leftfielder.org

The concept of equal pay for equal work is one that most people nowadays would probably endorse. And I think that’s a good thing. The egalitarian in me thinks that while differential effort, training, ability, and perhaps seniority should be rewarded, other dimensions ought not to matter. And this is officially supported by several important organizations including The U.N. Human rights declaration (I’m so glad to have access to that document…)

Article 23.2
Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

And the the U.S. government’s equal employment opportunity commission..

Of course, practically this goal has not been achieved. There are still gaps in pay by gender, attractiveness, and height. (On a purely speculative note, I wonder if the gender difference in pay persists when you control for the height differences. And vice versa…). But for the most part, people decry such differences as unfair, and while most aren’t motivated to work for positive change, they at least don’t actively work against it.

There is one factor though, in which many people actively support and push for differential pay for equal work. And the people doing this pushing are typically those that style themselves as progressive and liberal thinking. That factor is being single.

Yesterday I got a memo from the administration at my job which proudly announced yet another benefit for families that single people can not use. In this case, it was a subsidy for child care… a certain number of dollars a week that you could spend on child care and the university would reimburse you.

Now, I understand the reason for this benefit. Sarah and the army of commentators have discussed factors that prevent women from succeeding in the workplace. By giving subsidies for child care, the university makes it easier for people to have a career and a family, and because women are disparately implicated in child care in this culture, that increases the opportunities for women to make it to higher levels. And I fully support that the university wants to help women succeed, and to provide parents with flexibility.

But at the same time, single people work just as hard as their married counterparts. In fact, they probably work harder, because at the end of the day, they don’t have anybody to go home to and so are more likely to stay at the office and work late. And yet their married peers are getting paid more in perks and benefits than single folks are, especially married workers who have children. The child care subsidies are just one of dozens of such perks.

So, how about this solution: Instead of giving a child-care subsidy of several thousand per year, just up everybody’s salary by several thousand per year. People who have made the decision to have children can spend that money on child care, and reap all the benefits of the current policy. But this would be more egalitarian for single people, who would be getting paid equally for the work they are doing.

The point is, to the extent that we believe in equal pay for equal work — an idea that most progressives who are driving for child care and spousal benefits espouse — we need to make sure that such principles are applied across the board to all groups, not just the politically popular ones (gender, race, handicap, and sexual orientation).