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Mr. President: Mind the Gender Gap
By Phyllis Chesler / November 10, 2008
The people are talking about it on television and in newspapers and magazines. Of course, I refer to the positive effect that President Obama’s election is expected to have on young African-American men and on the conversation about race. Jonathan Kaufman and Gary Fields, in "Election of Obama Recasts National Conversation on Race," in The Wall Street Journal.
WSJ describe African-Americans who feel that they can now hold their heads a "little higher" and, as important, hide behind fewer excuses in terms of their own achievement. In addition, white folk may feel that, in voting for Obama, they have atoned for their considerable historical sins and either are no longer "racists," or will no longer be perceived as such. 
Here’s what’s missing from the national conversation. In what way will electing another man, even a man of color, to be our Authority-in-Chief, psychologically effect young girls and women? Are they also holding their heads higher, are they also now empowered to break glass ceilings without any excuse for failure? Perhaps and yet: If we still conceive of God as a tall man, and imperial authority as residing in a man, how does this enable women to become like them, as opposed to merely marry or sleep with them? According to Jena McGregor, in her Business Week article, "Gender Pay Gap: Still Alive at the Top, Too," women (working full-time) still make 79 cents on the male dollar. Well, this is slow and painful progress. When I started out in this, the "longest revolution," American women made 59 cents on the male dollar and were locked out of most high-paying positions. Imagine that: It took a mass movement to achieve twenty cents in forty one years. Holding aside lower paying jobs where, some have argued, womens’ lower compensation is due to their leaving to have children or due to a decision to work only part-time, McGregor examined the compensation only for corporate CEOs. "The Corporate Library, a corporate governance research firm, is just out with a 2008 study of more than 3,000 North American companies which documents that indeed, "total compensation for women CEOs lags behind male CEOs after all." In short, female CEOs make about 85% of "male total actual pay." Interestingly, on paper, the women start out with slightly higher base salaries but "add in cash bonuses, perks and stock compensation–the goodies that really get CEO pay skyrocketing– and the differential is clear. The gap is the widest for female CEOs of the largest companies, who make less than two thirds of their male counterparts." And now for some more good news: Only 3 percent of the CEOs are women–a "shockingly low number in any major Western economy" said Senior Research Associated, Paul Hodgson. And further: Male CEOs are seen as responsible for increasing or decreasing the company’s wealth–but, according to co-author Clara Kulich, when female CEOs do so"[boards are] more prone to use external situations, economic situations" to explain their performances. There is almost an "indifference" to the women leader’s impact. According to Merissa Marr, also in today’s Wall Street Journal, Catalyst, a New York research group, found that women hold 15.4% of the top jobs (not the CEO positions) in Fortune 500 companies. However, this is a decrease 16.4% in 2005. Now, due to mainly male leaders, our nation has suffered an economic meltdown of gigantic proportions. Many men and their families will suffer; women as full-time wage earners and single heads of household will suffer more. So: I would like our national conversation about race to be expanded to one about gender as well. And, I would like people to grapple with the issue of how electing a male leader, even an eloquent and inspiring male leader, will translate, psychologically, into elevated ambitions for girls and women.
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Oh, dear God. You don’t honestly believe that there are differences in politics from one decade to the next, do you?
Well, stick around, you’ll find out.
Hey Isaac-
"From the president-elect, who broke previous campaign-fundraising records by collecting more small contributions from anyone else…"
Whoops. Maybe more as an absolute number, but as a matter of actual fact, a greater proportion of McCain contributions were of the "smaller than $200" variety. Surely the percentage of small contributions is the more interesting measure.
As for as the preposterous quote from Obama goes, how can you take such rubbish seriously? He received far more money from the finance/insurance sector than did McCain, and he has already surrounded himself with the most horrifying collection of business-as-usual Clinton retreads imaginable.
Very sorry that you too appear to have quaffed so deeply from the same cup o’ delusions as has the bulk of the American Liberal community.
