Explained (2018–…): Season 1, Episode 18 - Why Women Are Paid Less - full transcript

[Rachel McAdams] The pay gap between men
and women around the world

looks a little different
depending on how you measure it.

In Poland, women earn 91 cents
for every dollar a man does.

In Israel, it's 81 cents.

In South Korea, women make
just 65 cents on the dollar.

We know that just freeing
the potential of women,

that is the fastest multiplier
that we have in terms of our growth.

That is such an accelerator
in eradicating poverty.

When you go to the store,
you don't get a woman's discount.

You have to pay the same
as everybody else.

So that comes out of your family income.



[McAdams]
When someone mentions the pay gap,

you often hear another phrase as well.

-Equal pay...
-...for equal work.

-Equal pay...
-...for equal work.

[McAdams] It makes it sound
like women are paid less

for doing the same job as men,

which means women
are paid less just for being women.

There's a word for that, discrimination.

But a huge body of research
from many countries shows

that overt pay discrimination
only potentially explains

a small part of the gender pay gap.

It's a real number, but it really,
actually tells you almost nothing

about the real disparity
between men and women.

Women aren't looking for a leg up.
They want equal opportunity



and equal pay. Big difference.

If you want to change culture,
you can't sit down and wait.

You must do something about it.

[McAdams]
So, if it's not all about discrimination,

why are women around the world paid
so much less than men?

[man] The woman who works at a career has
chosen to ignore that the woman's place...

It doesn't matter
if you have a female or male body,

they should be paid accordingly.

[man] I see
some really advanced clerical work.

Pays women 80 cents
for every dollar it pays men.

[woman] This is our time to stand up
to have our voices heard.

And women will lead this country.

That's what this is all about.

[McAdams] The story in the United States
is similar to a lot of countries.

It wasn't very long ago that most women,
especially white women,

didn't work outside the home at all.

When you go back to the 1950s,

there weren't very many women
in the workforce.

The women there were were often
not as well educated as the men.

They either didn't finish college,

or they didn't have
the same credentials in college,

or hadn't gone to college at all.

Most of the women
in my neighborhood did not work.

My mother did not work.

The only women that I saw
in professional roles were teachers.

[McAdams]
Most women didn't get that far.

Seventy percent had menial jobs
on factory assembly lines or in offices.

[man] Women workers don't mind
routine, repetitive work,

and they're good on work
that requires high finger dexterity.

[McAdams] People understood that a woman
might need to earn a little money,

but a career? That was for men.

Your high score
on the clerical aptitude test

indicates that you can become
a good secretary.

[McAdams]
Discrimination was also totally legal,

allowing employers
to put out job listings for men only.

When I was growing up,

I knew one woman lawyer. One.

I never met a woman doctor.

I couldn't have even imagined
women engineers.

[McAdams] The pay gap hovered
around 60 cents on the dollar.

It was caused by several
interconnected factors,

like lower female education rates,

women not being in the workforce
in big numbers,

grouping in traditionally
feminine industries,

and the fact that it was perfectly legal
to pay women less,

and then a slew of cultural norms
about gender roles and aptitudes.

These were the major explanations
for the pay gap.

And then, in just a few decades,
things changed.

Sisterhood is powerful!
Join us now!

[man] The battle cry
of the women's liberation movement

rings out down New York's Fifth Avenue.

[man] First woman to receive
the highest honor of the National...

[man]
The House broke into spontaneous applause.

Benazir Bhutto, the new prime minister.

[man]
This is the first American woman in space.

[applause]

[man] First woman nominated
to the Supreme Court.

[man] First woman ever to run
on a Presidential ticket.

My candidacy has said to women,
"The doors of opportunity are open."

Women are out-earning men
in college degrees and advanced degrees.

[woman] Women are engaged
to bring the next generation.

For the first time in history,

women are actually outnumbering men
in the workplace.

This was just a sea change

to see women competing for scholarships
I couldn't have competed for,

going to schools
that were not open to women,

taking on jobs that were closed to women.

That's changed... just... unbelievably.

[McAdams] Many of the factors
that were causing the pay gap shrunk,

except for one.

[Anne-Marie Slaughter] But what has stayed
is that women bear children.

They are assumed
to be the primary caregiver.

[McAdams] Even as women became doctors,
and lawyers, and heads of state,

the popular expectation
remained in society

that they would still do
most of the work of raising children.

In the United States, in the UK, even in progressive
Scandinavian countries,

surveys today show
only a fraction of the population

thinks women should work full-time
when they have young kids.

When it comes to men,
the expectation flips.

Seventy percent of Americans think
that new fathers should work full-time.

There still is a considerable
percentage of people,

not just in our country,
but around the world, who really think

once you're a mom,
you shouldn't be in the workplace.

