President Obama signs equal pay law
 

President Obama on Thursday signed into law a measure allowing for broader legal claims against unfair pay, saying it would "help others get the justice" that Lilly Ledbetter was denied.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act is a response to a May 2007 Supreme Court ruling that made it tougher for employees to file pay discrimination claims.

It is the first bill Mr. Obama has signed into law, and effectively overturns the court's ruling.


Link

WooHoo!

Does the law officaly outlaw unfair pay....If so how does someone find this out legally? I heard once that if you ask, talk to, or find out another employee's pay that it is illegal and you can be fired...

The one thing I don't understand is that if companies are paying women 78 cents on the dollar, from an economic interest standpoint the company would hire nothing but women or at least as many women as they could get, that's not the case. Why?

Maybe because it costs so much to train and replace us because once we marry and get knocked up we leave because that's all we really want in life :rolleyes:

Think about this question...if it's cheaper to hire her and not hire any men....guess what problem you run into?

A company is going to pay somebody the lowest amount that they can. If women accept less money than men for the same job then so be it.

It may be against a corporate policy, but it is NOT illegal. Government paid positions have to be publicly available. There is a state of Michigan web site where you can look up any employee's salary by their name. This includes universities, university hospitals, etc. Personally, I think when corporations take great measures and use threats to keep people from sharing salary information, they are usually trying to hide these kinds of unfair practices.

If women are always offered less money everywhere, then they don't really have this option, do they? Obviously places that offer women a lower starting salary are discriminatory and would rather hire the man for the higher salary if they are going to have to pay that much. Additionally, it doesn't always happen at the time of the offer. It can happen with lower annual raises. Two people could start out the same but over time, if the woman only gets a 2% raise and the man gets 5%, things get out of whack very quickly. Then corporations institute policies like Thetagirl outlined, where they threaten to fire people who share salary info and the woman doesn't really know that she's being paid much less.

Minimum wage has been used as a tool for prejudice for years. Perhaps the government should stay away from what is out of it's sphere of theoretical influence.

It's of my own personal belief that in a company with different management/performance tiers, it's really no ones business what other people are making.

So the gov't has to mandate how much one's raise will be each year?

If a woman only asks or accepts a 2% raise and a man asks for and won't accept anything less than 5%...how is that discrimination?

Also, how does this equal pay law take into account when a woman takes a leave of absence for a pregnancy? She just took of 6mo or a year from work, from gaining experience, from actually making her company money. It is only right that when she comes back she is not making as much as a man of equal talent that did not take that time off.

Hell, the list can go on and on why this is not so much an equal wage law, but an unequal wage law in favor of women.

You are making far too many assumptions. Nobody said the govt would mandate how much raises should be, only that they should be equal pay for equal work.

How does a man not accept less than a 5% raise? Quit??? And feed your family how???

Who in the world takes a 6 month or a year maternity leave???? No woman I know. We take 6 weeks, 12 at most, as allowed by FMLA. If I took more than 12 weeks, I would lose my job. Does the research show that only mother's have this significant pay difference? Matter of fact, it does NOT.

Assuming that the difference in pay is due to maternity leaves and an inability to be assertive is as chauvinistic as the men who think they can get away with paying women less money only because they are women.

It's really nice that all the men in here think it's a okay to discriminate against women...especially since they don't have to worry about making $0.78 for every dollar a man makes! I doubt very seriously that men go into a job interview demanding to see the salaries of every employee in their desired position to make sure they are being paid fairly! Men just get to assume that they will. Yes the government should legislate this matter since the bigots in power won't do it themselves!

You obviously don't realize that most pregnant women have to use vacation time for their maternity leave! Just because men can procreate like rabbits without effecting their careers doesn't mean that they should discriminate against their wives who are effected!

Haha, typical. Bring up examples of why there is a difference and you get angry responses.

Where exactly does this .78 cents figure come from? How do we even know that is a valid figure. I can think of about a dozen ways that such a study could find any figure it wanted by using biased variables.

You use something called the internet. It has all sorts of cool little tools and searches that allow you to figure out exactly how much money you should expect in your particular area.

Basically you are saying you go in to a job interview totally unprepared, do no homework on the company or how much they pay, and then say that you should get the same raise as someone else even if you don't ask for it. Oh and the gov't should mandate how much everyone is paid and how much their annual raises are.

Well maybe BO will come through for you...

All the political bullcrap and debate over whether the government should mandate equal pay aside.....

Discussions of gender inequality in the workforce are very similar to discussions of racial and ethnic inequality in the workforce.

