Squeezed: a look at women’s smaller paychecks, and workplace bullying increases
March 10, 2009
by Sheryl Lee
|In “Why Is Her Paycheck Smaller,” the New York Times has graphed earnings for men and women in the same occupations. It won’t surprise you to learn that the women come out substantially below the men.
The graph reflects the weekly earnings of subjects working full-time who are 16 years-of-age and older. Only occupations that had a minimum of 50,000 respondents were included in the study. In each occupation, women did the same job as men.
Nearly every occupation has the gap — the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the size of the paycheck brought home by a woman and the larger one earned by a man doing the same job. Economists cite a few reasons: discrimination as well as personal choices within occupations are two major factors, and part of the gap can be attributed to men having more years of experience and logging more hours.
Click on the link above or the image below to go to the NYTimes article. Mouse over the dots to see the disparity in earnings by gender.
Why is her paycheck smaller?
ECONOMIC BULLYING: What would you put up with in order to keep your job?
Liz Ryan interviews employment attorney Cynthia Wellbrock for Colorado Biz Magazine.
The recession isn’t just hard on those who’ve already lost their jobs. These troubled economic times also create stress in the workplace, where people are anxious about the future, wondering if they’re about to lose their jobs. According to Cynthia Wellbrock, employees are being physically threatened, harassed, denied pay, and being told to quit if they don’t like it.
One person with over 15 years experience told me his boss flew into a screaming rage and threatened to shove him down the stairs over a minor issue – yet he’s afraid to speak up. I asked him what would make his supervisor behave like that, and he said, “Everyone is scared of losing their jobs. The stress is incredible.” That’s no justification, but he is right and more and more workers are unwilling to say or do anything about abusive behaviors for fear of termination. I’ve started to call the phenomenon economic bullying.
It makes sense, doesn’t it? Workplace bullies who have kept their abusive behavior in check in “normal” conditions now feel free to unload on people who are too terrified of losing their jobs to speak up. The bullies are scared, too, of course, and therefore more inclined than ever to take out their psychological distress on others.
But a lawsuit, Wellbrock notes, is a risk the bully may not be able to afford, and an employee who has lost her job has nothing more to lose if she takes action. Bullying will also cause a loss of productivity.
The longer people fail to speak up to their boss or to HR, the greater their stress will become, and symptoms of stress, like depression, anxiety, and illnesses increase. Stressed and sick employees aren’t productive, and tend to miss more time. The result is decreased productivity at the worst possible time and costly emotional distress damages in the event of litigation.
Wellbrock outlines steps companies can take to help employees and managers cope with stress and “stand by their companies’ values such as an equal opportunity and respectful workplace.” Making sure laws are complied with, keeping lines of communication open, and responding proactively to symptoms of stress in employees and managers will help keep a situation from escalating to the point where the company is put at risk.
Employees, Wellbrock says, should make sure they “document incidents as they occur.”
Speak up to the bully or harasser in a calm manner and ask them to stop. Report the incident to HR. Insist that HR take action immediately to investigate your complaint. In instances of unfair wage & hour practices track the hours you worked but for which you weren’t compensated properly. In the event of litigation those records are crucial. In certain situations, and employee is required to report harassment or discrimination to upper management or HR when it happens. Failure to do so could bar the employee from suing in the future.
Wellbrook ends by warning employers that terminating an employee who has complained for a minor infraction, such as coming in late, will likely backfire. And once you fire a person, she has nothing to lose by suing.
Cynthia Wellbrock can be reached at cwellbrock@comcast.net.
Liz Ryan is the CEO of Ask Liz Ryan, a Boulder human-resources and career-coaching firm. She can be reached at liz@asklizryan.com .
With all this concern about wage disparity on the New Agenda – why have you been utterly silent on the tax disparity?!?! The marriage penalty which already penalizes working women is being exacerbated in Obama’s new budget. A single wage earner making $200,000 hits the top 39.6% bracket, but a married couple making $250,000 pays the top 39.6% rate. Why is this okay? Do we still live in a society that believes that women shouldn’t be making more than $50,000? Perhaps if our tax system didn’t penalize working women, we might not have such a wage disparity.