And that's been proven wrong,
short-sighted over and over again. I learned, after I went back,
when my time was constrained,

not by my employer, but by me,

because I wanted to get home to that baby
and spend time with her,

that I could actually get
a lot of work done in 15 minutes.

Like, I would take
any opportunity to work.

I've become, I think, a much better
employee since I've had children.

[McAdams] Even when a mother does work
full-time just like her male partner, she spends nine hours a week more than him
on childcare and housework.

Over a year, that's the equivalent

of an extra three months
of a full-time job.

This is the heart of the pay gap,

and to understand why,
it helps to follow the story

of a young couple
just starting out on their careers.

I often think about the trajectories

of the many law students I taught.

They look exactly the same.

They have the same educational record,
the same experience.

And then you watch what starts to happen

as they hit their late 20s, early 30s,
childbearing years,

and they start thinking
about having children.

If they have children,
at that point, somebody has to be home.

You can have lots of childcare,

but a parent needs to be at home
for those situations that needs a parent.

So he's likely to get promoted.

She, on the other hand, has had
to turn down some of those assignments,

say no to some of that travel.

So eight years out, ten years out,

typically, he's then a partner,
and he can do lots of things from there.

She hasn't made partner.
She's not earning the same.

She's working flexibly, or even part-time,

and from there, her earning potential
and his just keep diverging.

[McAdams] This is the story the data
tells us in study after study

in a variety of different countries.

One Danish study
did an especially good job

of showing how childbirth
affects earnings.

[McAdams] Here's a man's pay trajectory.

Watch what happens when his child is born.

Here's the woman's trajectory.

So then if you compare the earnings
of a woman with kids

to a woman without kids,

you can see that the pay gap
isn't as much about being a woman

as it is about being a mom.

The gender gap really is between
women with children and everybody else.

Women who are not caregivers
earn 96% of every dollar.

It's a motherhood penalty.

[McAdams]
Some mothers don't see this as a problem.

They want to spend more time
with their children.

They don't mind
if it means making less.

Some women make a job choice based
on the fact they want to have families.

Nothing wrong with that.

Presenting it as, you know, a penalty
is kind of denying

first, that women make that choice,

but also that there's
some extreme value...

not just for the children, the family,
but also for the women making that choice.

A pay gap based on choices,
you know, is different

than a pay gap
that's just because you're a woman,

and you just can't get equal pay
for doing the same thing a guy does.

[McAdams] But often, women and men
don't get the same choices.

In the US, there are three times
as many single moms as single dads.

And growing up, most of us get the message

that caregiving is more
of a woman's job than a man's.

Take, for example, a 1980s advice column
about how to decorate your desk at work

that still rings true today.

Someone wrote in and said,
"I've just gotten a big promotion,

so I'll have my own work space
for the first time.

How should I decorate it?"
And here was the answer,

"I can't tell from your initials
whether you're a man or a woman,

and the answer depends upon which you are.

If you're a man, and you have a family,
plaster your office with family pictures,

because people will think
you're a very good provider. If you're a woman, and you have children,

don't put pictures up in your office
of your family,

because people will think
you can't keep your mind on your work."

[McAdams] The roots of this issue go deep
to how we understand family

and mothers and fathers.

It's why the gap is so hard to close.

But it's not impossible.

Two countries, Iceland and Rwanda,

have almost closed their wage gaps,
and in just a few decades.

And looking at these two cases
reveals important lessons

about what it takes to create a society

where women are paid
almost the same as men.

Rwanda is one
of the poorest nations on Earth,

and until just a few decades ago,
women were denied many basic rights.

[Consolee Nishimwe]
Before 1994,

women were not allowed
to speak in public. Married women were not allowed

to open a bank account without
the authorization of their husbands.

[McAdams]
But in 1994, everything changed.

The fifth day of carnage and bloodshed
in the Central African nation of Rwanda.

Thousands of people
are feared dead tonight...

The fiercest fighting yet
in the Central African nation of Rwanda.

[McAdams] In just three months,
800,000 people were murdered.

Losing my dad and my three brothers,

I survived with my mom and my sister.

[McAdams] After the violence, the Rwandan
population was 60 to 70% women.

It destroyed completely the social fabric.

You do anything you can do to survive.

[McAdams]
The shortage of men meant

that women had to step into the workforce
in huge numbers,

taking on jobs that a year earlier
would have been unheard of.

You'll find a woman who was police,
for instance, or in the military.

Gradually, women were found,
like, being a mayor, a governor.

Women actually were helping
to change, you know, the country.

[McAdams] The new government realized
that to rebuild Rwanda,

they needed women.

