Op-Ed: Our jobs and paychecks

A few things we should all be upset about

Lisa Nunna Ph.D./Op-Ed Contributor/The USD Vista

Women have been earning more bachelor’s degrees than men since 1983. It has been at 57 percent for the last 18 years. Women also earn higher grades across all levels of education. So here’s my question: why are men still getting more than their share of the good jobs with the great salaries?

Gender income inequality has been going on longer than any of us have been alive. During the 1980s and 1990s, progress was made and it looked like incomes were headed toward parity. However, that stalled. For over a decade, women consistently have made 80 cents for every dollar men make, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy and Research. Between 2016 and 2017 the gap even grew wider a little bit. That, friends, is the wrong direction.

It’s tempting to imagine that we Toreros are exempt from this reality. That four years at a fine place like USD is all it takes to break the pattern. A USD degree gives access to great futures, great jobs, great salaries, and great lives. No matter what your gender. Right?

Get ready to be angry.  According to the Equality of Opportunity Project, by age 34 graduates of USD, on average, earn $61,200. That sounds pretty good until you realize that the average hides a deep gender imbalance: USD women earn $52,700 on average and USD men earn $71,900. Same university. Same great education. A $19,200 yearly bonus for men.

Go ahead and sit down. There’s more.

Part of the explanation for why men outearn women on average is called occupational segregation. Women are employed in larger numbers in industries that pay less (nurses, school teachers, social workers, etc.), than where men are employed (engineers, pilots, athletic coaches, etc.). That is true, and we should rightly be working to change it. Men also make great kindergarten teachers. Women also make great airline pilots. But occupational segregation is not the whole picture. It only explains a part of today’s 80-cent situation.

A study this year by sociologist Natasha Quadlin shows that recent college graduates with the same levels of experience, same majors, and same GPAs all applying for the same entry-level jobs are perceived very differently by hiring employers. Men with high GPAs were called for interviews twice as often as women with equally high GPAs. Yep. Twice as often.

Quandlin conducted an audit study, that’s when a researcher creates fake resumes and applies for open jobs. It means she could carefully control every element of the resumes and be certain that the only difference between who got an interview and who didn’t was gender.

But wait. 

It gets worse.Employers want to hire people who have a track record of achievement, right? Nope.  Moderate-GPA women got more interviews than high-GPA women. And for men, low-GPA, moderate, or high, it didn’t matter. In fact, men with low GPAs got more interviews than women with high GPAs. Are you angry yet?

Quandlin wanted to know what was going on, so she asked. She learned employers evaluate men’s resumes looking for competence, hard work, and commitment. Women’s resumes, however, are evaluated for “likablity” and “sociability.” Employers described moderate-GPA women as “a real worker bee,” “she seems to enjoy life,” “fits in and is a team player.” Meanwhile, high-GPA women were called: “overconfident,” “overqualified,” and “very smart.” Apparently, being “very smart” means that you don’t get an interview. Nevermind that men with the exact same GPAs were not seen as overqualified.

On the contrary, low-GPA men’s resumes got responses like: “his grades suck, but his experience seems okay. I would follow up with his past employer,” or “could be motivated and become a very good employee.”

So, low-achieving men get the benefit of the doubt while high-achieving women are passed over because they aren’t seen as a fun person to have around the office. Employers hire entry-level women whom they see as “worker bees” rather than women who might be superstars. No wonder women get promoted less often than men; they aren’t hired on their potential for excellence in the first place.

Are you still sitting down?  Parents also reward men and women differently. Last year two research studies showed parents save more money for sons’ college educations than for daughters’. More parents of girls say that they would consider a lower-cost college than parents of boys. This happens despite the fact that girls do better in school.

It’s more than school too. 

A study out last month shows that parents pay boys more than girls for household chores. Yes, you read that correctly. Long before male USD graduates are earning $19,200 more a year than their female classmates, they get paid more by their parents as children. To add insult to injury, boys are more likely to be paid for personal hygiene “chores” like brushing teeth while girls are more likely to be paid for chores like cleaning the bathroom. 

I am not just angry. I am outraged. 

This is happening today. Right now. We like to imagine that we are in a new era of gender egalitarian America. But we aren’t. Is it any surprise that women are systematically underrepresented at the highest ranks and in the most powerful jobs?

 Reality check:

-Twenty-one out of 100 Senators are women today—our record high (21 percent).

-Eighty-four women hold seats in the House of Representatives (19.3 percent).

-However out of 43 U.S. Presidents, zero have been women (0 percent).

-Four out of 113 U.S. Supreme Court Justices have been women (3.5 percent). Currently 2 out of 9 are women (22 percent)

-Forty-nine out of 896 Nobel Prize winners have been women (5.8 percent). Recent decades are only slightly better: between 2000-2017, 9 percent of winners were women.

-Twenty-five CEOs of Fortune 500 companies today are women (5 percent).

We all should be outraged. Men. Women. Non-binary. Gender resisters. We are in this together, friends. We all suffer because our entire society is diseased by it. Men are tired of feeling blamed for these inequalities. Women are tired of bearing the brunt of them.

Each of us has both men and women in our lives, people we love and respect. People we are willing to fight for. So get out there and start fighting the fight. Even if we personally are benefitting from the way things are right now, we still lose when the society we call home lacks justice.