A Day Without a Woman

When I first met my fellow Peace Corps volunteers, I was completely unsurprised to find that at least 3/4 of them are females. That's because throughout my education and paralleled part time career, women have vastly outnumbered men. In college, slightly more than 50% of my pre-med classes were composed of women. And in grad school, slightly less than 100% of my public health classes were composed of women. Peace Corps has proven to be no exception to this trend with a reported 62% female and 38% male gender breakdown of volunteers worldwide. The trend is nothing new, nor am I the first to notice it. The disproportionally large representation of female students and workers in the healthcare and social sciences fields has long been noted. According to a recent count by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a little under 80% of all health care provider jobs in the U.S. are held by women. This imbalance is most stark with nursing, where females outnumber males 10 to 1. Beyond direct health care provision, the trend holds true in other fields like international and domestic public health, social work, and education. If you look a little closer at these professions, you'll notice another trend - historically low pay for incredibly invaluable work. Health care, public aid, mental health, and education are cornerstones of a high-functioning, healthy society, so why do we pay our nurses, social workers, and teachers so little? Are fields dominated by women inherently underpaid due to the wage gap? Or are women more likely to go into low-paying, "nurturing" careers as their male counterparts choose less rewarding, but higher paying job opportunities? I think the answer to both of these questions is an indubitable yes.

The wage gap in the United States is not a feminist-invented boogey man that liberal snowflakes use as a happy hour talking point. It is a quantifiable, observable trend that has been studied by countless economists and sociologists; and it has real economic and social consequences. The wage gap dissuades women, particularly mothers, from entering the work force as their wages may not outweigh the costs of child care. This not only deprives our industries from talent, new ideas, and different perspectives and ways of thinking, it deprives our economy of spending power. Also, it's just plain unfair and insinuates that our work is somehow worth less just because the person doing it has an uterus. Across time and setting, we have seen over and over again that empowering women in the workforce leads to higher company productivity, stronger markets, and higher GDPs. So why is closing the wage gap still such a contended issue????  Apparently our country is willing to overlook the large-scale social and economic benefits of equal pay in fear of upsetting the status quo and actually acknowledging gender equity. I truly believe that if we were capable of looking past our human differences and made policy decisions based on the facts and numbers - not our gender, religion, or sexuality - issues like the wage gap would dissipate.

Issues brought up by the wage gap are also compounded by a noted tendency for women to choose "caretaker careers."  The choice to pursue these careers is born out of a desire to take care of others and support communities, and not out of the allure of a big paycheck. The idea that public health and other social aid careers should be lower paid is a concept that can be traced back to origins hundreds of years old. In his TED talk, "The Way We Think of Charity Is Dead Wrong," Dan Pallota links this mentality back to the Quaker idea that doing good for others is a sacrifice good, God-fearing citizens choose to make with no personal benefit. This mentality became deeply imbedded in our country's psyche and now, half a century later, choosing service careers is still a personal sacrifice for most. While I think there is true value in charity without any reward other than the warm feeling you get from helping others, I don't think this concept applies to career paths as it does to a Saturday morning volunteering at your local homeless shelter. Denying public health and education workers competitive wages deprives the most complex and important fields competitive applicants. In my short time out of college, I have seen many friends choose higher paying corporate jobs over the nonprofit jobs their hearts cried out for. Crushing student loans doesn't help this dilemma either. If we were somehow able to shift our outlook on public service fields, we could offer competitive wages that attract the brightest, most qualified individuals to education, social work, and health care jobs without them having to take pay cuts. If we promote the idea that it's not just the women that can be the caretakers and nurturers in our society, then maybe more men would enter these fields. Balancing wages and blurring the line between our overly-defined gender norms that pit women as caretakers and men as breadwinners can expand male representation in social services and female representation in industries like tech. Win - win.

In 1975, Icelandic women took a "day off" to protest things like wage inequality, unbalanced opportunities in the workplace, and unfair employer practices including little attention paid to sexual harassment or assault claims. Their intention was to demonstrate the indispensable work of women for Iceland’s economy and society, and how disastrous losing the contributions of women would be. On October 24, 1975 90% of women in Iceland didn't go to work and refused to do any housework for the whole day.  There was no telephone service and newspapers weren't printed since the typesetters were all women. Theaters shut down for the day as actresses refused to work. The majority of teachers were women so schools either closed or “operated at limited capacity.” Flights got cancelled since the flight attendants did not come into work. Iceland was essentially shut down for a day. Tomi Lahren would obviously go on some primetime rant about how women are just complaining and being hormonal (only a true villain has no quarrels adopting the same slurs men sling to make women feel inferior, and I have no doubt that Tomi is capable of exactly this level of treachery). How this will do nothing to change the way things are and that there's no reason to punish our poor husbands and children in the useless process. But like always, Tomi would be wrong because just a year later Iceland’s parliament passed a law guaranteeing equal rights for women and men, which set an important legal precedent in the country. The strike also paved the way for the election of Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the first democratically elected female president in the world. 

             

To honor this legacy and to protest the still existent economic injustices women and gender-nonconforming people face worldwide, grassroots activists and organizers have declared March 8, International Women's day, "A Day Without a Woman." They're encouraging women to take the day off from paid and unpaid work if they can, or to show support in other ways if they can't. If you can't strike, you can avoid spending money anywhere except small businesses and those owned by women or minorities, wear red to symbolize "revolutionary love and sacrifice," or donate to an organization that bolsters women's rights. No one can foretell how successful this strike will be, especially in the U.S. where our 'work, work, work' mentality has been a big obstacle for past labor movements. Whether or not this movement is successful, I believe it's important - especially now. Women in the U.S. need to stand up and fight, not just against the tangible barriers restricting our economic and social equality, but also against our country's most insidious demons - the deeply rooted misogyny and sexism that got Trump elected. Strikes are hard to organize and, as many opponents have pointed out, are only viable options for those privileged with job security, an understanding employer, or the ability to forfeit a day's worth of pay. This undeniably prompts the question, "who is the strike really for?" In response, organizers released the following statement: "Many women in our most vulnerable communities will not have the ability to join the strike due to economic insecurity. We strike for them." I'm not wholly convinced by this logic, but I'm always here for social experiments and support any and all attempts to shake up the patriarchy. I sincerely hope activists find a way to make this movement, and all future movements, as inclusive as possible. 

In solidarity, I will be wearing red, donating to Planned Parenthood, calling my representatives, and showering the goddesses of my life with well-deserved thanks and affirmations. 

Donate to PP: https://secure.ppaction.org/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app259b?df_id=24063&24063.donation=form1&NONCE_TOKEN=7B9F4E800C632B936695CC88AC0B53F1