So they immediately implemented
a host of new policies

aimed at getting more women
into positions of power.

The preamble to the new Constitution

included a commitment to equal rights
between men and women,

stipulating that 30% of representatives
at all levels of government be women.

Today in Rwanda, women hold 61%
of the seats in Parliament,

the highest in the world.

They have a labor force participation rate
of 88%.

Rwanda is one of the few countries

where a woman is just as likely as a man
to work outside the home.

The Constitution also created
the position of gender monitor,

who ensures
that public programs are complying

with the country's goals
of gender equality.

A young girl in Rwanda doesn't think

that there is anything
that she's not allowed to do.

They don't have to grow in a system

where they think
there will be a ceiling somewhere.

[McAdams]
This cultural shift around gender began

as a survival mechanism
after the genocide.

But thanks to aggressive policies,

Rwanda has achieved lasting progress
in closing the gap. The World Economic Forum
puts Rwanda's pay gap

at 86 cents on the dollar.

Much further north,
the small island nation of Iceland

has also made major strides
towards closing the pay gap.

But they took a different path
towards equality.

The real turning point came in 1975.

[Crowd chanting song]

The year before I was born,

the women of Iceland
actually left their workplaces

and went out in the streets
in order to object to the gender pay gap.

Without them in their jobs,
businesses could not stay open,

and it started a huge grassroots wave

that, you know,
slowly started changing society.

The first result was really

that women became a lot more visible
in the political field.

[McAdams]
In 1980, five years after the strike,

Iceland voted in the world's first
democratically-elected female president.

...Iceland. Hurray! Hurray!

[McAdams] The number of women
in the Icelandic Parliament skyrocketed.

Then really, in the years to follow,
you see policy changes.

[McAdams] In 1981, Iceland passed a law
that required employers

to provide new mothers
three months of paid leave.

That was extended to six months in 1988.

Guaranteed maternity leave
was a novel idea at the time,

and Iceland's was one
of the most generous in the world.

But as progressive as this law was,

it encouraged moms to stay home
while new fathers kept working,

reinforcing cultural norms
at the heart of the pay gap

that women are caregivers,
and men are not.

So lawmakers did something radical.

What if they gave parental leave to dads

and made it a use-it-or-lose-it benefit,

so dads would feel pressure to take it?

Iceland passed that law in the year 2000.

Obligational paternity leave
has made a difference

in the culture of men in Iceland,

a very positive difference.

The men of the youngest generations,

they expect to take time off
to take care of their children.

Which really makes all the difference,

both at home, but also in the job market,

because now you can actually expect,

if you're hiring a young man
or a young woman,

both will take maternity
or paternity leave.

[McAdams] In 2004, the pay gap in Iceland
was about the same as it was in the US,

but in the years that followed,

Iceland's gender pay gap shrank,
to where today,

women in Iceland make about 90 cents
on every dollar a man does.

So we know that narrowing
the gender wage gap isn't impossible.

But these kind of family-friendly policies
might come with tradeoffs

that we don't immediately see.

These are benefits.

Having more of these choices available
are great things.

We should not expect them
to come for free.

Some women elect to have children.
Some don't.

And some men elect to have children.
Some don't.

Can I look at the person
who elected not to have children

and say,
"You gotta pay for it in some way"?

If a mother takes off a lot of time,

what does the small business person do
who only has three employees?

I don't want to penalize a mother,

but you don't want
to penalize a small business owner.

It's not the same
with a giant corporation,

because they have
enormously more flexibility

in filling positions,
and it doesn't hurt the bottom line.

[McAdams]
While it may not be

the biggest reason
women are paid less than men,

and it varies significantly
across countries and industries,

women still don't get
equal pay for equal work.

There is an irreducible percentage
that is due to discrimination.

It's just very clear that much
of what the workplace favors...

favors men.

I've watched it
in many different settings

where, you know,
the guy you talk sports with,

the guy you go golfing with,

he's somebody you get more familiar with,
and you're comfortable around.

[McAdams] But that kind of discrimination
has declined over the decades

as more women entered the workplace,
and the culture shifted.

Changing the expectation that women
should be the ones to raise children

will require another cultural shift.

And in the view of many
who work on this issue,

that shift begins with men.

Until we think of men and women
as both caregivers and breadwinners,

we're not gonna get there,

because as long
as it's a woman problem...

then we are reinforcing
that stereotype that care is her job.

It'll only be less of a burden on women
when men feel comfortable saying,

"I'm going to a parent-teacher conference.
I'm not leaving it to my wife."

Or, "I really wanna go
to the well-baby check-up.

They're getting their vaccinations.
I wanna be there."

The wage gap is not just
a woman's issue. It's a family issue.