Combining Career and Family

In describing their future family life, however, both sexes tend to follow tra­ditional gender roles. When asked whose job comes first, most say the husband's does. Both sexes are unanimous in declaring that primary care of children is the wife's job. Al­though young women hope their hus­band will share household chores equally, most young men express only willingness to "help"—a word that im­plies, not taking their share of the re­sponsibility, but assisting with tasks that are really the wife's responsibility.

Although both sexes anticipate hav­ing careers, males and females hold dif­ferent attitudes toward work. Male students see their future in terms of a steady line of work and achievement. Most have clear ideas about where they want to go and how to get there. They expect to work for the rest of their lives and to be the main providers for their families, even if their wife works. By comparison, women seem tentative and vague about their ca­reer goals. They want to work, but see their career plans as depending on the needs of their husband and children. They expect their careers to be inter­rupted or even halted at various times.

In short, neither sex anticipates a symmetrical marriage in which husband and wife assume equal responsibility for supporting the family and raising the children. If compromises need to be made, both sexes assume that the wife will sacrifice her career for the family (and the husband his family life for his career). Given the fact that women usu­ally earn less than men and that the workplace is not structured to accom­modate family commitments, these ex­pectations may be realistic.

The American workplace is not designed for people who want to make equal com­mitments to their family and their job. The law does not guar­antee American women maternity leave, and very few companies offer men paternity leave though one of the first bills that President Bill Clinton signed into law required large companies to offer their workers unpaid leave for births, adoptions, and family emer­gencies. Although more than half the mothers of small children work, few em­ployers provide any form of child-care assistance (such as on-site day care or allowances for baby-sitters). The federal government's support for day care has been minimal. Because caring for chil­dren is still seen as women's work, the burden of trying to balance work and parenthood falls on women. Our culture still expects men to be part-time parents, just filling in for Mom now and then.

There are alternatives. In Sweden, where nine out of ten women ages twenty-five to thirty-four work, the government provides public day care for all children. Parents of either sex who choose to stay home with a newborn or newly adopted baby are guaranteed eighteen months' leave, receive social security payments corresponding to their current salary, and must be given their old jobs back when their leave ends. The government also requires employers to allow parents time off to care for a sick child and the option of part-time work while children are preschoolers. Either parent may take advantage of these pro­grams, or mothers and fathers may take turns. Of all the in­dustrial nations, only the United States and South Africa do not provide new parents with some form of support. But the structure of the workplace does not tell the full story; cultural forces also come into play. Even in Sweden, few men take advantage of paternity leave, and those who do often are ridiculed by their co-workers. As a result, most women today hold two full-time jobs, one at the work­place and one at home.

The sociologist Arlie Hochschild characterizes the state of gender relations in America today as a "stalled revolu­tion." The work force has changed, women have changed, but most work­places and many men have not changed in response.

The most visible sign of the stalled revolution is the phenomenon that has come to be known as women's "second shift." Growing numbers of women work an eight-hour shift at their jobs and then put in another full shift at home, cook­ing, cleaning, and caring for children. From her own research and other time-use studies, Hochschild calculates that working women do fifteen more hours of work a week than their husbands do. This adds up to an extra month of twenty-four-hour days each year. Even when husbands are willing to put in as much time on child care and housework, women feel more responsible for the functioning of the family and the home. Women are the ones who keep track of doctor appointments, arrange for chil­dren's visits with friends, and call from work to check on the baby-sitter. Women do more of the daily jobs, like cooking and cleaning up, that lock them into fixed routines. Men take care of the car, the yard, and household repairs— nonroutine chores that are less frequent and often can be done whenever time permits. Most of the time men spend working at home is devoted to the chil­dren, not the laundry. Moreover, men are more likely to do "fun" things with the children (such as trips to the zoo), while women more often perform such routine child-care tasks as feeding and bathing. Just as there is a wage gap in the workplace, so there is a "leisure gap" at home. Husbands sleep longer and have more time to watch TV or pursue hob­bies. Wives talk about sleep "the way a hungry person talks about food”

Hochschild suggests that women give in to their husbands on the "second-shift" issue because they are locked into marriage in a way that men are not. For one thing, women earn less than men and so have more of an economic need for marriage. For another, marriage is less stable than it used to be, and divorce is more economically damaging to women than to men. To make matters worse, many divorced mothers receive little emotional or other support from tradi­tionally minded friends and relatives.

Hochschild sees the "stalled revolu­tion" as the result of colliding social forces. On the one hand, new economic opportunities and needs have drawn women into the work force, which puts pressure on men to share the second shift. On the other hand, the wage gap between men and women and the high rate of divorce lead women to hold on to their marriages—and men to hold out on sharing housework. Hochschild sug­gests that many modern women feel dou­bly oppressed by men, not only on the first shift (where the boss is male, privi­leged, and better paid than they are) but also on the second shift (where husbands opt out).

