Women, Let's Stick Some Knives in Our Own Backs Shall We?

Just last week, this pretty outrageous article appeared in the Straits Times (Singapore's main daily), written by a young female journalist who clearly lives a rather sheltered life.

Her piece, titled almost flippantly, "I Can Quit if I Want To: Can You?" essentially argued that even though women, herself included, went on and on about how unfair it is that women still get paid less than men for doing the same work, they shouldn't complain. Because ultimately, if things got too hard at the workplace, women, unlike men could just..QUIT..and pursue their dreams. Poor men, she argued, couldn't, and so perhaps they deserved the bigger bank accounts and paychecks after all.

Thanks. All we need is another hollow justification for wage gaps and glass ceilings for women. Yet another knife in the back for women, from another woman.

Anyway, I was seething, and so wrote a scathing response to the newspaper. They actually printed it, although it's so watered down I'm not sure it's worth it.

For what it's worth, here is my response, the un-edited version.
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I refer to the article by Tee Hun Ching in Life!, dated 4/9/06, titled “I Can Quit if I want to. Can you?”

It was disappointing and ironic to read that despite Ms Tee’s indignation at her new male colleagues already nipping at her heels in salary terms, she simultaneously attempts to justify glass ceilings and wage gaps for women. In her opinion, while women may ‘carp about wage gaps and glass ceilings’, and life may seem unfair, when the going gets tough, women, unlike men, can just throw in the towel – a good reason therefore that men’s bank accounts should be better fed since they do not appear to have that same option.

With all due respect to Ms Tee, her argument contains assumptions that are naïve at best, and disparaging to both women and men at worst.

First, the suggestion that women should earn less because, unlike men, they can choose to work or not, is simply preposterous. Women do not have it as easy as Ms Tee’s article seems to suggest - free to pursue their dreams as and when they wish, while poor men must prioritise earning a living, leaving their dreams to sputter by the wayside.

Millions of women around the world, and including in Singapore, struggle everyday to make ends meet to support their families. Ask your question to the single mother struggling to ensure her children can go to school, or the young woman supporting her elderly parents, or the mother who must return to fulltime employment immediately after her baby is born because one income in her household just isn’t enough to get by? Or how about the scores of women migrant workers toiling in foreign countries to send money home to support large extended families? Your question insults all these women, for whom opting out of the workforce simply because things are not going well is not only unthinkable but often also a matter of life or death for the people who depend on them.

And ask them if gender wage gaps shouldn’t matter, if women should earn less than men despite performing the same work? The obvious answer – no – is contradicted by the reality of the situation, and those affected are too often powerless to do anything about it. Women with high-paying jobs and affluent lifestyles at least have the luxury of debating this issue without having to tighten their belts. For many others, the majority I would argue, wage discrimination adversely affects their daily lives.

Second, the idea that men must toil because they have to, while women do so only if they want to, diminishes the crucial contributions that women make to the social, economic and political life of societies, nations, countries. Suggesting that women participate only because they feel like it undervalues the scale and power of their involvement in the labour market. Further, suggesting that women work only because they want to also presupposes that, personal resources aside, they have someone around, maybe a parent or more likely a spouse, to foot the bill. If we women should be so lucky. And frankly, why should we? Last time I checked, we were in 2006 not 1955. We have moved on from the archaic notion of man as the sole provider. Thankfully, modern families increasingly function as partnerships between men and women, where caring and providing for the family are seen as shared responsibilities rather than prescribed duties of one or the other based on stereotyped notions of gender roles. The family decision-making that may allow or necessitate a woman to stop working or switch to part-time work should also apply to her spouse.

Third, it is my view that a man is no less capable of running a household and caring for children than a woman. If society continues to brand men who choose to stop working to stay at home with the kids unambitious, irresponsible wimps, then I applaud all the men who have the strength of character to challenge this stereotype. Caring for the family is not a job relegated only to the weak while the powerful are the ones out earning the bucks.

Finally, much progress has been made in the last 5 decades in moving towards gender equality. It is views like Ms Tee’s however, that sadly, have a regressive effect. Equal pay for equal work is recognized as a basic right of citizens in modern, democratic nations, regardless of their gender, race, religion or political affiliation. And yet, worldwide, as is rightly pointed out, women continue, on average, to earn a third less than men for performing the same work.

We need to stop pretending and acknowledge discrimination for what it is – by any other name, it would smell as bad. No woman chooses or deserves to earn less than a man for performing the same work. And no woman chooses or deserves to hit a glass ceiling in her career just because of her gender. The choices that we make are dependent on resources, abilities, capacities, timing and opportunities, and not on whether we are male or female. A merit-based society such as Singapore must uphold the principle of equal pay for equal work – to do any less would be to discount the value of half its citizenry.

THE END.