Fair Pay
Friday, April 18th, 2008
Equal Pay. It’s hard to really wrap your head around the concept. There are so many excuses for un-equal pay: women ask for salaries on the lowest end of ranges; they don’t have as much training; they work in fields that just don’t pay as much. Never do the people putting forth these arguments consider that women are systematically taught to devalue and question themselves; that training is not as readily available because of the socio-economic difficulties and social obstacles (i.e. overwhelmingly male-oriented schools, lack of advising and support for women); the hostility and outright misogyny many women face in traditional male-dominated, higher paying fields.
I have come up against these obstacles time and time again. I am privileged as compared to many women, enough that I have been able to get accepted into a pretty good undergraduate institution, and have my choice of the six law schools that accepted me. However, I went into law school with the express purpose of going into public interest law, the lowest-paying sub-field in law. This sub-field also happens to employ many more women than men.