Do you care about the role of women in our workforce? If so, you may be suffering from gender fatigue.
According to an article in Newsweek (“Women Will Rule the World”), the debate over women in the workforce in the United States is an old issue. “We’re done,” the magazine quotes Rosalind Hudnell, the head of diversity and inclusion at the Intel Corporation, as saying. I am not making any of that up.
I am suffering from fatigue, alright – but I am tired of silly articles about how our work is done and how women will soon rule the world.
As far as I know:
- The U.S. still has a pretty significant gender pay gap, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a Women’s Foundation Grantee Partner.
- Women are still segregated in “women’s” jobs such as secretaries, nurses and teachers.
- Men still earn more than women at every educational level. In fact, women with some college or an associate’s degree actually have *lower* median weekly earnings ($628) than men who are high school graduates but have no college ($709), according to the 2009 Women in the Labor Force Databook.
- Women in woman-dominated professions (such as nurses, secretaries and maids) still earn less than men in those fields.
- Government funded training programs perpetuate occupational gender segregation, according to a new report by the Center for American Progress.
I think what we are suffering from is imagination fatigue. Why can’t we imagine and work to create a world where women and men of equal skill and education are paid equally for the same work? Why can’t we imagine and work to create a world that places a higher value (literally) on “women’s work?” Why can’t we imagine and work to create a world that didn’t think of certain work as “women’s” or “men’s?”
I would love to hear what fatigues you about this conversation, as well as what you want to imagine and create.
Gwen Rubinstein is a program officer at Washington Area Women’s Foundation.
Photo credit: The White House; President Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009