There are official and unofficial reasons for the disparities. Some seem justified to those who want them to be justified. Such as, men generally get paid more because employers want employees who need less "family time" and can potentially work more. But looking beyond the surface and beyond profit margins, it is society's gender norms that make it such that men generally have fewer family responsibilities/expectations. Therefore, men would be hired, paid, and promoted based on societal factors beyond their qualifications and job performance.

On another note, I only expect male feminists and male proponents of gender equality to see this. I don't expect the average male to see this and especially not the average white man. Moreso than other males, white males have a history of being the primary breadwinner and being paid more than other gender and race categories (and feeling as though this disparity is justified for a number of reasons).

Anyone have links to studies that show what was controlled for to come up with the 78 cents figure?

I think sex discrimination does happen, but I also see a lot of women with children who elect to seek one career path versus another because they want time with their children. I think it's much more rare for guys to do this. On average, I suspect that decisions that women make contributes to the disparity.

I can think of several people who went the PA route rather than the MD route for example.

Unlike AGDee, I also know women who elected to be stay at home mom for until their kids started school and effectively put themselves six years behind anyone who said in the workforce. I see few men who elect to do this.

I do think it's rare these days for companies to deliberately discriminate based on sex, but I also think that the standards men and women are held to on the job can be quite different and I think it can be much harder for women to get promoted beyond a certain point. My guess though it that 15 of the missing 22 cents that women don't earn comes from decisions that the women make.

It's not society's gender norms that gave women breasts. In an era where breast feeding is encouraged, there are biological reasons when childcare by women makes more sense. If you're talking about a two parent family, that makes someone else the primary breadwinner if breasty needs to be with the kids.

Sure, we can think of ways to overcome biological limitations, but it's not some arbitrary social construct.

It has always been my understanding that these comparisons are based on equal titles and years of experience. Whether you took off 6 years to be a mom and then got 10 years experience, you still have 10 years of experience, just like the man who didn't take those 10 years off. I do know SAHMs and clearly, they aren't counted in this because they have no salary and no title. But, I don't know of any job that lets someone take 6 months to a year leave of absence and get that same job back, which is what Coramoor implied happens regularly. Of course I would not expect someone with less experience to make as much as someone with more experience. Nor would I expect a PA to be compared to an MD. But a CPA to a CPA, both with 15 years experience and similar marks on performance reviews? You bet they should be paid similarly.

The point <-------------------------------------------------> you

That 6 years off to be a mom can trump the 10 years of experience in certain careers, jobs, and job market conditions.

Then we get back to the crux of the issue, who is more likely to want to take the time off to be a parent if the family can financially sustain itself, the mother or the father? The mother.

Other than academia, there are probably a couple of fields where that happens.

No one is saying that CPA to CPA, given the same location, same business, same job function, same experience, as well as same sense of self worth should be paid differently based on their sex. All things being equal, they should be paid the same. However, that is a LOT of criteria to fill, and probably not even an tenth of the qualifications that can be looked at. I don't see how any study measuring such a pay disparity can be accurate.

It is not as simple as equal experience and academic degree.

Your understanding, huh? What if your understanding is wrong. Then you will be quoting a study that in no way validates your point and in fact may invalidate it, yet you are passing it off as truth. That's a quick way to look like a fool.

Dr.Phil,
I see what you are saying, but at the same time I think that answer is a cop out. Where I do agree is that any time things such as this are brought up it is very difficult to get to the meat of the issue because you have too many people's emotions wrapped around the axle. Next thing you have is someone throwing around the word racist or sexist or whatever...usually to distract others from their weak arguments.

Because people want a quick fix and want to believe that it "just so happens" that males are at the higher end of the salary scale. These trends are no coincidence and even UGAalum's post is an example.

Gender inequality and "family vs career inequality" do not begin in the workforce. As society becomes more equal our institutions tend to become more equal. If society begins to see childbirth, childrearing, and other family responsibilities as more than a "woman's job," employers will see that happier male and female employees who are able to balance work-home make for better workers and higher profits. Some companies (and countries) have adjusted their alienating capitalist structure in similar fashions.

This equal pay law may not go far but it may go further than it would have gone 15-20 years ago when the gender disparities were greater and more swept under the rug.

That is NOT what I said.

:confused:

Senusret!!! Quick, get in here!!!

It's Gender War 2009!

LOL!

Is Coramoor a man?

From the location and past posts I'd always assumed he was a soldier overseas. (and hey, thanks for that, man)

Dr. Phil, do you complete reject the idea that biology plays a role in gender norms or do you simply expect that we can tinker with enough of the other influences to neutralize it?

I also think you misrepresented my position earlier. I don't think it's a "it just so happens" thing. But I think that some of the gender inequality in pay in based on decisions that women make and that some of those decisions are influenced by the biological differences in men and women not particularly dependent on gender roles as socially constructed.

