His Daughter Has No Idea What She Does For The Women In The Office
What if there were a magical water that could wash away pay inequality for women? Well, someone invented one ... kinda.
It's a fake product called "Daughter Water," a refreshing beverage designed to help male CEOs conceive baby girls.
Sound weird? Just check this out:
<span class="redactor-invisible-space"></span>Why should we want male CEOs to have daughters? Because when they do, it tends to reduce the gender pay gap.
While this commercial had me LOLing all the way through, it's obviously not real. But it does actually highlight a real phenomenon that happens when male CEOs raise daughters. The fact is that even after the #LillyLedbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law six years ago, pay inequality is still out of control, with women making 77 cents for every $1 an equally qualified man doing the same job makes on average. Men and women are still not being paid the same — for doing the exact same work.
FACT CHECK TIME:
It's true that male CEOs having daughters tends to reduce the gender pay gap. But obviously the idea that a bottled water can do that is ridiculous (and totally made up).
As of January 2015, women are paid about 77 cents for every dollar a man makes in the U.S. That figure has hardly changed in about a decade.
Gender pay inequality is an international problem. (The folks who made this video are from Australia.) In the U.S., women experience it in all states. Washington, D.C., is at the top of the pay equity scale (paying women 91% of what men earn) and Louisiana is at the bottom (paying women 66%).
Educated women are not exempt. Basically, if you're a woman fresh out of college working full time, a study found that you'll only earn 82% of what guys in the same demographic are paid.
If you're a woman who's been in the game for a while, that's actually a disadvantage. Paychecks for women over 35 are, on average, about 75% of men's.
If you're a woman of color, it's even worse. Black women were paid 64% of what white men doing the same job were paid, while Latina women only received 54%.
It doesn't matter if you're a doctor, a lawyer, or a school teacher. No matter if your occupation is female- or male-dominated, women are very often paid less.
All of this sucks, right? So what can we do about it?
Get involved with groups like The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA), which launched a campaign to educate folks about how the gender pay gap affects work environments and how to combat it.
