Pay Equity and Neverneverland
Antonia Zerbisias tackles the issue of pay equity in her latest column WhyCan'tAWomanBePaidLikeAMan?
I often think about this issue because something tells me (I call it: reality) that it's never going to play out fairly. That's because there is a prevailing societal myth that men are there for women, that a woman can always find a man to look after her, even if that means prostitution, but a man is ultimately on his own - so he needs more money than she does.
The myth is constantly propagated, too - that a woman can always hook up with a man and then he'll pay her way. Uh... unless she's a prostitute and he's a pimp, in which case she'll pay him to pay her way.
So women, because their supposed vulnerability is also their saving grace, are considered to not need money as much as they need men, who are assumed to be their protectors.
And since the added assumption is that women need men to protect them from other men, I can't see us climbing out of this tidy set of assumptions box any time soon. I mean, you don't see many homeless women hanging around on street corners panhandling, but you don't see many male prostitutes working the same corners, either. So, since even homeless women (streetwalkers) work harder than homeless men (panhandlers) - but still fork over most of their earning to a pimp for protection against other men, I think prostitution vs panhandling is where we need to start with pay equity.
