Open Letter about Wage Gap

The following is a letter in response to an article my boyfriend sent me "debunking" the myth of a female-male wage gap and my research in turn. I included in the message an attachment to the Institute for Women's Policy Research fact sheet.

Hey,

After spending all this time reading about this I've realized that wage gap isn't so much the issue as it is "life choices" that are forced upon women. Women are still expected to give up their careers in order to raise their and their partner’s children. That's something that is so ridiculously 1950s, I can hardly believe it's still true. But it really is. It's something we're raised to believe, and it started when my female cousin, was given a baby doll to play with and my male cousin, was given a toy train.

My research shows that there is a wage gap, though it is smaller than what we've been told. Quite frankly, there are so many factors that have to considered I'm not sure any one place can give us the real picture, whether in support of both of our arguments or against.

You used an unreliable source for your claim that we’re not a patriarchal society so I’m going to use an unreliable source (just one) as well, in response to the Consad research:

unreliable source-blog

You'll note that the author raises the issue that the study was comparing part-time women to full-time men which would create a disparity in the research. There are a few tiny things like that that I did not see in the research. Granted, I could have easily missed it.

This is what’s going on in the US today regarding the gender wage gap.

Note that they focus on men and women being paid differently for the same job. That’s the issue, when it’s within the same job, like how my sister's boyfriend made more than my sister for the same job.

Even though this article does not support my argument I'm going to give it to you and suggest you read that because it is more recent. It’s saying pretty much what yours was saying, anyway.

It's true that women are more likely to take off time from work in order to bear and raise their husband's children for him. That, alone, is cause for concern when it comes to gender equality. Women are the ones expected to give up their careers in order to raise children and, yes, it does have an impact on the wage gap. As you said yourself a while ago, you probably wouldn't take time off instead of your wife. Either she would take time off or you would get a nanny.

Take a look at this study by the Dept. of Labor.

Why am I hell bent on proving that there are HUGE gender inequalities? Because they are issues that need to be addressed and people are fighting it. Right now in America there is a war against women and women and their male supporters need to stand up and say, "Hey, not cool. Now let's make change!"

I'm giving you a some studies done by the Institute for Women's Policy Research and I hope you'll give it an honest read.  See the first attachment. This is also considerably more recent than your study. and, yes, things do change quickly. Just look at the issues of gay marriage and abortion. Things are happening crazy quickly!

This is a good site that my media writing prof. It says there is a wage gap but it's not the $.77 to every man's dollar. But it's still there....

Love you.

Romney in the Room with My Legs in the Air

Romney in the Room with My Legs up in the Air

Women of America, our savior has come! Romney is running for president and he’s taken us into his hearts--and placed himself in our bodies. He's trying to take away our right to our body and our freedom to make decisions about our health.

It’s a well-known fact that women are the weaker of the two sexes. We think with our emotions, never with our minds.

Having a right to our body is just silly. How are we to make a coherent decision for ourselves when our brains are full of fluff?

Romney wants to make sure that he is there for us, especially when we’re in the room with our gynecologist, on our backs with our legs in stirrups.  As a man, he knows our bodies very well and has our best interest at heart.

That’s why he’s dedicated to banning our right to choose what we do with our bodies before we can make bad life decisions. After all, can it really be a choice if we’re unable to think clearly?

Let’s say I were to become unexpectedly pregnant (possibly because I didn’t have access to sex education or contraceptives because Planned Parenthood was defunded). Suppose that I made the difficult decision to terminate my pregnancy. Romney is there to stop me from making a wrong choice!

Romney will walk into my doctor’s appointment--with my feet up in the air--and will take his rightful place between my legs. “Stop!” he will say to me and close my legs. “You don’t know yourself! You don’t know what’s good for you!”

But as much as I protest, as much as I yell for help, I’ll thank him later, as I upchuck into the toilet for the 10th time that day. He’ll be there for me all nine months of my pregnancy, because the father of my child decided he wasn’t ready for a baby and decided to opt out of the pregnancy (that’s okay--if I couldn’t, he should at least be able to).

He will be there to hold back my hair as I vomit; there to make love to me when my hormones demand sexual attention, (because I will have no one who wants to be with a woman who’s gained 50 pounds and looks like she’s going to pop); there to go to my prenatal exams, and pay for them (because God knows I won’t be able to afford the medical appointments on my own!)

And when I’m in the delivery room, finally in hard labor after three days of “mild” to “moderate” contractions, he will be there holding my hand. He’ll be there for me as I grunt and scream, yell and vomit. He will once again be between my legs as the doctor performs an episiotomy to prevent my perineal from tearing as I push out an eight-pound child.

But then, as I force out the placenta, he’ll be gone.

I’ll look around for his support but he won’t be there anymore. As soon as the child becomes a citizen she won’t have Romney’s help anymore. Obamacare would have been overturned and as a young, unemployed single mother living off of vouchers, my child and I will have no health care.

Afterward, as I look back, I’ll realize that he had left my doctor’s room, as soon as he closed my legs.

Perpetuating the Culture of Rape, One Male Politician at a Time

I have a strong stance on the issue of rape. If a rape is a rape, then that rape is rape. There is no illegitimate rape, no rape-ish, no rape-y. There is just rape.

And a few months ago I would have ended that last paragraph with “rape is wrong.” However, it’s come to the public’s attention that many Republican men in power do not seem to think so.

Women in this nation are taking blow after blow delivered by male GOP politicians. There appears to be no end to what these men think they know about women’s bodies, despite not being female. The latest issue of interest? Rape.

Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan and US Senate candidate Richard Mourdock agree on one fundamental issue about rape: if rape happens then it was meant to be.

Ryan called rape just another “method of conception” while Mourdock defended his religious, anti-choice stance saying that if a woman became impregnated by rape it was "something God intended to happen."

US Senate candidate Todd Akin, on the other hand, fundamentally disagrees with these men’s positions on rape against women. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Funny, this clearly uninformed woman missed that part of sex ed.    

This dismissive view on rape further strips women of control over their bodies. If rape is not taken seriously then women who are victims of sexual assault have no ground to stand on and will continue to be victimized.

In an interview in September, Kim Sherva, executive director of the Minneapolis SlutWalk, said that we are a nation that promotes the “rape culture.” This is a culture where the severity of rape is repressed and fueled by its tendency to “blame the victim” and is further perpetuated by microagressions, like rape jokes and overt aggressions towards women, similar to the attacks these three men made.

People in this nation (Ryan and Mourdock) are diminishing, and downright dismissing (Akin) the harmful consequences of rape.

Women face the scary reality that rape can result in a pregnancy. A pregnancy that, if abortion in cases of rape are outlawed, would result in a continuous nine month re-victimization and imprisonment of her body on top of the traumatic experience itself.

What irks me the most is that these men will never have to fear this terrifyingly real outcome of rape.  These men will never have to live with the consequences that female rape victims do. This female author thinks it’s safe to say that if they did, we’d never hear these hateful, harmful, hurtful, oppressive words come out of their mouths.

For more information and resources visit:

Central Minnesota Sexual Assault Center provides support for victims, both female and male, of sexual assault.

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