There’s this event that is starting to get traction in Europe (I don’t know in the rest of the world), that on November 4th, at 9:10 am, women work for free for the rest of the year due to wage disparities between men and women.
Clarification: women are not refusing pay, the event is that they (as well as men) are highlighting the fact that after that date, they are essentially working for free.
Truthfully I’m not sure what to think of this or say about it. I mean, the purpose of noting this event is to bring awareness to wage disparities and inequality. But I can’t help but feel it lacks revolutionary character. All wage labour is labour done for free, it is not unique to wage disparity among other lines.
What are your thoughts? How do we repackage this into a revolutionary outlook?
They aren’t literally working for free or refusing pay.
The point is that because of the average gender pay gap between men and women, women are essentially working for free for the rest of the year relatively.
Nobodies rejecting pay to make a point. The date November 4th is to mark the point in the year where if women were paid equally to men, they could stop working and take home the same pay they receive in reality.
There is also some revolutionary suggestions by the Europe party of Socialists and the women’s wovement zij-kant called the “out of office” campaign in which for the remainder of the year they are encouraging women to link and automatic mailbox message directing all inquiries to male colleagues as they are currently still being paid. Essentially a soft strike where they still work bar answering emails.
makes sense
It makes more sense.
Yes I can see how my original post makes it seem like they are refusing pay
I think the idea of them refusing to answer emails is a good way of getting non revolutionary women to engage in the campaign.
I’d like to see people setting fire to CEOs cars and striking but for a lot of women, even agreeing to strike will put a target on them and lead to considerably more workplace discrimination than if a male colleague did the same. This same discrimination still isn’t addressed today.
Even with action women are hamstringed by male perception and control of the workplace and having the odd girl boss ceo is not the fix to this problem.
The UK government currently believes it is however (they are suggesting tying CEO bonuses to the amount of women in board rooms) and are completely missing the point that companies promoting a girl boss into the board is not going to a) change the material conditions of female colleagues down the ladder b) more than likely lead to companies hiring women who will turn their backs on their fellow colleagues and defend the already existing status quo.
I think the solution proposed is reasonable enough to get engagement from the wider female workforce in a way that a full strike might not. Maybe. And hopefully will raise awareness about these current issues.
The wider problem cannot be addressed until men pull their heads out their arses recognise the systemic discrimination that their female colleagues suffer and join with them in solidarity to affect real systemic change.
Sadly that isn’t the case across the majority and women are yet again being made to try and push back against the patriarchy on their own without support or allyship leading to a situation where a majority of men will criticise and mock these movements eithee through a lack of understanding or a vicious distaste for womens empowerment in the workplace and perpetuate these problems as they see them as “oh the girls are kicking up a fuss again”.
If we want real revolutionary change we need men to recognise this and join in solidarity to address this problem.
Leaving women to tackle this alone in a system made for and by men is what leads to less revolutionary and more appeasement strategies as women are blocked from pushing back due to fear of harassment, discrimination and job insecurity.
Allyship is important here.
That’s my take.
So do women actually make less money than their male counterparts in the same job?
I’ve had this explained to me that the whole gender wage gap could be explained by maths, as there are less women working, so the average salary of a woman is therefore lower on paper but not in reality or something like that.
It’s been a while since I’ve thought about this but the way I remember it makes no sense at all right now. Can anyone elaborate on this, maybe?
Women make less money. They are often hired for less, they get raises less often, they are unable to negotiate as high salaries, they often are expected to do extra labour unpaid (reproductive labour around the workplace, like cleaning, making coffee, looking after others etc), they are more often hired temporary or part-time versus full-time.
They often have to take more leave (especially for care-giving), on top of the large amounts of unpaid reproductive labour they are expected to do outside of work.
This is compounded for women with further marginalisations. Black women in America, for instance, make 58% less than white men, so when discussing the gender pay gap in America it ends up averaging out to 82%, because white women make almost as much as white men, but Black women make much less than white men.
I like how whenever I ask a question, you’re often quick to reply. In my headcanon you get a notification whenever I ask a question. ‘Babe, please watch the soup for a second. It says right here that DankZedong has a question again so I have to come in’
This explanation makes more sense. You got any theory or vids or something you recommend about this?
Little alarm goes off whenever someone needs to know about intersectional feminism, it’s like my bat-signal.
The Marxist examination of the gender pay gap is a building on the Conflict Theory (first put forth by Marx himself), which has a lot of writing on it, though you may want to look specifically into writers from your general locale to get a more firm grasp of what you specifically can do to help address it.
The always-classic Wages Against Housework by Silvia Federici is a good introduction into the Marxist feminist struggle of unpaid reproductive labour (which isn’t usually what radlibs are talking about when approaching the gender pay gap, but which is a more robust understanding of the expropriation of feminised labour).
I think an understanding of women’s place in the wage labour economy is essential to tackling the multi-faceted layers of the gender pay gap, so of course the very intro-level reading is Engels’ Origin of the Family.
Judith Orr (who wrote Sexism and the System) also has a pretty good essay on bridging feminism and Marxism that touches on the gender pay gap, though it’s over a decade old now so the statistics aren’t going to be up to date. I’ll see if I can find it.
Edit: I found it; https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj2/2010/isj2-127/orr.html
How working for free is a good thing, though? o_O
Check my comment
Idk why but I imagine like a big evil ceo going “Yes women, trust me pr*stitution and dying in wars for imperialism are very empowering and will stick it up to the big white man, but you know what will be even more empowering? working without getting paid” someone explain.
edit: I am not saying real feminism or feminists see the things I mentioned as empowering or revolutionary, but I noticed that western media depicts it that way
