Pay equality
Posted by Lizzie on Sep-5-2008There’s a lot of talk about women’s issues this election cycle. Thanks to Hillary Clinton, and now Sarah Palin, we’re back in the spotlight. In that vein, Congress is pressing for a revote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which failed to pass previously. McCain has come out again it:
“I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what’s being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems,” the expected GOP presidential nominee told reporters. “This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system.”
I’ve recently engaged in a half-hearted IT job search - in anticipation of my eventual graduation from the Tech program. There seems to be a little available, but I’ve heard that women are not treated favorably in the IT industry. It would please me, and thousands of other women, tremendously if this actually became law. Would I know that my male counterparts were making more than me? Probably not. But this act would give me recourse should I find out about a pay discrepancy after the fact. As a woman hoping to work in a male-dominated field, I would feel just a little better knowing I had a safety net.
There was some talk that this law isn’t necessary. I beg to differ. I worked with a company (unrelated to the tech field) that cut me a mystery check. When I inquired to what the purpose of the check was, I was told that it was to make up for a pay difference between me and my male counterparts. I had no idea that the men were making that much more per hour than I was, but there was a lawsuit and the settlement agreement was that this company would pay the hourly difference to each female for whatever period of time they agreed to (I think it was 3 months, even though I’d been there for over a year at that point). I left that company not long afterward, but my eyes had been opened. The reasoning for the lower pay was that women are mothers and so are prone to miss work because of their sick children. Men, on the other hand, are more reliable and should be rewarded. Really?
At a time when a major political party has nominated a self-proclaimed “hockey mom” to be vice president, there should be no more “she should get less because she’s a mom”. This woman is seeking a job while parenting 5 children (and potentially helping parent a grandchild) so the reason listed above would apply to her and her pay should be cut significantly. Right? No. Wrong. Her husband will be able to tend to the children while she runs for office and he can tend to the children while she continues to govern Alaska (except that he’s got a full-time job plus an extra job on the side in the summer, but that’s not this issue). It’s only fair that the rest of American women enjoy the same equality in pay as the women who govern them.
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That’s funny to me because until recently PR never mattered to me and the traffic I get there is minimal. It’s a deeply political blog that would never pass muster with some people, but I guess Google’s kind of fond of it.
I don’t blame you on not wanting to change from gmail- I really don’t want to change and I’m having a hard time deciding. Yahoo mail does suck, I could always use the email I set with my ISP but then spam is a huge issue. I don’t appreciate someone who also utilizes advertising for payment, telling other bloggers we’re to blame. The no-follow and Technorati movements were to help us not just with page rank, but readership as well. What were we supposed to do at the time? Sit back and continue to allow the big-name blogs make all the money? We didn’t know Google would drop our page ranks, simply because others have used viral marketing for years- and in unethical ways. Nothing we did was unethical. Down with Google!
Hi Lizzie,
Finally its all about money isnt it? We want to make money, Google wants to make money, but when Google tries to make money, we don’t get as much money, when we make money, Google doesnt get as much…
Catch 22
By the way, I wasn’t suggesting people should kiss Google’s a$$. But I still think Google search is the most accurate and fast. I’m on a very slow net connection, and speed sure matters. I’m a literature+journalism student, so I search like around 200-300 times a day. And Google helps me out pretty well by displaying the results in 2 seconds. Yahoo takes half a minute! MSN takes 1 minute! Now consider my situation. 200 searches @ half a minute = 100 minutes - 1 and half hours wasted… And for inaccurate results!
Not to mention, Google Alerts save my fat in this highly competitive journalism world!
So Google offers all these great services. Why boycott it because Google down ranked your blog? Actually, I don’t give a damn…
And do you realize something? Google doesn’t own the web, nor does it say that. But WE are the ones saying Google owns the web! Google made a change to THEIR search, THEIR algorithm, not a public property. Google didn’t change anything on the web - they changed something which THEY own. So what right to we have to complain? Ofcourse, we can opine… But thats about it
As far as I’m concerned, I wouldn’t want to waste time, and waste my readers’ time by posting a whine. I utilize the time for doing something which might still ensure a good readership for my blog. Time is really precious!
Cheers,
Mohan
Beth,
The no-follow and Technorati movements were to help us not just with page rank, but readership as well.
I understand that completely. I don’t think that PR is a good indication of traffic and traffic should be the ultimate indicator of ad revenue. If the A-Listers have 10 blogs each they can link them all together and BOOM! They’ve all got a huge PR, but they don’t have traffic. What’s fair?
I’m not trying to cut into their piece of the pie, though. I just want a slice for myself. With a world of readers and buyers, I’m pretty sure there’s enough to go around.
Still, Google is only as powerful as the users make it. If no one considered PR a big deal, who would care that it got smacked? But since that’s all people were talking about, used it as bragging rights, and advertisers used it to measure money making potential, well, Google got all powerful. Now they want to wield that power. Why is anyone surprised?
Now paid blogging services are looking into other ways to measure viability of a blog. Traffic, for one. This is where the social sites and Technorati will rule again. Get people to your blog by surpassing the Google search and you’ll be making money again. Then Google will have to rethink their strategy, but if we don’t give them power, they can’t take it from us.
Hi, Mohan, thanks for stopping by!
I hope you don’t think I was insinuating that you were whining. On the contrary, I can see where both you and Beth were coming from.
I use Gmail and Picasa, but not so much the search. Honestly, Google search just turns up too much junk for me. I don’t have alerts for some key issues that I watch, though. That’s very helpful. I have to same thing in an old Yahoo mail account though, and I have to say they’re a little speedier getting me the information I want. Using both makes sure I don’t miss what I’m looking for.
As I said in my article, I don’t have any problems with Google looking out for Google’s interest. They’re not a charity service, afterall, they have monetary interests in this Internet thing too. I disagree that they’re evil and forming a monopoly, as so many other people contend. It’s nerve wracking to know that you’ve put so much stock in Google and then they slap you in the face by lowering PR, but…
I think people have a right to complain and be upset and wonder what went wrong. Then they’ve got to stop and remember that Google is only as powerful as we allow Google to be. Plain and simple.