April 20, 2016 • 47 mins
Why is the gender wage gap narrower for lesbians? Cristen and Caroline investigate why those bigger paychecks happen but probably don't buy an easier time in the workplace.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from how stupp
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen, and we're all familiar with the
gender wage gap, the concept of it, the realities of it,
especially since we just marked equal pay Day in mid April.
(00:27):
And well, Caroline, quick note equal pay day for white women. Well, exactly,
that's what I'm getting at com SIY. Sorry, sorry, you
and I are on the same page here. My intersectionality
gets so over eager sometimes I don't I know it. Um. Basically,
what Kristen is referring to, in case you're not a
long time Sminty listener, uh, for every dollar earned by
(00:51):
a white, non Hispanic dude in full time work, the
average white woman in America earns seventy eight Since this
is a refrain with which we are very familiar and
so equal pay day then is the extra amount of
time by which a woman would need to work to
match a man's annual salary. So for white ladies with
(01:12):
that seventy eight cents ratio, it rolls around in April,
correct exactly. But the average Hispanic woman in this country,
for every dollar a dude makes she makes only fifty
six cents, so her equal pay day is in October. Yeah.
So just as the as the leaves are changing, and
(01:33):
and a man, a white dude, an average white dude
has made almost an entire New year's worth of salary
money cash. Uh, the Hispanic woman is is just starting
to catch up. Yea. And I believe for black women
the gap is sixty eight cents for every dollar a
white dude make, so they're more late summer yeah there July. Yeah,
(01:55):
so you know, you go to the swimming pool, you know,
you're rock in your shorts, in your Hawaiian shirts around
the luau in the summer, and and you finally catch
up with with your wage gap. Also, I want to
go to whatever swimming pool you're having these um, well,
you're invited. I mean, it's it's just the wage gap.
(02:16):
Luow you know, I mean, we're we're trying to work
on a on a better catch your name, yea, the
wage gap flu Yeah, well, because I'm hoping to find
something with a little more alliteration. So the wage gap,
grill out, grill out, I don't know, we'll we'll work
on it. You guys are welcome to send us suggestions. Um.
(02:37):
But the interesting thing about the wage gap and equal
pay salaries negotiation. The interesting thing is that when you
break it down by sexual orientation, things actually shake out
a little differently in that study after study has shown
(02:58):
that lesbians earn more than they're straight sisters. And I mean,
people are like, good for you, lesbians, and and it
is good for them. We can stand to learn so
much everything from you know, possibly bucking gender norms and
egalitarian divisions of chores. Well, exactly, they have more orgasms
(03:18):
statistically than straight women. They're better planning weddings in a
in a saner kind of way. Who knows, but yes,
there there are there's an array of things that I think, uh,
the straits could learn from our lesbian friends. But of
course there are some downsides too, the financial issues facing
(03:43):
a lot of people in the LGBT community. But first
let's jump into what the heck is going on with
this so called lesbian wage premium. Well, there's no so
called about it. Uh. A January meta analysis by Maerica
Collobuter at the University of Washington and found a nine
percent lesbian wage premium. Or put another way, she found
(04:07):
that lesbians earned nine percent more on average than straight women,
and even when you control for demographics, the wage premium
is still around six percent. Yeah, and those demographics being
that self described lesbians tend to be that are educated
on average, more likely to be white, live in urban centers,
(04:28):
have fewer kids, and are more likely to be in
professional positions. And there was also a Canadian study that
looked only at white lesbians btw, and there was something
about the idea of factoring in race would factor in
too many variables in terms of socioeconomics. So they compared uh,
(04:50):
white lesbians and white street ladies in a July study
in the journal Gender and Society and found that that
wage premium is even stronger in those higher paying professional jobs.
But that does not mean that lesbians have entirely escaped
to this wage gap that we talk about. No, So
multiple studies have actually established an even more detailed pay
(05:14):
hierarchy than what we might think of with just the
gender wage gap. Of he makes this. She makes that because,
as we've already acknowledged, things shift when we look at
women of color. But if we look at sexual orientation,
the income hierarchy goes straight men, gay men, lesbians, and
(05:36):
then straight women. Yeah, very interesting, and that the one
of the factors that cements and complicates the whole gender
hierarchy thing is that trans women actually see a drop
in wages by nearly a third when they transition compared
with their trans men peers, who actually see a slight
(05:57):
bump in wages. Well, and that makes sense too, because
that's in line with the gender wage gap and isn't
necessarily correlated to the sexual orientation wage gap. Correct exactly,
And so why what is going on? And as I
was reading, you know, people, people are definitely reaching for answers.
They're trying to figure out the secret because I mean,
(06:18):
I think most of us, or at least the people
listening to this podcast, would love to see the gender
wage gap close, um, and the sexual orientation wage gap.
We want to see the wage gaps closed. We want
to earn the money that we deserve. And so as
I was reading all this stuff, I was trying to
figure out, like, yeah, you know what Kristen mentioned, there
is the egalitarian household chore thing, which we'll get into
(06:40):
here in a minute. But I was wondering too, if
it doesn't circle back to already having experience and or
a level of comfort with bucking those gender norms where
women are supposed to be polite and you're supposed to
be a good girl and don't negotiate and don't push
too hard and just take what you're given and be
grateful for it, and that perhaps that gives them a
(07:03):
leg up when it comes to negotiating. Well, and I
would wonder too that if that is the case, whether
it plays more of a role in the how the
lesbian is going to negotiate for herself versus how an
employer is going to perceive her gender role wise, because
(07:24):
maybe with that bucking of gender norms, the employer is
less likely to negatively judge her if she pushes for
more money aggressively in a way that we would consider unfeminine. Well, yeah,
and that gets to the one of the possible answers,
which is the issue of positive discrimination. Those Canadian researchers
(07:47):
that we cited earlier said that lesbian employees could be
quote perceived as less feminine and closer to the unencumbered
male ideal. In other words, employer might be expecting lesbians
to be more competitive in their jobs. Uh, they might
be more committed to their work than straight women, you know,
(08:07):
those straight women who just immediately want to run off
and pop out babies and never come back from eternity.
Like I mean, I can't wait to do that as
soon as I leave this podcast studio. I know Kristen's
on a timetable here, and and that whole thing, that
concept is called mommy tracking. It's when you pass over
a woman for top projects and promotions because of this assumption,
(08:29):
this this like almost subconscious assumption that mothers will be
less productive. And it's worth noting, by the way, that
there's no equivalent daddy track. And actually women tend to
be dinged for becoming mothers, whereas fathers in the workplace
tend to get almost like higher status. They're trusted more
(08:52):
when they become both married and fathers. So anyway, and
can I just stay here one that the combination of
those two phrases unencumbered male ideal and mommy track just
made me sprout like ten new gray hairs. I know,
but like I mean, here we were exploring subconscious in
(09:15):
a lot of cases biases, what what could potentially be
benefiting lesbians and hurting straight women? Um and in reality,
you know, moms with full time jobs do take off
more time to tend a family, but that's for so
many complicated, myriad, multifaceted reasons, including things like male partners
(09:37):
not pulling their weight, expectations that a mom will take
care of the kids, sh'll go leave work and pick
them up when they're sick, and according to a Harvard study,
men prioritizing their careers over their wives while women tend
to prioritize their careers equally. I think I just felt
like two more great hairs. But that's this that positive discrimination,
(10:01):
those assumptions around mommy's versus lesbians, as if lesbians would
never have or adopt children, That is one of the factors.
You also have the factor of education and job choice.
Researchers have found that gay men and women are nearly
two times likelier to hold a bachelor's degree, which you
(10:21):
know often opens the door to better paying positions, particularly
you know, white collar or professional positions that offer room
for advancement. And this is something that you see come
up a lot when people argue that, oh, the gender
worrige GOP doesn't exist at all, because it's just the
jobs that you're choosing, um and it is true if
we look at the sexual orientation gap, that gay men
(10:45):
and lesbians are proportionally overrepresented among the highest paying jobs,
including psychology and law. They're also overrepresented in university teaching
in social work, although of course, as you I guess,
social work and university teaching are not among the highest
paying jobs. Um And. This has also led researchers to
(11:08):
investigate whether there's this factor of lesbians picking jobs that
are a typical for women, for sis, straight women. Um And.
