John Roberts’ Wage Bias
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Dumb Things Said By Smart People, Economy, Supreme CourtSince I’ve been focusing quite a bit on the good stuff about John Roberts, I figured it’s only fair to take a look at some of the more suspect stances he has taken.
Recently a memo was discovered that exposed Roberts’ views about unequal wages between the sexes. That’s right. He wasn’t in favor of fixing the problem. That’s troubling on many different levels, not the least of which is that this man is going to be taking the place of a woman Justice who championed this cause. That’s not to say he has to feel the same way, but I think I can make a fairly reasonable assumption that O’Connor would not be very happy if this is how he truly felt.
In any event, take a read:
As an assistant White House counsel in 1984, John Roberts scoffed at the notion that men and women should earn equal pay in jobs of comparable importance, and he belittled three female Republican members of Congress who promoted that idea to the Reagan administration.The memo from Roberts, now President Bush’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, was a response to a letter that the three women – one of whom was Olympia Snowe of Maine, now a U.S. senator – had sent to the administration. The women had said that the concept of “equal pay for equal work” had not sufficiently boosted women’s wages because women were not in many of the same fields as men. The three were promoting the notion of equal pay for different jobs of comparable value, based on factors such as skills and responsibility.
In his memo to White House counsel Fred Fielding, Roberts said the women’s letter “contends that more is required because women still earn only $0.60 for every $1 earned by men, ignoring the factors that explain that apparent disparity, such as seniority, the fact that many women frequently leave the work force for extended periods of time. … I honestly find it troubling that three Republican representatives are so quick to embrace such a radical redistributive concept. Their slogan may as well be, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to her gender.’ “
I don’t agree with Roberts about this at all. However, another thing that needs to be taken into consideration is the fact that this memo was written 21 years ago. People’s attitudes change, and I’m hoping that’s the case here. The wage bias in the corporate world is demonstratable and we need to start being honest about it.
And as a side note, I was pretty disappointed that this article is titled “Roberts scoffed at equal-pay theory.” Really? You’re actually going to use the word “scoff”? Personally, I think that’s a judgement call they shouldn’t be making, but whatever, I digress…
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August 16th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
Roberts was talking about comparable worth theory, not equal pay. This was a fairly radical idea 2 decades ago that said that people with different jobs (e.g., an accountant and a teacher) should be paid the same if it can be established that the jobs they perform hold comparable value and require comparable effort, education, training, and experience, and the persons performing those jobs have comparable seniority, etc. The idea was to correct for the big differences in pay between jobs that are predominantly or traditionally worked by women and those by men. It was (and still is) radical because actual enforcement would require enormous government intervention, since the markets can’t by themselves correct for differences between jobs across industries — in other words, there’s no way for market forces to raise the average teacher’s salary to an accountant’s without the government intervening.
August 17th, 2005 at 8:16 am
Understood from the get go. However, they’re obviously intertwined. And having such a pronounced wage gap is still a big problem in the US. I’m not saying that having the government intervene is the best way to go about it, but Roberts dismissed the reality of the gap nearly out of hand and used examples that could essentially prove the bias.
August 17th, 2005 at 10:03 am
Having worked 35+ years in technology industry and government, I’ve observed a great deal of discrimination based on age, sex and far less significant things (e.g. irritability, ‘negative’ attitudes, etc.) But I’ve also observed many employees that clearly are not contributing to the bottom line of the organization, yet are protected because of age, sex and other concerns (e.g. friendship, history, etc.) It is obvious that we cannot reduce all decisions to “worthâ€Â? to the organization’s bottom line, certainly not from a legislative point of view.
But it is not just a matter of the discrimination against women alone; it is also a matter of unreasonable expectations placed upon men by society. Indeed, women do take off more time to raise children, often opting for part time or at least less demanding positions. But men should do the same without the guilt and (worse) the career-limiting impact. If men put more emphasis on their duty as fathers and mentors to their children, their salaries would not be as high and the disparity between women and men would be greatly reduced.
I would certainly agree that discrimination is bad, but do we encourage discrimination against being good parents in order to eliminate wage discrimination? We cannot look upon wages as if this completely measures the worth of a person to society.
August 17th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
“Understood from the get go. However, they’re obviously intertwined. And having such a pronounced wage gap is still a big problem in the US. ”
How can you say this? Who gets to determine which ‘jobs’ compare? How can you measure what Company A is willing to pay for someone to be an accountant and what Company B is willing to pay for an accountant? What about senority? Then to compare different jobs for a pay difference, how would you even approach that one?