This is a generalized suggestion. I very much appreciate that you have new content daily and the effort that takes. However I noticed the article on the ridiculous U2 “feminist” video last week and it occurs to me a way to get new exciting content for your site and encourage young women and give women a voice in the important topic of what a world run by women might look like, would be to hold a contest where girls and young women can enter a 2 min video on their view of that topic and offer a prize of say $500. to the winner. Then run a different notable entry on your site each day. You can’t control what men in the MSM and music business make but you can give women a voice and drown them out. I would donate to the prize money for such an effort. And don’t make it a scholarship because not all intelligent, talented girls with something to say can go to college.
Unfortunately, sometimes the HR department IS the bully.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Barack Obama is planning to sign an executive order on Wednesday that will create a White House Women’s Council overseen by senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, according to two senior administration officials.
The officials said the president will make the official announcement at the White House and is likely to be joined by his wife, first lady Michelle Obama.
One of the officials said the president wants the office to “have a presence at the White House to address the issues facing women and girls,” including pay equity and the balancing act working mothers face.
I see the obsession to “explain” why women consistently earn less than men for the same work as a problem that we should challenge at every opportunity. Imagine the chart and interpretation above, only replace the words ‘African American men’ where it now refers to women. Attempts to paper over an obvious and systemic racial disparity with unconvincing excuses would be rightly denounced as insulting in the extreme. So why should women settle for their work being valued less compared to men being explained away by this “personal choices” nonsense? It’s not our choices, but the collective and predictable bias of management skewed overwhelmingly male that perpetuates the gap. Fortunately, Congress has seen the so-called explanations for what they are, and has imposed the force of law to address the root problem.
It’s the same with analyses of why women trail far behind in our share of leadership roles. We are supposed to be comforted by the idea that most voters want the best candidate, male or female. Yet minorities don’t settle for “race-blind” excuses. They very credibly make the case that they should serve in government in proportion to their numbers in the population — and if that’s not happening, it’s a problem that needs to be fixed. Why in the world should women be any different? Settling for “gender-blindness,” whether in elections or promotions, perpetuates the catch-22 that women are seen as having less experience & leadership ability, because – hello! – people actually see fewer women being leaders. To break the cycle, women need a foot in the door (also known as affirmative action) — to leadership positions in government, corporate boards, and management roles in every type of institution. Forget about “the best candidate.” When two candidates are qualified, give the edge to the woman. Bonus: women come in every age, color, economic class, handicap, sexual orientation, etc., etc. Society can advance every other diversity goal AND close the gender gap.
When people tell you they discount gender in choosing a candidate, tell them you give the edge to women, explain why, then ask them to do it too.
*****A
Denice C – we’ll look into it.
Bes – I love that idea. I’ll think about logistics, and see what we might do.
OK – true.
MaryL – Smart move on Obama’s part, and something to celebrate.
Thanks MaryL!
Equal rights for women anchored in the constitution would help us a long way. and we need only 3 more states to ratify. a few days ago one of the opponents was democrat GLover. who is from Arkansas and can help Berta Seitz?
From Berta Seitz, ERA coalition leader in Arkansas:
Dear ERArkansas Supporters: URGENT! URGENT! We need Governor Beebe to know that it is important that Arkansas ratify the ERA this legislative session. He needs to receive emails and phone calls from every one of us.
Gov. Beebe’s email is tonyamercer@governor.arkansas.gov. His phone number is 501-682-2345; this is the receptionist phone but you can leave messages. He has shown outstanding leadership and every bill of his has passed, even raising taxes on the Tobacco Bill, which required 75 votes in the House to pass. Senator Glover is carrying one of Governor Beebe’s bills, the one-cent sales tax reduction on groceries. This is an honor for Glover. If Gov. Beebe really supports ratification of the ERA, then he should get Glover to vote for the ERA at least in committee or find someone else to carry the bill.
We want to let Governor Beebe know that we appreciate his help but we expect success. We cannot condone Arkansas being ranked 51 in treatment of women. We can no longer accept people who say they are Democrats, but don’t support something that is in the national and state platforms and endorsed by the Democratic Women of Arkansas. We will be out in the Democratic Primary supporting those who helped and strongly opposing any who did not support, such as presently Senator Glover. The word is that Glover wants to run for Sec. of State.
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