This was something that was looked at in a study
published in in the journal Social Forces. And it did,
in fact find that lesbians are less likely to work
(11:31):
in the retail industry for instance. Yeah, and so there
is this question of our gay men and lesbians concentrated
in certain jobs. There was a study and Administrative Science
quarterly that found that gay men and lesbians gravitate toward
professions with high task independence in other words, less reliance
(11:54):
on coworkers or managers, so like a fire safety inspector
or a massage therapist. Those were two examples they gave.
Uh And in addition to high task independence, they also
gravitate toward jobs with high social perceptive nous in other words,
requiring the ability to accurately read or predict other's emotions.
So what is going on with that? The researchers point
(12:17):
out that task independence makes it easier to hide sexual
orientation if you don't feel comfortable coming out. Um and
knowing how to read social cues for a lot of
people might be an important acquired skill when you're surrounded
by bigots your entire life. What an upshot to such
a downside? And when the researchers looked at traditionally blue
(12:40):
collar versus pink collar jobs, they found that when lesbians
end up in more blue collar jobs, they're often well
paying professions like being diesel mechanics, doing elevator and heating repair,
Whereas if they are in more pink collar jobs, they
tend to end up in more academic and social focus
(13:01):
jobs like psychologists, sociologists, or being training and development specialists. Yeah,
and another interesting factor that underlies this whole conversation. Researchers
predict that as society becomes more accepting of people in
the LGBTQ community, these associations and divisions could very well fade,
(13:27):
because they argue, if you are more accepted and less
afraid of coming out, then there wouldn't be as much
of a drive to go to those task independent positions.
And if you're not as worried about being attacked by
bigots around you physically or verbally, then you don't need
to have that heightened awareness necessarily of other people's emotions
(13:51):
and feelings. And that seems analogous to efforts to close
the gender gap with stem fields, where it's like, we
need to, uh, you know, a limit ate all of
these gender based barriers so that hopefully in the future
more girls will naturally be drawn to and I want
to say naturally, but will um be drawn to and
(14:11):
be able to retain jobs in those fields. And you
also have this terrific website called gay Money that's created
by journalist Joe Clark, and Clark looked at twenty years
of studies and found that lesbians tend to also work
longer hours because generally speaking, generally they are less likely
(14:32):
to have kids, so they can put in the longer
hours potentially earn that overtime on the job. And he
points out that you have to keep in mind that
these studies that we're talking about are dealing mostly with
lesbian couples, not single lesbians because they are easier to
identify in surveys. They're more likely to uh either be
(14:56):
out or or um publicly self identify in serve as
as lesbians, and so Clark calls for more research on
both single gay women and single or coupled bisexual women.
And of course at this point we want to note
that bisexual women are largely erased or just hidden in
a lot of these statistics. So what I'm hearing is
(15:19):
that the lesbian power couple trope is real, so real,
because when you toss a man into the equation, having
ever lived with a man, having ever coupled up with
a man, automatically your average salary goes down. And this
was something reported on in the Economists. So women who
(15:43):
have never lived with a male partner before make more
money than those who have, regardless of sexual orientation, and
this might be a result of striving for a higher
paycheck to compensate for making less than men overall. Um.
And you also have same sex couples being likelier to
be dual earners even when they have kids, which circled
(16:05):
back around to that whole egalitarian household thing. Yeah, and
so uh studies in two thousand and two thousand nine
found that lesbians who have lived with a man experience
a wage penalty of nine point five percent. They make
nine point five percent less than lesbians who had never
lived with a male partner. And so remember that six
(16:26):
percent wage premium we mentioned above, that lesbians have a
wage premium of six percent when you control for demographics
blah blah blah blah blah um, Well, for these women,
it drops to five point two percent for never married
to a man lesbians, which is still a good chunk
above women in opposite sex marriages, which is making me
(16:47):
real nervous about the fact that my fiance and I
are living together. It's like, do we do we need
to have separate homes so my income will rise? Well,
I mean, what researchers point out is that it maybe,
and you know, maybe, like maybe this is a subconscious
thing that if you grow up and and trust me,
like I'm fully aware of the quibbles that will arise
(17:10):
when I say this, Like I agree, I understand, But
the researchers point out that maybe if you grow up
never having an intention to lean out buzzword and you're like,
I know, I'm a lesbian I don't want to live
with a man. I don't want to marry a man,
So therefore I will never have a man bringing home
the bacon. Uh. So I know I have to commit
(17:33):
myself to getting a good education. I've got to invest time,
money in education and climbing that career ladder because no
one's going to help me. Um. Although of course you
could argue, hello, there are women, gay, straight, bisexual, whatever
who also never planned to marry or have children. But
(17:53):
that is one factor that perhaps when you know that
you won't have a partner, or you assume you won't
have a partner who's bringing him more than you and
who can support you if you decide to stay home,
that you will feel compelled to. I guess work harder
and longer to make up for that. Well. And I wonder,
in terms of the growing up factor, if it's maybe
(18:17):
not so much like a ten year old girl being like,
I'm never going to have a man in my house
that's saving my cash. Um or if and this again
is would be something I would predict would change over
time and would have already improved, um where we are today.
But for that ten year old girl, say twenty years ago,
(18:38):
knowing that she's a lesbian and being like, I'm going
to have to work really hard and overachieve to compensate
for the discrimination that I'm very going to likely face. Yes,
And I would argue that that's probably more likely, especially
if you're talking about a ten year old. We need
to get a ten year old year where's our child consultant?
(19:00):
And you know, like we said, a lot of this,
a lot of this gap, this premium might relate back
to the fact, uh that gay couples tend to have
more egalitarian households, and we're gonna get into that when
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(20:29):
So we have talked on the podcast before about egalitarian
divisions of household labor when it comes to straight couples
versus gay couples, and that even if you are the
most feminist man woman couple in the world, instead of
saying opposite sex, I think it's fine, you're the same
(20:49):
man woman man woman couple in the world. Statistically speaking,
according to research, you will likely still see your household
labor divid iidit along gendered lines, and that means both
you know, dude, it's going to be mowing the lawn
and fixing the car. Lady friend is going to be
doing the dishes and the laundry, And in addition to
(21:12):
lady friend doing the dishes and laundry, she's going to
be doing more of it and spending more time statistically
on housework than her man friend will. But when you
look at gay couples, as we talked about in that
long ago now egalitarian Household episode, gay couples don't grapple
with the same gender divisions, obviously, because when you're two
(21:36):
women living together in a romantic partnership, like, there's no script,
there's no schema telling you like you're the one who
mows the lawn and you're the one who does the dishes,
or you're the one who picks the kids up when
they're sick and you're the one who takes care of
the finances. There are fewer gendered expectations along those lines.
(21:56):
So if we go into one of those man woman homes,
I guess man will is all one word. Worldwide, women
spend four and a half hours a day on unpaid
work such as cooking and cleaning, whereas men spend about
half that time doing the unpaid work. But even in
the US, where women constitute of bread winners, and this
(22:21):
reminds me that we need to do an episode stat
on women breadwinners, because we are winning more bread than
ever before, bread and bacon. It's like Oprah says, I
love bread. Even in Oprah's bread loving homes, where women
are bringing it home and eating it too. Women still
spend more time on housework compared to men. But this
(22:43):
isn't just a thing of man. Those guys sure are jerks,
So letting just do all the work around here. Um.
There's also this concept of comparative advantage that may have
laid some groundwork when men were the ones who were
working outside the home for the most part. Um that
has fostered this pattern. So this is something that Marina
(23:07):
Ashad explains over at the Big Think, And basically, comparative
advantage means that people benefit from a task trade off
of each specializes in a task at which they're most efficient.
And so I'll use the example we've used many times
in this podcast, which is my dishwasher efficiency. It so
(23:29):
in my Mad Woman the Household, Uh, I do the
dishes because I'm better at loading up that dishwasher. I
know it, I'm proud of it. Whereas my fiancee is
I mean, it's it's also his his day job, but
he does things. He is the fixer of electrical things. Yeah,
(23:51):
and so there's that trade off. Yeah, he's expected to
do that, and it's okay because you're expected to do
this other thing and it's so gender normal, but it's
also are comparative advantage. I would electrocute myself if I
tried to be the fixer, and our dishwasher would be
a wreck if he took over ps he does wash dishes.
