Material World

In Valenti's chapter "Material World" she explains that despite popular belief, women are still getting paid significantly less than men. This was somewhat surprising to me but the real shocker was that the Bureau of Labor Statistics stopped reporting on women's wages because it wasn't a priority. Luckily, the Senate passed an amendment that required BLS to continue collecting data on women's wages. Also, some claim that the difference comes from women working part time or taking time off to take care of family even though statistics that indicate that women get paid 76% of what men get paid were based off of women who work full-time.

So how can we fix this problem? One way would be to get more women in higher positions in companies because it is shown that when this is the case, women workers make more money. However, it is hard to get women in these higher positions due to sex discrimination. Walmart, for example, has 70% women making up the hourly workers but less than a third of the management.

As we have already figured out in this class, the media lies. Valenti points out another instance in which this is the case. The media has started this idea that women "opt out" of work to stay at home. This is not the case and in fact most women cannot afford to do so. When women do choose to stay at home, they are under appreciated for their work which would amount to a salary of $134,121 a year.

Social and political forces are telling women that all they are good for is having babies yet the cost of doing so is not even manageable for some. If women are supposed to want to have babies than why is it so hard to do and why is there no incentive for doing so? The government could at least fund for pre-schools or provide paid leave for new parents.

Valenti proposes an interesting question: Are women more likely to choose low-paying jobs or are jobs low paying because they are jobs predominantly chosen by women? I have no idea what the answer to this question is nor a way to test it. Considering women get paid less when they hold the same jobs as men I would have to guess that the second one has to be at least somewhat true but I am not saying I do not think the first part could be true to an extent as well.