I also acknowledge that in some cases, women experience gender discrimination in employment.

I though that this and the links at the bottom were pretty interesting in explaining exactly how things are measured and how they've previously been controlled for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male-fe...ity_in_the_USA

No.

We can stop exaggerating the biological differences between men and women. :) You mentioned childbirth as though it isn't obvious that this is a biological difference. The gender norms come in how we interpret these biological differences.


I didn't misrepresent your position at all. We simply disagree with whether your position boils down to a "it just so happens" approach. I say that it does because it is as though these biological differences explain more of the gender inequality in this society than they do. Women can have babies. Men can't. Some women choose to have babies. Men still can't. "It just so happens that this is the case therefore it is what it is."

The outcome is what we're looking at here and, again, how we interpret biological differences and what the gender norms are based on. In a more gender egalitarian society, family dynamics do not rest predominantly on women's shoulders. Men aren't overwhelmingly "free" from family responsibilities from the moment of conception. These gender dynamics would extend to all social institutions, including the workforce.

Wanting to work part time, be a stay at home mommy should have no bearing on the millions of women who work full time in this country. Considering that child bearing years only apply to a very specific part of the years a woman can work and that the vast majority of women do not have more than 2 children, using the likelihood that a worker may become pregnant as a reason to pay every woman in the US less than her male counterparts is RIDICULOUS! My husband would LOVE to be a stay at home house husband...I already support our family. Should men get paid less because some men decide not to work? Shoot, my husband has an MD with advanced fellowship training at Hopkins...if you want to talk about wasted education, he's an excellent example!!

I love seeing families that defy traditional gender norms! :) There are men and women with MDs, PhDs, etc. who choose to stay at home.

If more men were stay at home fathers, to the point where there was a pattern to be observed rather than outliers, employers would change their policies accordingly.

Single father families also challenge traditional gender norms. Unfortunately, if these men are not in fields where they can work from home and set their own schedules, they find themselves in workplaces that are unwilling to accomodate a single father. This is not only because of the time commitments of the family situation itself but also because having family responsibilities that rival career responsibilities defies norms of masculinity and maleness.

I completely agree! I'm actually fine with being the main breadwinner because in the end, I get paid well for a job I love. My husband would make much less and be miserable the whole time. He'll eventually find something he doesn't mind doing everyday, but right now he's just bored! For those who think gender discrimination doesn't occur, I can attest to being discriminated against multiple times after I graduated from med school. It shocked me then...I thought in 2000 that those things didn't happen anymore. And, I was dead wrong!

That is the point in contention! You cannot prove that women that work full time is experiencing pay inequality because other women choose to have families or work part time. The study you quote cannot go to prove what you are presenting as fact.

Hmmm...did I actually quote any studies? No. I actually was addressing reasons others proposed for lower wages amongst women. I'm confused. Are you saying that women aren't paid less or that they aren't paid less because of their ability to bear children? If you want to argue statistics, you actually need to read the studies and evaluate their methods. They probably address the confounding factors that you point out. Just because a problem is multifactorial and complicated doesn't mean it can't be researched.

If you read about Lily, you see that she was 1) far above child bearing age for this to be an issue, 2) worked in a Goodyear factory, 3) worked with 9 men and the lowest paid of the men made 15% more than her 4) she was hired in 10 years prior at the same rate as the men and did not receive raises at the same rate

She didn't take a maternity leave, she didn't have less experience. She did the same job as the men and should have received the same pay. That's what I see equal pay for equal work to be about.

Isn't it sad? It didn't stop there either. After suing for discrimination, she was demoted and put on an assembly line requiring her to flip Hummer tires as a frail >60yo woman. She had to take early retirement because she couldn't handle the work after being in management for years. I seriously will never buy another Goodyear tire in my life! At least for her suffering, she can settle for being a hero to working women everywhere!!

AND the issue with this particular case (and the law that President Obama signed) addressed is a person's ability to file suit after 180 days. The Supreme Court ruled that because Ms. Letbetter brought her claim more than 180 days after the *initial* incident of gender discrimination that she could not legally sue her company. The new law states that a claimant has 180 days from each instance of discrimination, which in a case about pay, would be 180 days from each paycheck because each check would be a new incident of discrimination, to file a lawsuit.

The law makes no claims about what employers can or should pay their employees. If an employer can justify because of experience, knowledge, performance, etc. that certain classes of employees have and do performance at a higher rate than others, then there is nothing to prevent them from doing so.

Very true! We can just hope that these gender inequalities will be caught, and those people will be sued frequently enough to make it not worth their while to discriminate. Considering there are women in this world who are still regarded as property, I can't be too dismissive of this new law.