We trade off. He would be so frustrated if he
(24:13):
heard me saying this right now, because we're actually pretty
um Yeah. And so basically, when you take this concept
and look historically, men have historically been paid more to
work outside the home, which gives women the comparative advantage
in doing the household yours and taking care of the
kiddos and all that stuff, and so odd Shad wrote,
(24:34):
if a woman believes that she will eventually be married
to a man who earns a higher income than she does,
then she has less to gain from investing in human
capital that will give her an advantage in the labor market.
That's what we were referring to earlier. So when you
look at lesbians, women who have no intention of marrying
a man and indeed planned to spend life with another
(24:55):
woman who might make more less or the same amount,
They have none of those incentives to under invest in
their skills and education, and so this creates a situation
in which these women increase that X factor. So whether
it's education or skills or whatever, that gives them a
competitive advantage in the market. And like we said, obviously
(25:18):
not everyone falls along these lines. Were painting with a broadbrush.
We're talking about gender norms, so obviously there's going to
be people who fall outside of those norms. And isn't uh,
speaking of increasing the X factor, isn't the X factor
also like a competitive singing show. Yes, so when lesbians
invest in voice lessons, they increase the X factor. That's
(25:42):
what we're trying to say. Yeah, surprise listeners, this episode
is actually a sneak attack promo for the X factor.
It's a twist, um, But there is actually a twist here. Okay,
because we've been talking as if gay men and women
are just walking around making it rain. They've got money
for days and days, but gay affluence is kind of
(26:06):
a total myth. Yeah, and it's a myth, and it's
been around for a long time. And Scalia Justice, Scalia
rest in peace. Uh he didn't invent it, but he
certainly perpetuated it when in one court descent he said
those who engage in homosexual conduct tend to reside in
(26:32):
disproportionate numbers and certain communities even more ominously. Though to Scalia,
these homosexuals have quote high disposable income, which gives them
quote disproportionate political power to achieve not merely a grudging
social toleration, but full social acceptance of homosexuality. Oh my gosh,
(26:55):
is the gay agenda acceptance? I was about to say, yeah,
it's like they so the Scalleia. I know Scalia was
a very smart guy, you know, conservatism notwithstanding, um, but
it seems so illogical to believe that gay men in
(27:16):
particular would somehow be wealthy enough to like fund a
gay quote unquote gay agenda, because if that were the case,
like wouldn't seem sex marriage and passed like forever ago anyway. Um,
not to speak ill of the dead, but yeah, moving on.
(27:36):
Uh So, where did this myth come from? What what
is behind it? And like so many things in America
and in the West, like marketing and advertising in Corporate
America is sort of behind this. Corporate America actually sought
to improve policies around LGBT people because they wanted to
create a viable consumer market, and they had marketing firms
(28:00):
conduct surveys to try to show not just affluence, but
disproportionate levels of brand loyalty as being a hallmark of
people in the LGBT community, but particularly gay men. This
is where we start to see those stereotypes of like,
(28:21):
oh my god, gayman just want to buy all the
shoes and suits. And I'm not saying that people of
whatever stripe don't want to buy all the shoes and suits.
I love shoes and I love a suit. Perfect together,
we are like one character in nine to five. Um.
But the thing is these weren't exactly scientific studies, and
it left out people in poverty who wouldn't be worth
(28:45):
marketing too for these corporations, and poverty is a huge
problem for the LGBT community and for lesbians in particular,
and that's something that is just ignored when we tend
to just view gay men and and lesbians as these
like affluent, care free, childless, like suit wearing shoe loving people. Yeah.
(29:10):
I mean think about pop culture. You have the L word,
where from what I can remember, um, most of the
lesbian characters were very upwardly mobile. You have the first,
you know, real portrayals of gay men on television in
a big way with Will and Grace. Will had plenty
of money in that huge apartment and also queer eye
for the straight guy. Yeah. What was that episode of
(29:31):
Sex in the City where Charlotte starts hanging around with
a bunch of lesbians and yeah, the power lesbians, all
of the power lesbians and their suits and button ups
and glasses, and they finally kick her out because they're like, dude,
you're not a you're not a Listian. They didn't say that,
I remember exactly what they said that. Yeah, I don't
know if I can say that. Well. And then when
Samantha briefly dates a lesbian and she's a wealthy artist, Yeah,
there's Yeah, there is an investment pop culturally and marketing
(29:55):
wise in maintaining this you know, Scarry O type that
across the board. LGBT people are just rich and living
it up, and I wonder if that made it easier
to turn a blind eye to all the discrimination they face.
It's like they're fine because they can just pay for
a great lifestyle anyway, when in fact, data from u
(30:16):
c l a. S. Williams Institute finds that seven point
six percent of lesbian couples compared to five point seven
percent of married opposite sex couples live in poverty. Furthermore,
fourteen point one percent of lesbian couples received food stamps
compared to six point five percent of opposite sex married couples. Yeah,
(30:40):
and a few further stats, just over two percent of
women in same sex relationships receive government cash assistance compared
to just point eight percent of women in opposite sex couples.
And I mean this is this is bad enough when
you're looking at rates of poverty among lesbian couples, but
let's add some more factors, because it honestly only gets
(31:01):
worse when you add age to the mix. Women in
same sex couples who are sixty five and older have
nearly twice the poverty rate of women in opposite sex
couples of the same age. And of course, when you
add race to the equation, that makes a difference to
so queer women of color, trans women, and trans women
(31:21):
of color are specially vulnerable to poverty. You have African
American and Latino women in same sex couples being twice
to three times likelier to be poor compared to white
women in same sex couples. And then if we add
the layer of education, one third of lesbian couples without
high school diplomas live in poverty compared to just over
(31:44):
eighteen percent of different sex married couples. And of course
it changes when you change location as well. Yeah, so
lesbian couples who live in rural areas are much more
likely to be poor for ten compared to just four
and a half percent of couple of lesbians living in
(32:04):
large cities. And again, like geography, rural areas like that's
code for so much more, right, because living in a
rural area, you might not have access to the same
levels of education, healthcare, and jobs that women in urban
centers would. You also might face higher levels of discrimination
(32:26):
if in fact, those rural areas are more homogeneous and
don't have the same exposure to people of different backgrounds. Well,
and one of the big factors explaining a wage gap
premium for lesbians and love spian couples is the idea that, oh, well,
you know what, they won't be quote unquote mommy tract.
(32:47):
Here we go, let's let's pay him a little more money.
But when you do add children to the mix, which
is highly common for female same sex couples, you have
more poverty as well compared to people with kids who
are in those opposite sex relationships. Yeah, so just over
(33:07):
nineteen percent of kids who live with female same sex
couples are in poverty compared to just over twelve percent
of children who live with married opposite sex couples. And
in general, married or partnered LGBT people living in two
adult households with kids are twice as likely as comparable
(33:28):
non LGBT individuals to report household incomes near the poverty threshold.
And I'm wondering if that's also an issue of, like
I was saying, the job market and geography, because when
you look at the states with the highest proportions of
same sex couples raising kids, whether that's biological, adopted or
(33:49):
step kids, those include Mississippi, Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho, and Montana.
So I mean Mississippi like having major issues these days
with education, a healthcare crisis. They just passed a quote
unquote religious liberty law. So I mean there there are
so many factors that go into that go into the poverty,
(34:14):
the level of poverty that affects the LGBT community. And
this isn't just an issue of money, but how also
how money relates to our well being. So there is
a piece over in the Atlantic in UM that highlighted
a gallop pole which found UM a well being gap
(34:35):
essentially between queer women and street women. So queer women
scored slightly lower on an index of well Being UM
than straight women, and researchers think that those financial woes
play a large part because, for instance, queer men and
women are ten percentage points less likely to consider themselves
(34:59):
financial thriving compared to straight people. And there was a
piece in the Atlantic which highlighted a gallop pole which
found also a gap, a sexual orientation gap and well being,
which is sort of a complicated way of saying that
queer women reported lower levels of overall well being compared
(35:21):
to straight women. It wasn't a massive gap, of the
queer women's index score was fifty seven compared to straight
women's score of sixty three, but a gap nonetheless, and
those financial issues that we were just talking about, with
all of those percentages certainly play a point because if
you also compare queer women and straight women and ask
both groups whether they feel what financially stable and even thriving,
(35:47):
you have straight women likely to say yes, ma'am, I am,
and that could be linked to issues that queer women
would uniquely face in the workplace, like employment discrimination and
inequitable healthcare coverage, families turning them away, and outright homelessness.
