Gender Roles In The White House Glass Ceiling

My grandmother was a proud woman. Smart, strong, stubborn, and hardworking, she would have had her pick of any profession if she were born at any other time. But she wasn’t born at any other time; she was born in Depression-era Kentucky. And she didn’t pick her profession; it chose her. In a time before the pill, she got pregnant at 18, and four more popped out until Dad—the final draft, I’m told—was born. While she became a dazzling mom and grandma, she never had the dignity to choose among other options. And, regrettably, although her Alzheimer’s has convinced her Mike Pence is the first woman vice president, it will still take time, as we have learned, before the White House glass ceiling is finally broken. The imperative of doing so is

Simply put, the proximate cause for the disparity is not wage discrimination, but sexist gender roles, especially around the house. Men don’t consider raising the kids to be their main responsibility. Deadbeat dads mean women shoulder the burden of childrearing. Women have more gaps in their working experience, consequently, and have less time to clock paid hours during the week. More, sexist gender roles extend beyond the household and into the workforce. It is cultural sexism—seen also when women are discouraged from entering more lucrative “male” professions—that explains the raw figure, an important distinction if we are to correct the earnings gap between men and women. (Sexual assault also imposes an economic cost on women almost exclusively, worsening the gap.) Controlling for these variables and others yields a tamer figure of about ninety-six cents on the dollar, a level of wage discrimination that is inexcusable but numerically negligible. By the time paychecks come due, it is already too