Aside from the fact that I consider people of my gender to be...people, there are still palenty of social/legal reasons to continue loudly proclaiming myself a feminist. St. McCain provides us a primer:
NEW ORLEANS — Republican Sen. John McCain, campaigning through poverty-stricken cities and towns, said Wednesday he opposes a Senate bill that seeks equal pay for women because it would lead to more lawsuits.
FIRST OF ALL: the legislation in question does not "seek equal pay for women". The legislation in question seeks to clarify filing rules so that women who have been discriminated against can seek legal recourse according to existing law.
Lilly Ledbetter was almost 60 years old and on the verge of retiring when she first caught on that she was being shortchanged at work by what her lawyer called a "good old boys" network.
An anonymous letter turned up out of the blue and revealed to Ledbetter she was making substantially less money than male co-workers at the Goodyear tire plant where she worked.
A federal jury would later find she was owed almost $225,000 in back-pay over her 19-year career.
The Supremes decided last year- breaking with what has been a standard application of the law- that Lilly Ledbetter had waited too long to file a complaint against her employer.
Ledbetter filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission less than a month after receiving the letter, but it was already too late. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights imposes a six-month limitations period on discriminatory acts, preventing her from even bringing the claim to court.
So, unless your employer tells you up front that he pays you less because you're a woman, what are the odds you'll be able to seek recourse within the 6 month limitations period? And note: the 6 months starts the day that the discriminatory practice is engaged in- in Ledbetter's case, that would be back in 1979.
If you're a staffer, how does your employer feel about you sharing salary info with your colleagues? I'd bet there are rules against that sort of behavior, no? Companies I've worked for have all had such rules.
So the Ledbetter legislation attempts to fix the limitation period. That's all.
St McCain thinks women just need more training. That's what he said today.
Clearly, if we all inherited beer fortunes so that we could support the careers of our illogical husbands, this legislation wouldn't matter so much. But we don't. We have to work. And we have to work trusting that we're being paid equitably with our male colleagues.
2 comments:
For a serious analysis of legal and policy issues regarding the other "F Word" I suggest downloading this SSRN paper:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=896790
It ranks as a #11 downloaded academic paper.
Abstract:
This Article is as simple and provocative as its title suggests: it explores the legal implications of the word fuck. The intersection of the word fuck and the law is examined in four major areas: First Amendment, broadcast regulation, sexual harassment, and education. The legal implications from the use of fuck vary greatly with the context. To fully understand the legal power of fuck, the nonlegal sources of its power are tapped. Drawing upon the research of etymologists, linguists, lexicographers, psychoanalysts, and other social scientists, the visceral reaction to fuck can be explained by cultural taboo. Fuck is a taboo word. The taboo is so strong that it compels many to engage in self-censorship. This process of silence then enables small segments of the population to manipulate our rights under the guise of reflecting a greater community. Taboo is then institutionalized through law, yet at the same time is in tension with other identifiable legal rights. Understanding this relationship between law and taboo ultimately yields fuck jurisprudence.
Mikhail
You know that is my most favorite word.
Of course you know that. You've had enough wine-fueled arguments with me :-)
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