And when you look more closely at that whole idea
(36:07):
of thriving financially and you break it down according to
that sexual orientation hierarchy that we mentioned at the top
of the podcast, it is interesting to note that queer
women report a slightly higher average when it comes to
saying yes, I am thriving financially than queer men. And
why why would that be Because according to our hierarchy,
(36:29):
queer men still earn more than queer women in general.
But I think it breaks down in a way that
makes sense because gay men and bisexual men still make
less than their straight counterparts, so they're still being dinged.
So if you're separating it by gender that way, they
(36:49):
are being dinged. But when you look at queer women,
lesbians and bisexual women, they're earning more than their straight
lady counter parts. And so even though queer women are
making less than queer men on average, they are making
more than there as I said, lady counterparts who are straight,
(37:11):
but they also experienced far more poverty too. So I
mean it seems like there has to be like this
upper tier of high earning, high income lesbians who are
skewing that average a little bit, I would think. So,
I mean, I don't have the stats in front of me.
I mean, if I if I know anything about math,
(37:33):
which is enough, listeners, it's quite enough. Um. I would
think that would have to be the case, because when
we then start looking at more of the I don't know,
the more of the median, I would be curious to
see what the median income would be because I would
guess that the median income for uh same sex female household,
(37:57):
which is such a clinical way to put it, Um,
a lesbian headed household would be closer to poverty level
than the one percent level. Yes, yeah, I think on average,
you would be right. Um. And when we look at
this well being scale from the gallop pole. Poor physical
well being also plays a massive part. As you might imagine,
(38:18):
only twenty four percent of queer women reported that they
were physically thriving, compared with thirty six percent of straight women.
Lesbian and bisexual women reported higher levels of both smoking
and drinking, and bisexual women in particular reported elevated weight
and psychological distress. And of course you also factor in
(38:39):
the incredibly low feelings of safety, security, and community involvement
that lesbian and bisexual women reported in this survey nine
percent less than straight women, for instance, and lesbian and
bisexual women also reported having a lower sense of purpose
in life than the straight women in the survey did.
(39:00):
And as I was listening to you saying all of
these these statistics, which paints such a kind of a
dismal picture, the first time in my head was, oh,
this has to be a little bit dated. I forgot
that we were talking about, which only goes to show
that while yes, it has gotten better in many ways,
there's still a lot of work that needs to be done,
(39:21):
especially if we look at the concentrations of those uh,
lesbian households with kids and where those are in places
like Mississippi whose religious Liberty and Quotes bill is kind
of the one of the broadest um anti LGBT pieces
of legislation to ever pass. Yeah, exactly exactly, and it
(39:43):
I mean you talked about the whole mommy tracking thing.
The Williams Institute points out that it's not like lesbians
aren't striving to be parents. An estimated thirty seven percent
of LGBT identified adults, so not just women, have had
a child at some point in their lives. And the
study revealed that again it's more likely to be black
lesbians living in states like Mississippi, those are the lesbians
(40:07):
who are more likely to be parents. So again, multifaceted
issues around Soto, economics, race, education, well being, all of
these things tied together. And so while we see this,
we see these headlines about the lesbian wage premium, and
we think, oh, fabulous, how do we get there too?
It's more like, how can we all lift each other
(40:30):
up and support each other so that we aren't talking
about wage premiums and poverty. We're just talking about everyone
making and earning what they deserve well, And in the
internet news cycle that we all kind of swimming day
to day, the headline of lesbian wage premium is probably
(40:52):
far clickier and more viral than lesbians are living in poverty.
It wants to click on this and learn more. No, okay, well,
let's let's just talk about this one one big average.
That's how we got everybody to listen to the podcast.
That's true. It's true, sucked in um. And of course
we want to hear from our lesbian and queer listeners
(41:14):
about this issue, and not just you know, talking to
sis gender women either. I mean, clearly, the farther you
get from being a white, straight, sis gender dude, the
more complicated your salary situation can become. But like you
said earlier, Caroline, it's gonna be interesting, hopefully in a
really good way, to see how in the future, as
(41:37):
hopefully our society becomes more accepting, how the concentrations of
LGBT employees might spread away from those kind of pockets
that they're in right now. And also hopefully that hierarchy,
that income hierarchy evening out. Yeah, and hopefully more religious
(41:59):
Liberty Bill is being struck down or not succeeding. Yeah,
there's that whole thing too, So lots to write us about, listeners.
We want to know your thoughts on this mom stuff
at how Stuff Works dot Com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. Well, I've got a
(42:23):
letter here from Gia in response to our colorism episode.
Uh Gas says that she is from Papua and Indonesia,
but it is currently studying in the Netherlands. So Gas says,
thanks for the podcast on colors and it gives me
a word for a conversation I had with my sister
a few months ago. We were talking about an Instagram
account at Beautiful Papuan. It's an Instagram account that promotes
(42:45):
a beauty idea that is Populan by taking pictures of
Papua's who are gorgeous. My sister was critical of it
because this stress on beauty instead of brain is shallow.
My main criticism is because people featured in it are
mostly Papuans of mixed descent. I s spose I should
have begun by saying that Papuan's have a darker complexion.
We are more similar with people from the Oceana region
(43:07):
and have curly hair akin to African Americans in the
United States. However, the beauty ideal in Indonesia is parallel
to the one in the Philippines. We are inundated by
skin lightning products, and you don't see papuins in movies
or anything which may promote a different idea of beauty.
I welcome the Instagram account because I thought it could
be an outlet or an alternative for all the other
(43:28):
beauty ideas we are constantly receiving from the media that
exclude us. Let's skip the part that most people featured
our athletics, slender, extremely fashionable, and so on. That is
a different can of worms. My main criticism was based
in the fact that most of the people featured are
mostly people from mixed descent, someone with one parent from
Papua and the other from a different island. This means
(43:50):
that their hair is mostly wavy instead of curly, and
that their skin is lighter. Their skins are not fair,
but they are as close to fairness as a dark
skin papuin can be, and I thought this was a
pro blum for an account that wants to promote an
alternative ideal of beauty, but does so by revealing the
colorism we have. I myself am of mixed ascent and
am old enough not to care. But given the target
(44:12):
of this account, I wish they were more inclusive in
their promotion of a beauty ideal. Or am I expecting
too much from an account that shallow. In the meantime,
thanks for your work. I immensely enjoy listening to you
talking about women's issues. Your podcast always brightened my day.
So keep up the work and good luck with you.
I'm pending wedding Kristen, so thanks to you, I think
(44:33):
I just felt be more great. Thank you. Though. I've
got a letter here from Sarah about our episode on
the politics of tanning, and she writes, in college, I
was part of a ballroom dance company. For our annual performance,
there is an expectation that we can We were told
that in the large auditorium under many stage lights, we
(44:54):
would either glow or become translucent. I believe company members
with darker skin weren't expe died to tan, that others
would flock to get spray tans and share tips on
the best lotions. So around the same time, I started
noticing other conversations among students related to the tanning requirement.
Tanning is actually common or even mandatory throughout the ballroom
(45:15):
dance world, not just for performances, but for competitions which
often take place in gems or other traditionally lit venues. Clearly,
tanning here was not related to the effects of strong
stage lights. I learned that this tanning tradition in ballroom,
especially for Latin ballroom styles, stems from a desire to
quote look more Latin. In effect, people have used tanning
(45:39):
as a means of brown face in order to blend
into the desired aesthetic of the style. Of course, this
is super problematic, and at my small liberal arts college
this was not about to fly once people learned the
root of tanning in ballroom before the performance. The next year,
a group of students managed to shed light on this
issue enough to make tanning for the performing optional, both
(46:01):
for those with concerns of the racist implications and for
those like me who have sensitive skin. Well, I'm proud
that we were able to make a small change to
our company's standing requirement. It's still a major part of
the competitive ballroom world. I wonder if there are other
areas of performance with practices of a similar nature and
hope that the Latin ballroom world will be able to
(46:22):
continue loving the sport and art without the racist practice
that seems so ingrained. So thank you so much, Sarah,
I had no idea about that. Caroline is shaking her
head as well. So as always, we learned so much
from a listeners, So keep on sending us your letters.
Mom stapp at house stepworks dot com is where you
can send them and for links to all of our
(46:44):
sources as well as all of our blogs, videos and
podcasts with our sources so you can learn more about
the lesbian wage, premium and poverty. Head on over to
stuff Mom Never Told You dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
(47:05):
dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from how stupp
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen, and we're all familiar with the
gender wage gap, the concept of it, the realities of it,
especially since we just marked equal pay Day in mid April.
