TROUBL

It’s a well-known fact that in America, despite years of trying to rectify the situation, men still get paid more than women for equal work. Many of us down here at the economic bottom have a vague picture of the men at the top as power-hungry corporate types who maintain the upper echelons of American business as a Rich Boys Club. We grumble about how the rich are getting richer and making the poor poorer, though we lack proof that this is the case.

Right now, particularly, the wealthy elite of the male-dominated finance industry are coming under scrutiny for all their money-grubbing in the past decade, and for screwing the rest of us over in the process. It’s easy and satisfying to point our fingers at them for keeping all the money up there and not sharing it, even if we don’t really know that they’re doing it. It feels good to blame someone at the top for our woes.

An interesting time, then, for this study’s results to be published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. The study tracked almost 13,000 men and women from 1979 to 2005, repeatedly questioning them about their salaries and their views on gender roles. They were questioned about whether they thought a woman’s place was at home or at work, whether the man in a relationship should be the primary breadwinner, and other gender-role oriented topics. The results astounded the researchers. Their final data showed that in America, as of 2005, men who hold “traditional” beliefs about women (ie, women should stay at home to be mothers and housekeepers, working mothers lead to more juvenile delinquency, etc.) earn almost $12,000 more a year than men who have egalitarian beliefs. Let me repeat that: $12,000 more a year. $11,930, to be exact. That’s a lot of cash. And not only do they make more than other men, but these same “traditional” guys also make around $14,400 more a year than their correspondingly “traditional” women. And, to complicate matters, those “traditional” (or should we call them self-defeating?) women, should they choose to work, make on average $1,500 less a year than their egalitarian female counterparts. In turn, egalitarian women make only about $1,400 less a year than the egalitarian men who average 12K less than sexist men.

These results are mind-boggling. It’s no surprise to anyone that a wage disparity exists between men and women, or even that sexist men who think women should stay home earn more than anyone else. These men tend to be Type A personalities who were raised by Type A fathers, who taught them to be aggressive in getting what they want. But just how much more they get surprised even the researchers. As quoted onCNBC.com, Timothy Judge, a psychologist at the University of Florida who co-authored the study, said: “We weren’t surprised there was a difference, we were surprised by the magnitude of the difference.”

Twelve G’s is a lot of money to be held back from those who either hold different beliefs or who have different genitalia, no matter how you explain it. And the most interesting part of the matter is that the study took into account most of the possible mitigating circumstances that could explain the disparities. For instance, as quoted on www.scientificblogging.com: “The authors say that … the results did not fundamentally change when other factors were controlled, such as industry, occupation, hours worked, and number of children. ‘These results cannot be explained by the fact that, in traditional couples, women are less likely to work outside the home,’ Judge said. ‘…our results suggest that even if you control for time worked and labor force participation, traditional women are paid less than traditional men for comparable work.’”

And not only do the men at the top make more than the rest of us, but even the sexist men at the bottom make more than the egalitarian guys they work beside. The authors report “finding that the gender role orientation–earnings effect was stronger rather than weaker in low-complexity jobs.” At every level at which men compete for jobs, then, sexist men make more money than egalitarian men, and every kind of women.

How, in a country where most people have been made lawfully equal, in which women work outside the home almost as often as men, where most jobs are open to men and women of all races and religions, can the good old boys at the top still be so blatantly perpetuating sexism? For call their “traditional” beliefs about women what you will; they admittedly expect certain behavior from certain people based solely on their sex. And that set of beliefs, my friends, is the very definition of sexism. And given that the belief is seriously hurting most the people trying to earn a living in America, it is sexism operating at a very high, very harmful level.

So how is this happening in America in 2008? The researchers suggest that, “‘It could be that traditional men are hypercompetitive salary negotiators – the Donald Trump prototype, perhaps,’” Judge was quoted as saying in The Washington Post. “It could be on the employer side that, subconsciously, the men who are egalitarian are seen as effete.”

Both of these suggestions make a lot of sense, but they in no alleviate the problem at hand. And yet, what are non-sexist Americans to do to close the wage gap?

If we all became sexist to catch up, men would rocket ahead in salaries while self-defeating women would fall backward, dragging forward-thinking women along with them. The researchers offered the idea that, as quoted on CNBC, “If everyone were egalitarian, the gender wage gap would be a lot smaller than it is.” While that idea might be vastly oversimplified, it’s a pretty good start. How do we get to a point where even the men who make the most see women as equal? It’s a question social scientists have been trying to answer for decades, without much success (as this study shows).

One can hope that the current economic crisis will level the playing field by bringing some of the richest men down a few notches. Perhaps, in a post-economic-crash world, we can start over with a new look at American economics. Perhaps, a Democratic vote in November will help remind the richest of the rich that the rest of us deserve a piece of the pie, even those of us who believe women deserve just as big a piece as men.