Obama is a con man of Olympian proportions.Â
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Is there some reason why the formatting options are so screwy? I’d have loved to include a few bold-faced fonts, a hypertext link and some italics above, but Safari won’t let me do it. When I copy onto a window in IE, it compresses the paragraphs into a one-inch thick margin. Will I have to download Firefox again, or is there a technical fix on your end? Perhaps my interlocutor might suggest I use a Commodore 64, though.Â
blah blah blah <checks are still small> blah blah <leaving to pick up your kid? you’re fired> blah blah blah blah <he needs the raise more than you do, he has a family> blah blah blah blay blah <we just don’t think you’ll be tough enough> blah blah <she’s a bitch (she turned me down), don’t give her the promotion> blah blah blah <as a single mother, you should be destitute, blue-collar, and sacrificing all to raise your child, try it again and leave out the fieldwork in Argentina> blah blah blah blah blah <she’ll get pregnant and leave> blah blah blah.
Why would I look to persuade you? There’s 100 million women out there who know what I’m talking about. The question is whether they have the balls to do anything about it. So far, no. I can’t help them with that.
Isaac, you’re an ass. The choice you’d leave women with is to be disrespected by a pack of badly-behaved politicians (bosses, etc.), so they can work harder for less money, and sit home at night eating virtue for supper. There are enough miserable women out there who can go head-to-head with these guys. I say let them go work on our behalf.
So? Why didn’t you encourage women to do like me, and write in Hillary, whether or not we thought she’d have made a good president?
I used to work for my US Congressman, and one thing I learned at that job was how politicians fear and loathe the vote. The only reason that no political party takes women seriously is that we do not force them to. If we said, in any kind of numbers: "OK, chumps: Until you show respect, screw you, I’m voting for [random person who does respect women and the work we do, paid and unpaid]", they’d be falling all over themselves to find out what women actually do, and pay respect. The pay-parity bills would come fast and furious. So would a lot of other measures that acknowledge the tremendous amount of unpaid work we do.  Â
We certainly have the numbers to do it. The Reagan Democrats managed it with, what, a few hundred thousand? And look how careful every single Democrat is now, 30 years on, to go bowling and do the shots-and-beer working-class thing. I don’t know that they have any idea what it’s about, but they know they ought to fear those Reagan Dems. Â
One more case of women refusing to take the power they can get. I’m not surprised by it anymore.
Well, some of them will, at any rate.
Ms Chesler’s article is tone-deaf to the most glaringly obvious criticism of female obsessions with "power" as such, and this paragraph sums it up brilliantly:
"In short, female CEOs make about 85% of "male total actual pay." Interestingly, on paper, the women start out with slightly higher base salaries but "add in cash bonuses, perks and stock compensation–the goodies that really get CEO pay skyrocketing– and the differential is clear. The gap is the widest for female CEOs of the largest companies, who make less than two thirds of their male counterparts."
Has it not occurred to Ms Chesler that the grossly overcompensated CEOs of American companies are seen as an ethical failure and a political liability? How does she reconcile these figures with the golden parachutes for all the CEOs who wrecked their companies with greedy and short-sighted leadership, to say nothing of all the lay-offs they incurred? The spike in compensation ratios of CEOs to workers of greater than 400 to 1? Does Ms Chesler have the presence of mind to complain about unequal compensation in the same raw terms that these common observations I mention should help to contextualize and clarify, once considering them?
The more that women demand respect and power by emulating the worst and most dysfunctional characteristics that some male leadership styles typify, the more they will be undeserving of it – or at least deserving of the bad name that many male "leaders" have given themselves. Barack Obama won and will likely be a quite successful president because he embodied a new and better leadership style. So will the first female president. Unfortunately, her predecessors will likely just continue to be a series of female Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons – to the detriment of everyone.
Great to open the discussion on the gender gap again. It’s a difficult battle for women to be on top, enduring the criticism for appropriating traditionally male traits. America is behind much of the world when it comes to females in leadership.
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