(00:27):
And well, Caroline, quick note equal pay day for white women. Well, exactly,
that's what I'm getting at com SIY. Sorry, sorry, you
and I are on the same page here. My intersectionality
gets so over eager sometimes I don't I know it. Um. Basically,
what Kristen is referring to, in case you're not a
long time Sminty listener, uh, for every dollar earned by
(00:51):
a white, non Hispanic dude in full time work, the
average white woman in America earns seventy eight Since this
is a refrain with which we are very familiar and
so equal pay day then is the extra amount of
time by which a woman would need to work to
match a man's annual salary. So for white ladies with
(01:12):
that seventy eight cents ratio, it rolls around in April,
correct exactly. But the average Hispanic woman in this country,
for every dollar a dude makes she makes only fifty
six cents, so her equal pay day is in October. Yeah.
So just as the as the leaves are changing, and
(01:33):
and a man, a white dude, an average white dude
has made almost an entire New year's worth of salary
money cash. Uh, the Hispanic woman is is just starting
to catch up. Yea. And I believe for black women
the gap is sixty eight cents for every dollar a
white dude make, so they're more late summer yeah there July. Yeah,
(01:55):
so you know, you go to the swimming pool, you know,
you're rock in your shorts, in your Hawaiian shirts around
the luau in the summer, and and you finally catch
up with with your wage gap. Also, I want to
go to whatever swimming pool you're having these um, well,
you're invited. I mean, it's it's just the wage gap.
(02:16):
Luow you know, I mean, we're we're trying to work
on a on a better catch your name, yea, the
wage gap flu Yeah, well, because I'm hoping to find
something with a little more alliteration. So the wage gap,
grill out, grill out, I don't know, we'll we'll work
on it. You guys are welcome to send us suggestions. Um.
(02:37):
But the interesting thing about the wage gap and equal
pay salaries negotiation. The interesting thing is that when you
break it down by sexual orientation, things actually shake out
a little differently in that study after study has shown
(02:58):
that lesbians earn more than they're straight sisters. And I mean,
people are like, good for you, lesbians, and and it
is good for them. We can stand to learn so
much everything from you know, possibly bucking gender norms and
egalitarian divisions of chores. Well, exactly, they have more orgasms
(03:18):
statistically than straight women. They're better planning weddings in a
in a saner kind of way. Who knows, but yes,
there there are there's an array of things that I think, uh,
the straits could learn from our lesbian friends. But of
course there are some downsides too, the financial issues facing
(03:43):
a lot of people in the LGBT community. But first
let's jump into what the heck is going on with
this so called lesbian wage premium. Well, there's no so
called about it. Uh. A January meta analysis by Maerica
Collobuter at the University of Washington and found a nine
percent lesbian wage premium. Or put another way, she found
(04:07):
that lesbians earned nine percent more on average than straight women,
and even when you control for demographics, the wage premium
is still around six percent. Yeah, and those demographics being
that self described lesbians tend to be that are educated
on average, more likely to be white, live in urban centers,
(04:28):
have fewer kids, and are more likely to be in
professional positions. And there was also a Canadian study that
looked only at white lesbians btw, and there was something
about the idea of factoring in race would factor in
too many variables in terms of socioeconomics. So they compared uh,
(04:50):
white lesbians and white street ladies in a July study
in the journal Gender and Society and found that that
wage premium is even stronger in those higher paying professional jobs.
But that does not mean that lesbians have entirely escaped
to this wage gap that we talk about. No, So
multiple studies have actually established an even more detailed pay
(05:14):
hierarchy than what we might think of with just the
gender wage gap. Of he makes this. She makes that because,
as we've already acknowledged, things shift when we look at
women of color. But if we look at sexual orientation,
the income hierarchy goes straight men, gay men, lesbians, and
(05:36):
then straight women. Yeah, very interesting, and that the one
of the factors that cements and complicates the whole gender
hierarchy thing is that trans women actually see a drop
in wages by nearly a third when they transition compared
with their trans men peers, who actually see a slight
(05:57):
bump in wages. Well, and that makes sense too, because
that's in line with the gender wage gap and isn't
necessarily correlated to the sexual orientation wage gap. Correct exactly,
And so why what is going on? And as I
was reading, you know, people, people are definitely reaching for answers.
They're trying to figure out the secret because I mean,
(06:18):
I think most of us, or at least the people
listening to this podcast, would love to see the gender
wage gap close, um, and the sexual orientation wage gap.
We want to see the wage gaps closed. We want
to earn the money that we deserve. And so as
I was reading all this stuff, I was trying to
figure out, like, yeah, you know what Kristen mentioned, there
is the egalitarian household chore thing, which we'll get into
(06:40):
here in a minute. But I was wondering too, if
it doesn't circle back to already having experience and or
a level of comfort with bucking those gender norms where
women are supposed to be polite and you're supposed to
be a good girl and don't negotiate and don't push
too hard and just take what you're given and be
grateful for it, and that perhaps that gives them a
(07:03):
leg up when it comes to negotiating. Well, and I
would wonder too that if that is the case, whether
it plays more of a role in the how the
lesbian is going to negotiate for herself versus how an
employer is going to perceive her gender role wise, because
(07:24):
maybe with that bucking of gender norms, the employer is
less likely to negatively judge her if she pushes for
more money aggressively in a way that we would consider unfeminine. Well, yeah,
and that gets to the one of the possible answers,
which is the issue of positive discrimination. Those Canadian researchers
(07:47):
that we cited earlier said that lesbian employees could be
quote perceived as less feminine and closer to the unencumbered
male ideal. In other words, employer might be expecting lesbians
to be more competitive in their jobs. Uh, they might
be more committed to their work than straight women, you know,
(08:07):
those straight women who just immediately want to run off
and pop out babies and never come back from eternity.
Like I mean, I can't wait to do that as
soon as I leave this podcast studio. I know Kristen's
on a timetable here, and and that whole thing, that
concept is called mommy tracking. It's when you pass over
a woman for top projects and promotions because of this assumption,
(08:29):
this this like almost subconscious assumption that mothers will be
less productive. And it's worth noting, by the way, that
there's no equivalent daddy track. And actually women tend to
be dinged for becoming mothers, whereas fathers in the workplace
tend to get almost like higher status. They're trusted more
(08:52):
when they become both married and fathers. So anyway, and
can I just stay here one that the combination of
those two phrases unencumbered male ideal and mommy track just
made me sprout like ten new gray hairs. I know,
but like I mean, here we were exploring subconscious in
(09:15):
a lot of cases biases, what what could potentially be
benefiting lesbians and hurting straight women? Um and in reality,
you know, moms with full time jobs do take off
more time to tend a family, but that's for so
many complicated, myriad, multifaceted reasons, including things like male partners
(09:37):
not pulling their weight, expectations that a mom will take
care of the kids, sh'll go leave work and pick
them up when they're sick, and according to a Harvard study,
men prioritizing their careers over their wives while women tend
to prioritize their careers equally. I think I just felt
like two more great hairs. But that's this that positive discrimination,
(10:01):
those assumptions around mommy's versus lesbians, as if lesbians would
never have or adopt children, That is one of the factors.
You also have the factor of education and job choice.
Researchers have found that gay men and women are nearly
two times likelier to hold a bachelor's degree, which you
(10:21):
know often opens the door to better paying positions, particularly
you know, white collar or professional positions that offer room
for advancement. And this is something that you see come
up a lot when people argue that, oh, the gender
worrige GOP doesn't exist at all, because it's just the
jobs that you're choosing, um and it is true if
we look at the sexual orientation gap, that gay men
(10:45):
and lesbians are proportionally overrepresented among the highest paying jobs,
including psychology and law. They're also overrepresented in university teaching
in social work, although of course, as you I guess,
social work and university teaching are not among the highest
paying jobs. Um And. This has also led researchers to
(11:08):
investigate whether there's this factor of lesbians picking jobs that
are a typical for women, for sis, straight women. Um And.
