Maybe it Pays to be Married
I spent a good part of the day yesterday chewing on a WTF? moment after I finished reading a post Nina sent me from the Time Work in Progress blog. The post called, ‘œGay men earn less, but not lesbians,’ discussed findings from a study by the University of New Hampshire Whittemore School of Business and Economics. According to the post’s author, Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, ‘œThe authors [of the study] analyzed labor and wage information from more than 91,000 heterosexual and homosexual couples collected by the U.S. Census March 2004 Current Population Survey.’
Something about the numbers in an excerpt didn’t sit right with me, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“gay men who live together earn 23% less than married men, and 9% less than unmarried heterosexual men who live with a woman.’
Thankfully my partner was able to nail it: Why are unmarried heterosexual men who live with a woman making 14% less than married men?
Takeuchi Cullen nailed it too. She concludes her post asking, ‘œI mean, really? Are employers so stupid? They still think the most productive and thus worthy of highest compensation is the married, hetero male? Friends–I give up. Please discuss among yourselves. I’ll give you a topic: biased bosses.’
Obviously I’m ticked off by the idea that such a pay discrepancy could exist. I’m even more annoyed that three reasons for the pay discrimination are, ‘œbias by employers, bias by customers and fear of AIDS,’ as Takeuchi Cullen sums up.
However, my imagination can’t help but run wild. What if gay marriage were legal? Could it make unreasonable bias disappear from the minds of employers and clients? Would married gay men still make less than their heterosexual counterparts? And what would happen to the wages of married lesbians?
I can’t help but think that it pays to be married, and how the unfairness of this fact gets dealt all around to heterosexuals and homosexuals. For me, the real question is: What can you do about it?
Hmm. I wonder if it’s bias or just that married people (of any orientation) tend to be in a stabler place and better able to work. I’m leaning towards discrimination. But did the study diferentiate between married gay couples or long-term committed ones and people who were dating/engaged?
It drives me insane that employers/bosses make so many assumptions about employees based on factors that are not at all related to how they perform.
I’ve read so much about people assuming that because someone is married they’re more settled and more likely to stick around with a company for a while. I’ve heard those same things while going through the process of interviewing for and hiring the guy who’s now my boss.
If your company is worth sticking around for, you don’t have to worry whether outside factors will influence someone’s likelihood of staying.
It’s also a problem that there’s a terrible lack of transparency in salaries in most workplaces. A lot of people don’t find out there’s a pay discrepancy until much later (and then it has compounded).
Is it possible that married men are likely to be older than cohabiting straight men, since many heterosexual couples start out living together and wind up married?
Otherwise, I bet that it’s mostly inadvertent discrimination.
I think a lot of it too is that hetero married men are just generally more aggressive and cut throat in business. They make more than hetero women largely because women are much more timid when it comes to negotiating for initial salaries, bonuses, benefits and raises.
I’m also curious to know whether the study factored out age as a variable. Hetero men living with a woman tend to be younger than hetero married men as a group and thus less experienced so you’d expect them to earn less. If hetero men living with a woman are of the same age as the hetero married men then they’re not exactly driven, goal oriented go getters – otherwise they would’ve taken the next step and gotten married. If you have no desire to advance things in your personal life you may also not care about advancing your career.
I think one also needs to take into account quality of life. I think gay men (and hetero men living with women) are more apt to find a job that they enjoy instead of one that strictly pays well. e.g. You can work at Company A and get paid a fortune (but there’s a reason they pay that much – high turnover & they treat people like crap) or you can work at Company B and get paid less but get treated better.
Benefits also come into play here. One may earn less because of a significantly better benefits package (more vacation time or domestic partner health coverage). The last firm I worked at didn’t pay me much but it did provide free domestic partner health insurance which came in handy. The new firm I work at pays more but without the domestic partner coverage and you have to pay for your own health coverage albeit at a discount. Salary isn’t everything.
I heard outright a few times that some man needed a raise because they were getting married and needed the money to take care of their family.
Yes, this level of heterosexism and sexism is alive and well.
In their Ten Money Questions interview, both Joe Solmonese and Joeseph Kapp make note of the 1,000+ benefits affecting same-sex couples (e.g. estate taxes, domestic partnership benefits, and social security benefits). Since many of these are “economic” benefits, it’s easy to see why gay men in a domestic partnership make less than married men.
I heard outright a few times that some man needed a raise because they were getting married and needed the money to take care of their family.
Yes, I heard this exact comment from a supervisor when a straight male co-worker got married. She said this even though his wife worked in the same field that he did (ie, was not a stay at home mom, or someone in a lower-paying field).
It is both sexist and heterosexist. I have never heard anyone say women need a raise when they get married (employers probably start to worry that the women are now going to want leave to have kids instead). Honestly, I’m not sure that extending the right to marry to same sex couples will completely even things up here, because it is a combination of sexism and heterosexism.