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Pay Equity

What can be done to close the gap between the earnings of women and men? In the 1980s, pay equity—also known as compar­able worth - has emerged as a controversial solution in the effort to alleviate the second-class status of women within the paid labor force of the United States. Pay equity calls for equal pay for different types of work judged to be comparable through measurement of such factors as employee knowledge, skills, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. Pay equity goes beyond the idea of "equal pay for equal work" by encouraging equal pay for different (but comparable) work.

Theoretically, this doctrine sounds straightforward, but it is not so simple to effect. How exactly does one compare jobs in order to determine standards of equtable pay? Should a zookeeper be paid more than a child care worker? Does our society pay zookeepers more because we value caretaking for animals more than caretaking for children? Or do zookeepers earn more than child care workers because the former tend to be male while the latter are generally female?

Women's work is undervalued and underpaid in American society. From a conflict perspective, women earn low wages because they labor within a tradition that treats them as temporary and supplementary workers, de­values women's work, and views low wages as sufficient for female workers. Efforts to address the issue of wage discrimination have resulted in legislation and increased public awareness, yet women's salaries remain far lower than those of men. The federal Equal Pay Act of 1963, which mandates equal pay for equal work, applies to a relatively small proportion of fe­male workers: those who perform the same job under the same roof as male coworkers. Although these women's wages have increased as a result of the Equal Pay Act, most female workers remain segre­gated in a few occupations in which there are no male workers doing the same jobs with whom these under­paid women might compare themselves.

In some instances, pay inequity is difficult to defend. For example, in Arlington County, Virginia, entry-level gardeners working for the county must have a high school diploma and one year's experience before being hired. They earn $13,927 per year to start. By contrast, the position of entry-level Library Assistant I requires two years of college or two years of library experience, yet the pay is only $12,598 per year. Of the entry-level librarians, 93.4 percent are female, while 87.5 percent of the gardeners are male. Such data are cited by advocates of comparable worth, who insist that we need a more equitable way of eval­uating jobs to determine their value.

Although sex discrimination is one obvious explana­tion for the lack of pay equity, other explanations are possible. Employers commonly cite the influence of labor market supply and demand on wages in various occupations. "You can't measure productivity of jobs or the intrinsic worth of a job," argues Owen Johnson of Continental Bank. "Women are disproportionately found in relatively few jobs in our society, and there is an oversupply of women in certain occupations. This oversupply typically results in low wages." Johnson's comment appears questionable, however, in view of a labor-market phenomenon evident in the nursing pro­fession. Thousands of nurses are leaving the field be­cause of low pay; yet, in response to this shortage, wages have not been increased. Instead, a general reduction in nursing services has followed, and some institutions have hired nurses from outside the United States who will accept lower wages.

Thus far, the courts have generally been reluctant to address the issue of pay equity. However, in late 1983, federal district court judge Jack Tanner held that the state of Washington had violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act through inequitable treatment of its female em­ployees and ordered the state to pay $838 million in raises and retroactive compensation to these women. This ruling was overturned in 1985, as an appeals court determined that an employer can follow prevail­ing market wages in setting salaries—even if these wages underpay women. In 1986, the state decided to avoid further appeals by settling the case for $482 mil­lion in damages. As part of the settlement, the worth of different jobs will now be measured in terms of skill, training, education, responsibility, and other factors.

In 1985, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights took up the issue of comparable worth. By a vote of 5-2, the commissioners held that "comparable worth, as a theory of discrimination, or as a remedy for dis­crimination, is profoundly and irretrievably flawed." The chairman, Clarence M. Pendleton, Jr., inflamed the controversy by stating that comparable worth was the "looniest idea since Looney Tunes." Nevertheless, the majority of the Civil Rights Commission acknowl­edged that sex-based wage discrimination is a serious matter. As a remedy, they called for strict enforcement of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and federal civil rights acts to prohibit employment discrimination against women.

Many public employers, including the states of New York and New Jersey, have developed voluntary plans to put pay equity policies into effect. In a key develop­ment in 1985, the city of Los Angeles embraced the idea of equal pay for city jobs "of comparable worth," a decision that Mayor Tom Bradley called a "historic step." The city accepted a union contract that gave 10 to 15 percent raises to 3900 clerks and librar­ians—most of them women—to bring their salaries to the level of those of maintenance workers, gardeners, and other city workers in male-dominated classifica­tions. Mayor Bradley commented that, through the city's action, "we will send a message to all cities across this country"

The issue of pay equity is just beginning to gain pub­ attention. In a 2003 national survey, only one-fourth of respondents stated that they had heard a "fair amount" or a "great deal" about pay equity or com­parable worth. Most Americans believe that women and men should be paid equally for jobs of compara­ble worth. At the same time, two-thirds of respondents in the survey agreed that it is too difficult—and there­fore unfair—to compare and evaluate jobs that are quite different (such as secretary and electrician) to see if they deserve similar compensation. In any event, the American people will surely be hearing much more about this controversial concept. According to a survey released by the National Committee on Pay Equity, more than 1500 local governments and school districts in 24 states have taken steps to ad­dress the issue of pay equity.

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