This was something that was looked at in a study
published in in the journal Social Forces. And it did,
in fact find that lesbians are less likely to work
(11:31):
in the retail industry for instance. Yeah, and so there
is this question of our gay men and lesbians concentrated
in certain jobs. There was a study and Administrative Science
quarterly that found that gay men and lesbians gravitate toward
professions with high task independence in other words, less reliance
(11:54):
on coworkers or managers, so like a fire safety inspector
or a massage therapist. Those were two examples they gave.
Uh And in addition to high task independence, they also
gravitate toward jobs with high social perceptive nous in other words,
requiring the ability to accurately read or predict other's emotions.
So what is going on with that? The researchers point
(12:17):
out that task independence makes it easier to hide sexual
orientation if you don't feel comfortable coming out. Um and
knowing how to read social cues for a lot of
people might be an important acquired skill when you're surrounded
by bigots your entire life. What an upshot to such
a downside? And when the researchers looked at traditionally blue
(12:40):
collar versus pink collar jobs, they found that when lesbians
end up in more blue collar jobs, they're often well
paying professions like being diesel mechanics, doing elevator and heating repair,
Whereas if they are in more pink collar jobs, they
tend to end up in more academic and social focus
(13:01):
jobs like psychologists, sociologists, or being training and development specialists. Yeah,
and another interesting factor that underlies this whole conversation. Researchers
predict that as society becomes more accepting of people in
the LGBTQ community, these associations and divisions could very well fade,
(13:27):
because they argue, if you are more accepted and less
afraid of coming out, then there wouldn't be as much
of a drive to go to those task independent positions.
And if you're not as worried about being attacked by
bigots around you physically or verbally, then you don't need
to have that heightened awareness necessarily of other people's emotions
(13:51):
and feelings. And that seems analogous to efforts to close
the gender gap with stem fields, where it's like, we
need to, uh, you know, a limit ate all of
these gender based barriers so that hopefully in the future
more girls will naturally be drawn to and I want
to say naturally, but will um be drawn to and
(14:11):
be able to retain jobs in those fields. And you
also have this terrific website called gay Money that's created
by journalist Joe Clark, and Clark looked at twenty years
of studies and found that lesbians tend to also work
longer hours because generally speaking, generally they are less likely
(14:32):
to have kids, so they can put in the longer
hours potentially earn that overtime on the job. And he
points out that you have to keep in mind that
these studies that we're talking about are dealing mostly with
lesbian couples, not single lesbians because they are easier to
identify in surveys. They're more likely to uh either be
(14:56):
out or or um publicly self identify in serve as
as lesbians, and so Clark calls for more research on
both single gay women and single or coupled bisexual women.
And of course at this point we want to note
that bisexual women are largely erased or just hidden in
a lot of these statistics. So what I'm hearing is
(15:19):
that the lesbian power couple trope is real, so real,
because when you toss a man into the equation, having
ever lived with a man, having ever coupled up with
a man, automatically your average salary goes down. And this
was something reported on in the Economists. So women who
(15:43):
have never lived with a male partner before make more
money than those who have, regardless of sexual orientation, and
this might be a result of striving for a higher
paycheck to compensate for making less than men overall. Um.
And you also have same sex couples being likelier to
be dual earners even when they have kids, which circled
(16:05):
back around to that whole egalitarian household thing. Yeah, and
so uh studies in two thousand and two thousand nine
found that lesbians who have lived with a man experience
a wage penalty of nine point five percent. They make
nine point five percent less than lesbians who had never
lived with a male partner. And so remember that six
(16:26):
percent wage premium we mentioned above, that lesbians have a
wage premium of six percent when you control for demographics
blah blah blah blah blah um, Well, for these women,
it drops to five point two percent for never married
to a man lesbians, which is still a good chunk
above women in opposite sex marriages, which is making me
(16:47):
real nervous about the fact that my fiance and I
are living together. It's like, do we do we need
to have separate homes so my income will rise? Well,
I mean, what researchers point out is that it maybe,
and you know, maybe, like maybe this is a subconscious
thing that if you grow up and and trust me,
like I'm fully aware of the quibbles that will arise
(17:10):
when I say this, Like I agree, I understand, But
the researchers point out that maybe if you grow up
never having an intention to lean out buzzword and you're like,
I know, I'm a lesbian I don't want to live
with a man. I don't want to marry a man,
So therefore I will never have a man bringing home
the bacon. Uh. So I know I have to commit
(17:33):
myself to getting a good education. I've got to invest time,
money in education and climbing that career ladder because no
one's going to help me. Um. Although of course you
could argue, hello, there are women, gay, straight, bisexual, whatever
who also never planned to marry or have children. But
(17:53):
that is one factor that perhaps when you know that
you won't have a partner, or you assume you won't
have a partner who's bringing him more than you and
who can support you if you decide to stay home,
that you will feel compelled to. I guess work harder
and longer to make up for that. Well. And I wonder,
in terms of the growing up factor, if it's maybe
(18:17):
not so much like a ten year old girl being like,
I'm never going to have a man in my house
that's saving my cash. Um or if and this again
is would be something I would predict would change over
time and would have already improved, um where we are today.
But for that ten year old girl, say twenty years ago,
(18:38):
knowing that she's a lesbian and being like, I'm going
to have to work really hard and overachieve to compensate
for the discrimination that I'm very going to likely face. Yes,
And I would argue that that's probably more likely, especially
if you're talking about a ten year old. We need
to get a ten year old year where's our child consultant?
(19:00):
And you know, like we said, a lot of this,
a lot of this gap, this premium might relate back
to the fact, uh that gay couples tend to have
more egalitarian households, and we're gonna get into that when
we get right back from a quick break. Listen, you
(19:22):
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(20:29):
So we have talked on the podcast before about egalitarian
divisions of household labor when it comes to straight couples
versus gay couples, and that even if you are the
most feminist man woman couple in the world, instead of
saying opposite sex, I think it's fine, you're the same
(20:49):
man woman man woman couple in the world. Statistically speaking,
according to research, you will likely still see your household
labor divid iidit along gendered lines, and that means both
you know, dude, it's going to be mowing the lawn
and fixing the car. Lady friend is going to be
doing the dishes and the laundry, And in addition to
(21:12):
lady friend doing the dishes and laundry, she's going to
be doing more of it and spending more time statistically
on housework than her man friend will. But when you
look at gay couples, as we talked about in that
long ago now egalitarian Household episode, gay couples don't grapple
with the same gender divisions, obviously, because when you're two
(21:36):
women living together in a romantic partnership, like, there's no script,
there's no schema telling you like you're the one who
mows the lawn and you're the one who does the dishes,
or you're the one who picks the kids up when
they're sick and you're the one who takes care of
the finances. There are fewer gendered expectations along those lines.
(21:56):
So if we go into one of those man woman homes,
I guess man will is all one word. Worldwide, women
spend four and a half hours a day on unpaid
work such as cooking and cleaning, whereas men spend about
half that time doing the unpaid work. But even in
the US, where women constitute of bread winners, and this
(22:21):
reminds me that we need to do an episode stat
on women breadwinners, because we are winning more bread than
ever before, bread and bacon. It's like Oprah says, I
love bread. Even in Oprah's bread loving homes, where women
are bringing it home and eating it too. Women still
spend more time on housework compared to men. But this
(22:43):
isn't just a thing of man. Those guys sure are jerks,
So letting just do all the work around here. Um.
There's also this concept of comparative advantage that may have
laid some groundwork when men were the ones who were
working outside the home for the most part. Um that
has fostered this pattern. So this is something that Marina
(23:07):
Ashad explains over at the Big Think, And basically, comparative
advantage means that people benefit from a task trade off
of each specializes in a task at which they're most efficient.
And so I'll use the example we've used many times
in this podcast, which is my dishwasher efficiency. It so
(23:29):
in my Mad Woman the Household, Uh, I do the
dishes because I'm better at loading up that dishwasher. I
know it, I'm proud of it. Whereas my fiancee is
I mean, it's it's also his his day job, but
he does things. He is the fixer of electrical things. Yeah,
(23:51):
and so there's that trade off. Yeah, he's expected to
do that, and it's okay because you're expected to do
this other thing and it's so gender normal, but it's
also are comparative advantage. I would electrocute myself if I
tried to be the fixer, and our dishwasher would be
a wreck if he took over ps he does wash dishes.
