Issues: Samarasekera Response Team Putting the 'boy crisis' in context

Issues: Samarasekera Response Team

Putting the 'boy crisis' in context

Derek Warick / warwick.derek@gmail.com

Since the middle of October, my life has been consumed by an article in a local newspaper and some comments in it put forward by University of Alberta President Indira Samarasekera. The article in question addressed the post-secondary gender gap—the fact that women's enrolment in post-secondary institutions is increasing at a higher rate than men's. Those concerned about this trend typically slip into the claim that feminism has gone too far, that we're now facing a "feminization" of education and boys are being left behind in grade school.

I sat, bewildered as I read the article and Samarasekera's expression of concern that we won't have enough male CEOs in 20 years. And that she's going to be an advocate for white men. And that no one is going to question her.

If Samarasekera's words were taken out of context or she had been misrepresented—as some of us had hoped—then she had a responsibility to make that known. She didn't. Enter the Samarasekera Response Team.

The Samarasekera Response Team (SRT) is the name some friends and I eventually went by in the process of launching a campus poster campaign addressing her comments and the general fear-mongering generated in the article. Her comments and the ideas presented in the article were so public that it was only fair that our action be just as visible. That, and the fact that this action was bigger than Samarasekera; it was addressing the general ill-thought that prevents a reasonable analysis of the so-called "boy crisis."

It is true: women's enrolment numbers are increasing at a faster rate than that of men. According to Statistics Canada, women make up roughly 58 percent of students in universities across Canada. Here's where men's rights activists and university presidents come in saying, essentially, "Great job feminism! Now you and your angry compatriots can retire early—here's proof that equality has been achieved, so can't we all move on already?" Many of these same people become upset when we tell them there are other issues that aren't being addressed, to which they respond that feminists are just selfish, and that it isn't about equality anymore; feminism is now about dominating men. (When it's a man putting forward feminist arguments it forces them to get a bit more creative.)

It's easy to forget in the midst of all this concern for men in the education system that when women began seeking to increase their post-secondary participation rates, education was a means to an end—namely the end of wage discrimination and the ability to lead lives independent from men. Women are doing what they can to achieve these goals—like enrolling in universities in higher numbers—but to no avail. The wage gap between women and men with a university education in 1991 was down to 12 percent. By 2001, it had grown to 18 percent. For women of colour, it's even worse: with a post-secondary education, they make just 55 cents to a university-educated man's dollar. Women of colour without a university education will make 65 cents to a comparable man's dollar.

Combine this with the very real fact that women are often sexually harassed in the workplace and are less likely to be hired or be given promotions, and suddenly the absurdity of the claim that women will be ahead of men in the workplace in 20 years is revealed.

Now, Samarasekera's original vow (she's since clarified her position in a letter to the editor) to be an advocate for white men is another issue. The original claim was a racist one, plain and simple. It decontextualized the issue of male enrolment in universities to the point that racialized and classed peoples were effectively erased. Male enrolment is an issue, yes, but it's not limited to white men, whose enrolment is second only to white women.

The context is slightly different, but statistics from the US Department of Education indicate that among white, black and Hispanic people, women's rates of enrolment are increasing at higher rates. Across every race, men's enrolment is lagging behind women's; this problem isn't limited to white men, and in fact it's worse for people of colour, whose enrolment numbers are lower in general. In fact, Hispanic men's rates of enrolment are the only ones that have decreased. Unfortunately the statistics don't go into economics, but the study indicates clearly that meaningful discussion around this issue cannot be divorced from race and class.

What the SRT wanted to achieve with this action was to address these issues publicly, to generate discussion around them and to hold our president accountable for her comments. In almost every facet, we think we've succeeded. Despite having been conceived and developed in someone's living room, word of our campaign has spread nationally. Professors are discussing it with their students in classrooms. We've added to the barely audible feminist voice in Alberta. These are important accomplishments, but we need to be sure we don't lose this ground; we need to keep these issues in public discourse. That need is even stronger in our current political climate, in which Prime Minister Harper assures us women have achieved equality.

