentist appointments or whatever. I drove them down to school every morning, even after we split up – every morning – and picked them up every afternoon.
She couldn’t because of the job she chose; I could because of the one I chose, and because it was important that someone be able to be responsive to the needs of the family, such as they were, throughout the day. Most people with fixed jobs find ways to handle all this differently, but I was glad to think that one of the things that made it worth it to forego a retirement plan and corporate security was that I was flexible for this purpose.
She could have quit her job when the babies came, but it was important to her to have some personal involvement in something that utilized her skills (teaching math, and others). Plus she provided our excellent health care! (Something I had gone without my whole career, but was sure glad to have as I got older.)
I made way more money than she did, but it’s definitely not all about money. When you take the value of what she did around the house, with the boys and their sports and other functions as well as necessary things for the smooth functioning of our household – our real life – on a given Saturday for four hours, and compare it with the value I produced by working on somebody else’s kitchen remodeling project for that same four hours, generating a couple of hundred bucks, it’s not even close.
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Also, I insisted that she keep all the money she made, that I would support the family, and all our budgeting was done with my income in mind. Hers was for her to use at her discretion, for whatever she thought was best for her first, family second. She knew the needs of the family, and this way she had the means to fill in the inevitable gaps that arise; it also gave her a deserved feeling of power and discretion over her financial self.
This was a very workable set-up, for us at least.
So it’s not always the woman who selects lesser pay so she has increased flexibility, although that is a reliable cliche (trope? generalization? – maybe I have the wrong word here).
Point is that there are lots of ways we settle on to figure this thing out. To focus on “money earned” as the absolute standard of fairness and equity is absurd.
Great post. My wife was my social secretary and caterer not to mention more effective diplomat and intelligence agent while I was living abroad as a US diplomat. She was mother and homemaker everywhere. She had by far the most challenging job and when I see our kids and grand kids I know she did it better than I did mine. Was she paid significantly less? I get to spend what’s left to us on house, taxes, car she gets to spend the rest. It’s about even at least in pay, but not at all even, I got the best of the whole deal.
Oh, and also controls the use (spending and investing) of about 90% of the paycheck that has my name on it. Who again has the economic power?