We trade off. He would be so frustrated if he
(24:13):
heard me saying this right now, because we're actually pretty
um Yeah. And so basically, when you take this concept
and look historically, men have historically been paid more to
work outside the home, which gives women the comparative advantage
in doing the household yours and taking care of the
kiddos and all that stuff, and so odd Shad wrote,
(24:34):
if a woman believes that she will eventually be married
to a man who earns a higher income than she does,
then she has less to gain from investing in human
capital that will give her an advantage in the labor market.
That's what we were referring to earlier. So when you
look at lesbians, women who have no intention of marrying
a man and indeed planned to spend life with another
(24:55):
woman who might make more less or the same amount,
They have none of those incentives to under invest in
their skills and education, and so this creates a situation
in which these women increase that X factor. So whether
it's education or skills or whatever, that gives them a
competitive advantage in the market. And like we said, obviously
(25:18):
not everyone falls along these lines. Were painting with a broadbrush.
We're talking about gender norms, so obviously there's going to
be people who fall outside of those norms. And isn't uh,
speaking of increasing the X factor, isn't the X factor
also like a competitive singing show. Yes, so when lesbians
invest in voice lessons, they increase the X factor. That's
(25:42):
what we're trying to say. Yeah, surprise listeners, this episode
is actually a sneak attack promo for the X factor.
It's a twist, um, But there is actually a twist here. Okay,
because we've been talking as if gay men and women
are just walking around making it rain. They've got money
for days and days, but gay affluence is kind of
(26:06):
a total myth. Yeah, and it's a myth, and it's
been around for a long time. And Scalia Justice, Scalia
rest in peace. Uh he didn't invent it, but he
certainly perpetuated it when in one court descent he said
those who engage in homosexual conduct tend to reside in
(26:32):
disproportionate numbers and certain communities even more ominously. Though to Scalia,
these homosexuals have quote high disposable income, which gives them
quote disproportionate political power to achieve not merely a grudging
social toleration, but full social acceptance of homosexuality. Oh my gosh,
(26:55):
is the gay agenda acceptance? I was about to say, yeah,
it's like they so the Scalleia. I know Scalia was
a very smart guy, you know, conservatism notwithstanding, um, but
it seems so illogical to believe that gay men in
(27:16):
particular would somehow be wealthy enough to like fund a
gay quote unquote gay agenda, because if that were the case,
like wouldn't seem sex marriage and passed like forever ago anyway. Um,
not to speak ill of the dead, but yeah, moving on.
(27:36):
Uh So, where did this myth come from? What what
is behind it? And like so many things in America
and in the West, like marketing and advertising in Corporate
America is sort of behind this. Corporate America actually sought
to improve policies around LGBT people because they wanted to
create a viable consumer market, and they had marketing firms
(28:00):
conduct surveys to try to show not just affluence, but
disproportionate levels of brand loyalty as being a hallmark of
people in the LGBT community, but particularly gay men. This
is where we start to see those stereotypes of like,
(28:21):
oh my god, gayman just want to buy all the
shoes and suits. And I'm not saying that people of
whatever stripe don't want to buy all the shoes and suits.
I love shoes and I love a suit. Perfect together,
we are like one character in nine to five. Um.
But the thing is these weren't exactly scientific studies, and
it left out people in poverty who wouldn't be worth
(28:45):
marketing too for these corporations, and poverty is a huge
problem for the LGBT community and for lesbians in particular,
and that's something that is just ignored when we tend
to just view gay men and and lesbians as these
like affluent, care free, childless, like suit wearing shoe loving people. Yeah.
(29:10):
I mean think about pop culture. You have the L word,
where from what I can remember, um, most of the
lesbian characters were very upwardly mobile. You have the first,
you know, real portrayals of gay men on television in
a big way with Will and Grace. Will had plenty
of money in that huge apartment and also queer eye
for the straight guy. Yeah. What was that episode of
(29:31):
Sex in the City where Charlotte starts hanging around with
a bunch of lesbians and yeah, the power lesbians, all
of the power lesbians and their suits and button ups
and glasses, and they finally kick her out because they're like, dude,
you're not a you're not a Listian. They didn't say that,
I remember exactly what they said that. Yeah, I don't
know if I can say that. Well. And then when
Samantha briefly dates a lesbian and she's a wealthy artist, Yeah,
there's Yeah, there is an investment pop culturally and marketing
(29:55):
wise in maintaining this you know, Scarry O type that
across the board. LGBT people are just rich and living
it up, and I wonder if that made it easier
to turn a blind eye to all the discrimination they face.
It's like they're fine because they can just pay for
a great lifestyle anyway, when in fact, data from u
(30:16):
c l a. S. Williams Institute finds that seven point
six percent of lesbian couples compared to five point seven
percent of married opposite sex couples live in poverty. Furthermore,
fourteen point one percent of lesbian couples received food stamps
compared to six point five percent of opposite sex married couples. Yeah,
(30:40):
and a few further stats, just over two percent of
women in same sex relationships receive government cash assistance compared
to just point eight percent of women in opposite sex couples.
And I mean this is this is bad enough when
you're looking at rates of poverty among lesbian couples, but
let's add some more factors, because it honestly only gets
(31:01):
worse when you add age to the mix. Women in
same sex couples who are sixty five and older have
nearly twice the poverty rate of women in opposite sex
couples of the same age. And of course, when you
add race to the equation, that makes a difference to
so queer women of color, trans women, and trans women
(31:21):
of color are specially vulnerable to poverty. You have African
American and Latino women in same sex couples being twice
to three times likelier to be poor compared to white
women in same sex couples. And then if we add
the layer of education, one third of lesbian couples without
high school diplomas live in poverty compared to just over
(31:44):
eighteen percent of different sex married couples. And of course
it changes when you change location as well. Yeah, so
lesbian couples who live in rural areas are much more
likely to be poor for ten compared to just four
and a half percent of couple of lesbians living in
(32:04):
large cities. And again, like geography, rural areas like that's
code for so much more, right, because living in a
rural area, you might not have access to the same
levels of education, healthcare, and jobs that women in urban
centers would. You also might face higher levels of discrimination
(32:26):
if in fact, those rural areas are more homogeneous and
don't have the same exposure to people of different backgrounds. Well,
and one of the big factors explaining a wage gap
premium for lesbians and love spian couples is the idea that, oh, well,
you know what, they won't be quote unquote mommy tract.
(32:47):
Here we go, let's let's pay him a little more money.
But when you do add children to the mix, which
is highly common for female same sex couples, you have
more poverty as well compared to people with kids who
are in those opposite sex relationships. Yeah, so just over
(33:07):
nineteen percent of kids who live with female same sex
couples are in poverty compared to just over twelve percent
of children who live with married opposite sex couples. And
in general, married or partnered LGBT people living in two
adult households with kids are twice as likely as comparable
(33:28):
non LGBT individuals to report household incomes near the poverty threshold.
And I'm wondering if that's also an issue of, like
I was saying, the job market and geography, because when
you look at the states with the highest proportions of
same sex couples raising kids, whether that's biological, adopted or
(33:49):
step kids, those include Mississippi, Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho, and Montana.
So I mean Mississippi like having major issues these days
with education, a healthcare crisis. They just passed a quote
unquote religious liberty law. So I mean there there are
so many factors that go into that go into the poverty,
(34:14):
the level of poverty that affects the LGBT community. And
this isn't just an issue of money, but how also
how money relates to our well being. So there is
a piece over in the Atlantic in UM that highlighted
a gallop pole which found UM a well being gap
(34:35):
essentially between queer women and street women. So queer women
scored slightly lower on an index of well Being UM
than straight women, and researchers think that those financial woes
play a large part because, for instance, queer men and
women are ten percentage points less likely to consider themselves
(34:59):
financial thriving compared to straight people. And there was a
piece in the Atlantic which highlighted a gallop pole which
found also a gap, a sexual orientation gap and well being,
which is sort of a complicated way of saying that
queer women reported lower levels of overall well being compared
(35:21):
to straight women. It wasn't a massive gap, of the
queer women's index score was fifty seven compared to straight
women's score of sixty three, but a gap nonetheless, and
those financial issues that we were just talking about, with
all of those percentages certainly play a point because if
you also compare queer women and straight women and ask
both groups whether they feel what financially stable and even thriving,
(35:47):
you have straight women likely to say yes, ma'am, I am,
and that could be linked to issues that queer women
would uniquely face in the workplace, like employment discrimination and
inequitable healthcare coverage, families turning them away, and outright homelessness.