We need to move further, push harder, be louder and put these concerns on the political agenda. We, the SRT, have kick-started what should be the real concerns: the ongoing sexism women face in the workplace, the race- and class-based barriers both women and men must confront when seeking a post-secondary education and the continued marginalization they face upon graduation. The solutions are out there: national, publicly funded child care, pay equity laws, more effective initiatives to end violence against women. It's up to us to make these solutions realities. V

Derek Warwick is a women's studies major at the University of Alberta and a member of the Samarasekera Response Team.

Women Have Never Striven More for Less

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/style/women-have-never-striven-more-for-less/article1345668/

Women have never striven more for less

Females are willing to do more work than men for less credit, a reality that will always keep our daughters down no matter how diligent they are in school and work. And it isn't a new story

Leah McLaren

Published on Friday, Oct. 30, 2009 4:16PM EDT Last updated on Sunday, Nov. 01, 2009 1:02PM EST

Good news, girlfriends: It was a banner week for women.

According to the University of Alberta, the salaries of recent female business graduates narrowly exceeded those of their male counterparts for the first time. In the U.S., a recent study called the Shriver Report found that half the American work force is now composed of women.

Women, the report said, currently make up an amazing 40 per cent of the country's breadwinners. On this side of the border, Statistics Canada also reports a dramatic increase in primary female income earners over the past four decades.

So, my sisters, it's time to pop the champagne, put on the Beyoncé and do the Single Ladies dance until ... hey ... wait a second. If you stop the pelvic-thrusting long enough to read the fine print of the 400-odd-page Shriver Report, which was conducted by California first lady Maria Shriver with the help of a think tank, the Center for American Progress, the news is actually not so great.

Despite working harder and in greater numbers than ever before, women are still earning less than men in the same jobs over all and taking most of the responsibility for housework and child care.

In essence, the plight of women is like that old morale-boosting management trick: the no-compensation promotion (also known as the non-raise raise). It's all very flattering until you realize that you have just taken on twice as much work and responsibility for no extra pay or respect.

It's a raw deal. And here's another bitter pill: Working harder than men is not going to help us renegotiate the terms.

If you want proof, just look at the plight of women in the developing world. Of the roughly one billion people who live in extreme poverty, 70 per cent are women and girls. It's a situation that has prompted Plan International to launch its new Because I am a Girl campaign, a global initiative to change to the lives of women through education and community development work. According to the mission statement, “investing in girls is the key to wiping out the cycle of global poverty.” This is because women are the donkeys of the developing world. You don't need a statistician to tell you that African women on balance work much harder than their male counterparts and have far less to show for it.

Of course, there are fewer opportunities in the developing world – it's estimated that 20 million poor women never go to school or learn to read. But when we do get a chance at education, we work our tails off. For every 100 women enrolled in a U.S. university, there are only 77 men. In Canada, a similar gender gap exists.

The question is: Where is all this hard work actually getting us? As one perennially exhausted breadwinner/mother of three young children recently said to me, “As the mother, you just have to work harder at everything. You might as well accept it; otherwise you'll just be miserable.”

No wonder the Shriver Report found that women “feel increasingly isolated, stressed and misunderstood.” We have cast off our patriarchal shackles, but in exchange for enforced hard labour.

In this new world order, women get to support their partners, remain the primary child-care givers and earn less money for doing the same jobs as men. See? Promotion without compensation.

At least in the 1950s, middle-class women got to stay home and drink martinis like on Mad Men. Maybe they were miserable, but they could wallow in it. Most working mothers I know wouldn't even have the time to register if they were on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

While women around the globe are working more in exchange for less, what are we worried about here in Canada? Boys. Apparently, they're struggling so badly that we need to dismantle the public education system to accommodate them. In Ontario, experts are recommending extra recesses and special “active learning” classrooms where boys can swing from the rafters while learning long division. We're concerned not enough of them are going to university and that, by extension, girls are going to take over the world.

But don't fret, all you protective parents of hyperactive boys, that will never happen. Because what the Shriver Report really tells us is that women are willing to do more work than men for less credit, a reality that will always keep our daughters down no matter how diligent they are in school and work. And it isn't a new story – just ask any African woman.

I'm not saying that men don't work hard – just that, when they do, they are much better at reaping the benefits of success. While men work toward outward status – the double brass ring of power and success – women tend to be driven by intrinsic reasons: duty, loyalty, the need to be “good.”

