BE the CHANGE
There are those who feel only a miracle will allow women to reach their human potential, equal representation and wage parity, not only in politics, but all major sectors such as law, medicine, business, finance and STEM. Women of the globe can no longer afford to defer the CHOOSE TO CHALLENGE call. It is vital to voice our lived reality and systemic injustices that pervade our institutions and communities.
“Economic inequality is out of control. In 2019 world billionaires – only 2,153 people – had more wealth than 4.5 billion people. This great divide is based on a flawed and sexist economic system that values the wealth of the privileged few, mostly men, more than the billions of hours of the most essential work- the unpaid and underpaid care work done primarily by women and girls around the world.” ~ Oxfam 2021.
Research identifies that it will take more than a lifetime to make equality a reality. The forecast stands at a shocking 95 years to secure wage parity for women in the workplace. Am I the only one struggling to process and reconcile this staggering statistic? Is this demand for equal pay for equal work so unfathomable and challenging to implement that we can close the blinds, or turn our gaze elsewhere to minimize our discomfort? Have we accepted the foregone conclusion that this is not a SMART or attainable goal for our nieces and grandchildren? How do I remain positive while encouraging younger community members to pursue STEM, finance, or business and steer away from soft skill sectors such as education, healthcare and human and social services in hopes of securing wage equality?
Statistics demonstrate that women in all sectors are paid 77 cents for every dollar their male colleagues receive. It is often argued that women choose to accept lower wages due to caregiving responsibility or chose to seek a flexible employment situation to accommodate the highly devalued ‘women’s work’. Unfortunately, when you crunch the numbers, women receive 77 cents on the dollar before we account the flexibility of caregiving. This discussion is centered on base wage salary, not to be confounded by caregiving variances.
Help me understand how as a society, we seem quite adept at writing annual reports that demonstrate stock growth, market declines and population health statistics. Still, we fail to acknowledge statistics on poverty, food insecurity and the gender wage gap? Are we systemically challenged to measure the gender wage gap and implement a transparent process to assess, monitor and execute wage parity in 2021?
Where does the accountability lie within each and every organization that claims to be promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to conduct a PDSA cycle and continuously oversee the gender wage gap to ensure we measure what matters?
Who are the decision makers that perpetuate such injustice?
Human resources management professionals (90% female cohort) are not powered to persuade the finance or IT colleagues (90% male cohort) to support a quality wage parity initiative to assess compensation to level the organizational playing field. For many years I was under the assumption that human resources accountability included the charge of recruiting and valuing our collective ‘human resources’, not only the elite white recruits that identify as he/him/they.
The financial and ethical bottom line is quite simple; equal work deserves equal pay. Globally, the majority of countries cannot guarantee or have not mandated equal remuneration for work of equal value as the World Bank identifies as a key strategy. Within the plethora of recognition days within our social media spaces, perhaps we need to designate a global WOMENS DAY OFF to celebrate the leadership of Iceland in recognizing the indispensable role of women in society. No doubt Icelandic policy makers would be proud to share their equity play book and path to a socially just society.
Transparency of job roles and requirements and remuneration should be mandatory for all humans working within an organization, not a selected gender-biased cohort. This abrupt adoption of policies and practices grounded in human decency and transparency will also assist young adults in their career decision-making process. Is it fair to invite them to dive blindly into a sea of higher education without a clear vision of what their return on investment will be? In an age of information, surely equal pay for equal work and transparency in the process is a SMART goal?
This imbalance has been a topic of conversation without action for far too many decades. Justice and equity continue to plague our workforce. I fear this systemic injustice in the global pandemic context poses a high degree of intolerable risk to the well-being of 50 percent of the world’s population. I do not intend to devalue the strides made to recognize alternative pronouns, but perhaps we need to advocate for human/humane/humanity.
Photo: Talitha Cumi, India by Ray Majoran. http://www.compassiongallery.ca
World Economic Forum (2020). Global Gender Gap Report. https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Missions/14537/it-will-still-take-more-than-a-lifetime-to-make-equality-a-reality
Oxfam (2021). Time To Care: Unpaid and Underpaid Care Work and the Global Inequality Crisis. https://indepth.oxfam.org.uk/time-to-care/
https://canadianwomen.org/the-facts/
2 Replies to “BE the CHANGE”
Greetings! Very helpful advice in this particular post! Its the little changes that make the biggest changes. Thanks a lot for sharing!
Your perspective is always so refreshing and insightful.