It is true that women take extended periods off of work to raise children, they also dont usually take assignment that require traveling, etc. This would limit our mobility in some companies, however, I’m not that worried about it because I also get to spend the time with my kids, I get to go to their ball games, chorus recitals, and plays. That is my personal preference, not the company making me. To then turn around and demand that I get paid the same as the guy that spends 2 weeks out of the month traveling, or moving up the corporate ladder and having to handle the stress and extra hours, etc is ridiculous! I get off work at 5:00pm, and I go home, I get my weekends off, etc.
August 17th, 2005 at 4:03 pm
Debsay, look at the research I’ve compiled and look and the numbers. I’m not saying that your story is non-trivial or invalid. I’m sure many women share your views, but that’s anecdotal evidence. And as far as the generalization about women not wanting to travel, I’m going to have to ask you to come up with something to back up that claim before I can even consider it. If this is the case for you, then I appreciate that it’s YOUR view, but I don’t think you can extend that to cover an entire gender.
I’m looking at this situation as a whole, and that’s why I’ve found that men are making more money than women who have the exact same skills and put in the same amount of work. This has been shown to be the case in the same companies between people working the exact same jobs with the same amount of seniority. And, by the way, this isn’t just a problem with the US. Other countries suffer from this institutional bias too.
The last thing I’ll say is to address your point that women take extended time off for having children. You’re right because many women do this, but since when is it okay to pay somebody less by if they “could” get pregnant? Do you really think it’s okay to penalize somebody for the possibility that they could take time off simply because it’s a possibility? In my mind, it should never work that way and yet discrimination based on somebody’s gender happens every single day. In my mind worldview, that’s VERY wrong.
Simply put, you can’t define (and therefore punish) an entire group of people by one characteristic that they may or may not exercise.
August 17th, 2005 at 7:46 pm
If the gender bias were irrational, there would be an economic opportunity for labor arbitrage. If a woman was providing $1 of value and being paid $0.76 while a man was being paid $1 for $1 of value, you could increase profits by hiring away women for $0.80 instead of $0.76. Obviously, the numbers aren’t real but the principle is valid.
I have yet to hear of anybody running a business based on the idea that this arbitrage opportunity exists and collecting these available, excess profits by having a dominantly female workforce that is just paid slightly better than the prevailing female average. Corporate america understands arbitrage very well and engages in it all the time for profit gaps that are a great deal smaller than $0.23.
So why am I not hearing about this great profit opportunity? Why isn’t arbitrage bidding up prices for female work up to its deserved parity level? Why is capitalism financially failing? Or is it failing at all?
Perhaps the reason why arbitrage hasn’t eliminated more of the gap is because the difference in wages is caused by economically rational discrimination (the sort of discrimination that is justified). I read the San Francisco Gate article that claims it’s not. Color me unimpressed at citing studies that I can’t chase down to check if they actually say what the reporter purports they say.
August 18th, 2005 at 7:37 am
Justin,
“And as far as the generalization about women not wanting to travel, I’m going to have to ask you to come up with something to back up that claim before I can even consider it. ”
Point taken, I only know about myself and most women I know… and I did generalize because I didn’t research it. I would be interested to know if there are any studies out there with this information included. There are so many women (especially single mothers) that cannot take a job that requires a lot of traveling, this limits their career advancement opportunities. There are also many women that don’t want to travel while their children are young even if they are married. I’m sure that there are other women that do take advancement opportunities even though it includes lots of travel, I would expect that ‘their’ pay is equal to the men’s pay. You are also over generalizing when you compare ‘women’ with ‘men’, you aren’t taking into account all of the other factors that are more important to us.
The only point I was trying to make is that you can’t claim discrimination just by looking at pay, there are lots of other things to consider. One thing is that flexibility is more important to me than actual pay is. If my child is sick and I get called I don’t want to worry about whether I can pick them up or not, this is worth more than the $10.00 a week difference to me. I looked for that flexibility when I was job hunting because it was important for me, my husband was in the type of job that he couldn’t always leave to do this so I needed the flexibility. Single mothers need it more than ever, and if you aren’t taking this into consideration then your numbers would be faulty. I also wanted a job that allowed me the flexibility of taking more than the average 3 months off if I had another child. How many fathers take 3 months to a year off of work when they have a child? During this time off you don’t continue to accrue seniority, but the men do because they have already gone back to work.
Each of us negotiates a wage and benefit package when we get hired into a company, if somebody doesn’t negotiate as well then it is on them. I’m just tired of the ‘victim’ crap that goes on all too often. I have a white collar job, I negotiated my contract and I’m satisfied with it because I obtained some non-monetary benefits that are important to me. If I didn’t negotiate as well as somebody else then shame on me…. I probably got something else that was more important to me.
August 22nd, 2005 at 3:59 am
debsay has I think a good point. I wish I still had the citation for the paper that analyzed wage/gender differences in the US that had factored in probability that one would leave to raise children. When they controlled for seniority, years experience, and job title, they found that the probability a woman of that age and years on the job would take maternity leave explained the arbitrage.