And when you look more closely at that whole idea
(36:07):
of thriving financially and you break it down according to
that sexual orientation hierarchy that we mentioned at the top
of the podcast, it is interesting to note that queer
women report a slightly higher average when it comes to
saying yes, I am thriving financially than queer men. And
why why would that be Because according to our hierarchy,
(36:29):
queer men still earn more than queer women in general.
But I think it breaks down in a way that
makes sense because gay men and bisexual men still make
less than their straight counterparts, so they're still being dinged.
So if you're separating it by gender that way, they
(36:49):
are being dinged. But when you look at queer women,
lesbians and bisexual women, they're earning more than their straight
lady counter parts. And so even though queer women are
making less than queer men on average, they are making
more than there as I said, lady counterparts who are straight,
(37:11):
but they also experienced far more poverty too. So I
mean it seems like there has to be like this
upper tier of high earning, high income lesbians who are
skewing that average a little bit, I would think. So,
I mean, I don't have the stats in front of me.
I mean, if I if I know anything about math,
(37:33):
which is enough, listeners, it's quite enough. Um. I would
think that would have to be the case, because when
we then start looking at more of the I don't know,
the more of the median, I would be curious to
see what the median income would be because I would
guess that the median income for uh same sex female household,
(37:57):
which is such a clinical way to put it, Um,
a lesbian headed household would be closer to poverty level
than the one percent level. Yes, yeah, I think on average,
you would be right. Um. And when we look at
this well being scale from the gallop pole. Poor physical
well being also plays a massive part. As you might imagine,
(38:18):
only twenty four percent of queer women reported that they
were physically thriving, compared with thirty six percent of straight women.
Lesbian and bisexual women reported higher levels of both smoking
and drinking, and bisexual women in particular reported elevated weight
and psychological distress. And of course you also factor in
(38:39):
the incredibly low feelings of safety, security, and community involvement
that lesbian and bisexual women reported in this survey nine
percent less than straight women, for instance, and lesbian and
bisexual women also reported having a lower sense of purpose
in life than the straight women in the survey did.
(39:00):
And as I was listening to you saying all of
these these statistics, which paints such a kind of a
dismal picture, the first time in my head was, oh,
this has to be a little bit dated. I forgot
that we were talking about, which only goes to show
that while yes, it has gotten better in many ways,
there's still a lot of work that needs to be done,
(39:21):
especially if we look at the concentrations of those uh,
lesbian households with kids and where those are in places
like Mississippi whose religious Liberty and Quotes bill is kind
of the one of the broadest um anti LGBT pieces
of legislation to ever pass. Yeah, exactly exactly, and it
(39:43):
I mean you talked about the whole mommy tracking thing.
The Williams Institute points out that it's not like lesbians
aren't striving to be parents. An estimated thirty seven percent
of LGBT identified adults, so not just women, have had
a child at some point in their lives. And the
study revealed that again it's more likely to be black
lesbians living in states like Mississippi, those are the lesbians
(40:07):
who are more likely to be parents. So again, multifaceted
issues around Soto, economics, race, education, well being, all of
these things tied together. And so while we see this,
we see these headlines about the lesbian wage premium, and
we think, oh, fabulous, how do we get there too?
It's more like, how can we all lift each other
(40:30):
up and support each other so that we aren't talking
about wage premiums and poverty. We're just talking about everyone
making and earning what they deserve well, And in the
internet news cycle that we all kind of swimming day
to day, the headline of lesbian wage premium is probably
(40:52):
far clickier and more viral than lesbians are living in poverty.
It wants to click on this and learn more. No, okay, well,
let's let's just talk about this one one big average.
That's how we got everybody to listen to the podcast.
That's true. It's true, sucked in um. And of course
we want to hear from our lesbian and queer listeners
(41:14):
about this issue, and not just you know, talking to
sis gender women either. I mean, clearly, the farther you
get from being a white, straight, sis gender dude, the
more complicated your salary situation can become. But like you
said earlier, Caroline, it's gonna be interesting, hopefully in a
really good way, to see how in the future, as
(41:37):
hopefully our society becomes more accepting, how the concentrations of
LGBT employees might spread away from those kind of pockets
that they're in right now. And also hopefully that hierarchy,
that income hierarchy evening out. Yeah, and hopefully more religious
(41:59):
Liberty Bill is being struck down or not succeeding. Yeah,
there's that whole thing too, So lots to write us about, listeners.
We want to know your thoughts on this mom stuff
at how Stuff Works dot Com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. Well, I've got a
(42:23):
letter here from Gia in response to our colorism episode.
Uh Gas says that she is from Papua and Indonesia,
but it is currently studying in the Netherlands. So Gas says,
thanks for the podcast on colors and it gives me
a word for a conversation I had with my sister
a few months ago. We were talking about an Instagram
account at Beautiful Papuan. It's an Instagram account that promotes
(42:45):
a beauty idea that is Populan by taking pictures of
Papua's who are gorgeous. My sister was critical of it
because this stress on beauty instead of brain is shallow.
My main criticism is because people featured in it are
mostly Papuans of mixed descent. I s spose I should
have begun by saying that Papuan's have a darker complexion.
We are more similar with people from the Oceana region
(43:07):
and have curly hair akin to African Americans in the
United States. However, the beauty ideal in Indonesia is parallel
to the one in the Philippines. We are inundated by
skin lightning products, and you don't see papuins in movies
or anything which may promote a different idea of beauty.
I welcome the Instagram account because I thought it could
be an outlet or an alternative for all the other
(43:28):
beauty ideas we are constantly receiving from the media that
exclude us. Let's skip the part that most people featured
our athletics, slender, extremely fashionable, and so on. That is
a different can of worms. My main criticism was based
in the fact that most of the people featured are
mostly people from mixed descent, someone with one parent from
Papua and the other from a different island. This means
(43:50):
that their hair is mostly wavy instead of curly, and
that their skin is lighter. Their skins are not fair,
but they are as close to fairness as a dark
skin papuin can be, and I thought this was a
pro blum for an account that wants to promote an
alternative ideal of beauty, but does so by revealing the
colorism we have. I myself am of mixed ascent and
am old enough not to care. But given the target
(44:12):
of this account, I wish they were more inclusive in
their promotion of a beauty ideal. Or am I expecting
too much from an account that shallow. In the meantime,
thanks for your work. I immensely enjoy listening to you
talking about women's issues. Your podcast always brightened my day.
So keep up the work and good luck with you.
I'm pending wedding Kristen, so thanks to you, I think
(44:33):
I just felt be more great. Thank you. Though. I've
got a letter here from Sarah about our episode on
the politics of tanning, and she writes, in college, I
was part of a ballroom dance company. For our annual performance,
there is an expectation that we can We were told
that in the large auditorium under many stage lights, we
(44:54):
would either glow or become translucent. I believe company members
with darker skin weren't expe died to tan, that others
would flock to get spray tans and share tips on
the best lotions. So around the same time, I started
noticing other conversations among students related to the tanning requirement.
Tanning is actually common or even mandatory throughout the ballroom
(45:15):
dance world, not just for performances, but for competitions which
often take place in gems or other traditionally lit venues. Clearly,
tanning here was not related to the effects of strong
stage lights. I learned that this tanning tradition in ballroom,
especially for Latin ballroom styles, stems from a desire to
quote look more Latin. In effect, people have used tanning
(45:39):
as a means of brown face in order to blend
into the desired aesthetic of the style. Of course, this
is super problematic, and at my small liberal arts college
this was not about to fly once people learned the
root of tanning in ballroom before the performance. The next year,
a group of students managed to shed light on this
issue enough to make tanning for the performing optional, both
(46:01):
for those with concerns of the racist implications and for
those like me who have sensitive skin. Well, I'm proud
that we were able to make a small change to
our company's standing requirement. It's still a major part of
the competitive ballroom world. I wonder if there are other
areas of performance with practices of a similar nature and
hope that the Latin ballroom world will be able to
(46:22):
continue loving the sport and art without the racist practice
that seems so ingrained. So thank you so much, Sarah,
I had no idea about that. Caroline is shaking her
head as well. So as always, we learned so much
from a listeners, So keep on sending us your letters.
Mom stapp at house stepworks dot com is where you
can send them and for links to all of our
(46:44):
sources as well as all of our blogs, videos and
podcasts with our sources so you can learn more about
the lesbian wage, premium and poverty. Head on over to
stuff Mom Never Told You dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
(47:05):
dot com
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