For an issue that’s been front and centre during the election, there’s quite some
disagreement on whether the pay gap even exists.
Clinton: Too many women still earn less than men on the job.
Joe: Does it exist?
Liz: It does, right?
"If you become president, will a woman make the same as a man?"
Trump: You're gonna make the same if you do as good a job.
I just don't know if it's real.
Oh my god are you Hope Solo.
We're you talking about the wage gap?
Yes!
Boy do I have some stories for you.
[Funky music]
Hope Solo helped her team win the world cup last year. Hope Solo is also suing the soccer
federation league for wage discrimination because it chooses to pays its male players
more than its female players.
I was always the asshole -- sorry.
Oh wow.
I was always kind of the -- asking questions, that nobody wanted the answers to. And just
kind of stirring things up.
Did you feel like people thought you were an asshole just for bringing up--equality?
Absolutely. And these -- thank you -- and these were my own teammates. It was, ‘Hope,
just be happy we’re getting paid.
This has just been instilled inside my teammates and women for such a long time that I don’t
know how to break that thought process.
I mean it’s not just what’s right, I mean you guys -- so the men’s soccer team is
good, you guys are like really good. You brought in $20 million in revenue, but you’re paid
4x less than the men’s team.
It’s funny, I mean when you look at the numbers alone, logically it makes sense. Pay
the women not equal to the men, pay the women more. Because they’ve brought in almost
$21 million in revenue, while the men’s team has lost $2 million. So they didn’t
bring any revenue into the federation. Not to mention we had more viewership, we broke
records.
Most watched soccer game?
Most watched soccer game. We beat the men’s record which took place in 2014. And I’m
sure it will continue to grow and continue to compete, but the pay scale doesn’t compete.
It doesn’t even compare.
But I get comments all the time like just not believing the pay gap is real. Just, you
know, that women accept lower paying job. It’s our fault as a women’s national team
because we accepted a lesser contract.
So if women like Hope Solo are actually experiencing the wage gap, why are even well-regarded journalists
and academics denying it even exists?
Well, they say it boils down to choice – women often “choose” lower-paying professions,
and work fewer hours.
But women like Theresa Younger, the CEO of the Ms. Foundation makes a crucial point.
That assumption that women aren’t working as hard as the premise of that conversation
is a farce.
Do you think we value women's work less?
We do, the fastest growing jobs are around caregiving and teaching: we still have not
made those professions really reflective of the important role they play in society.
She's right. A good portion of the wage gap is explained by the fact that society has
decided to value the jobs that women often work in less.
And research supports this. For instance, as more women enter male-dominated fields,
research shows that men’s pay tends to go down.
Jobs that were previously male dominated like being a ticket agent, as it became female
dominated, saw a decrease in pay of 43 percentage points.
And even in female-dominated professions, the men in those jobs still make more than
women. Male nurses make on average $5,100 more than their female counterparts. This
phenomenon of men being advantaged in jobs that are female dominated, is so common, it's
a phenomenon that has a name: the glass escalator.
But the wage gap gets even wider when you add race.
Black women are making .60 to the dollar a white male is making. A Latina is making,
I believe its 0.54, and if you break down the data further to the southeast asian community,
you find that we have different communities within that one making 34 cents.
But despite this, surveys show that most employees don’t think the wage gap exists in their
workplace. And men, are more likely to deny it exists.
We have to ask men, which we don’t often times do, how the wage gap affects them, do
they understand what’s going and what is being said when we talk about the wage gap.
It seems like it’s not just an issue that affects women, it affects men too. How do
we get them involved too?
Hey you guys are men, get in here!
Do you know her?
This is actor Matt McGorry and former NFL player Wade Davis.
They both identify as men.
Why don't more men care about the wage gap?
I don't think that they know it exists.
I didn't know. I don’t think men think about the issues that impact women. I'm just being
honest.
They heard the term, but don’t necessarily believe it, it’s not like there are men
who actively say I hate women I don’t want them to have the whole dollar. It's not as
simple as that.
Men don’t think it impacts them. They don’t realize that if they have a wife, it brings
in money as well, it impacts their household income.
So maybe if we didn't spend so much time arguing about whether the wage gap exists we'd have
more time to actually fix it, and we’d all be better off.
Thank you. Oh shit do you have 22 cents? I only have 78.
[Throws coins]
Thank you!