Joanne Lipman, the former deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and editor-in-chief of Portfolio magazine, recently wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times responding to the Shriver Report. In it, she revealed that, during her years as an editor, “many, many men have come through my door asking for a raise or demanding a promotion. Guess how many women have ever asked me for a promotion? I'll tell you. Exactly… zero.”

Maybe while we're letting the boys out at recess, we should take the girls aside and teach them how to demand a raise. If our daughters are going to get a promotion, they might as well get compensated for it.

Why There's Still a Wage Gap

http://tinyurl.com/ybrzob4

Why There's Still A Wage Gap (With Apologies To Peggy Olson)

By Doree Shafrir, 3:00 PM on Wed Sep 30 2009, 10,833 views (Edit, to draft, Slurp)

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A couple weeks ago on Mad Men, Peggy got recruited to go to another, much larger ad agency. Instead of saying yes right away, she went into Don Draper's office to see if she could get a raise.

She's a copywriter, but she gets paid much less than the other copywriters, all of whom happen to be male. And so she invokes the recently passed Equal Pay Act. "It's a law now," she says. "Equal pay for equal work." Don looks at her as though she's speaking another language. "Peggy, it's not a good time," he tells her. Then he asks her if she wants a drink.

When Peggy confronts Don, it's 1963, and the median annual income for women was around 60 percent of men's. Today, it's around 77 percent—a gain, to be sure, but hardly anything to be thrilled about. While some of the so-called gender gap can be explained by the fact that women tend to work in lower-paying fields—such as education and child care (I'm going to bracket the debate about whether these deserve to be lower-paying fields at all)—there's still a five percent wage gap for male and female college graduates, even after controlling for things like age, race and ethnicity, region, marital status, children, occupation, industry, and hours worked, according to testimony given in April to the United States Joint Economic Committee. The conclusion? "It is reasonable to assume that this difference is the product of discrimination."

But it's slightly more complicated, I think, and it raises uncomfortable questions about the differences between men and women—whether they're socially determined or not. A couple years ago, there was another study that focused on men vs. women in negotiations; men, it showed, will take the initiative and ask for things like more money or a promotion, while women will wait to be asked. And this can have major repercussions:

If a 22-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman are offered $25,000 for their first job, for example, and one of them negotiates the amount up to $30,000, then over the next 28 years, the negotiator would make $361,171 more, assuming they both got 3 percent raises each year. And this is without taking into account the fact that the negotiators don't just get better starting pay; they also win bigger raises over the course of their careers.

It's hard not to look at these studies and think about anecdotal evidence from my own life. At my first job out of college, I was offered just that salary: $25,000 a year. I didn't even think about negotiating. Sure, you could argue that I wasn't exactly coming from a position of strength, as a 22-year-old college graduate with little experience who was desperate for a job. But over the years, I saw how certain people—and nearly all of them were men—were able to ask for things that I wouldn't even have thought of to ask for: Extra vacation days. Bonuses. When I was in graduate school, better teaching schedules (and better professor assignments). A few years later, I was offered another job at what I now considered a laughable salary, $35,000 a year. I countered at $65,000. We settled on $57,000, with a guaranteed raise to $60,000 after three months. And I came up with a new motto: "You don't ask, you don't get."

I bring specific salary numbers in part because women, it seems to me, are generally less comfortable discussing money than men—which also leaves us in a position of weakness. At yet another job I had (salary: $38,000), the founders of the company told us, with straight faces, that one of the bad things about unions were that everyone knew what everyone else was making. The employees all nodded solemnly, like, OMG, wow, what a horrible thing to know. Talking about money is taboo, of course! It was only later that I realized, duh! Of course they wouldn't want everyone to know what everyone else is making, because then everyone would ask for more money.

These days, when people are desperate for work and employers admittedly have the upper hand, it can seem as though we're all Peggys in a Don Draper world. But Peggy, I suspect, just might have the last word.

The Gender Wage Gap 2008 [Institute for Women's Policy Research]
Equal Pay for Equal Work? New Evidence on the Persistence of the Gender Pay Gap [AAUW]
Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling [Washington Post]