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Melissa Tyler
Melissa is an adventure seeker, AEMT First Responder/teacher, writer of Midwife Of the Wild Frontier, and Mom to three rad girls, three alpacas, three goats, two cats, one dog, and lots of chickens.

Women Don’t Deserve to Be Paid As Much As Men

I mean, just look at what the data shows us. 

According to Pew research, these stats have not changed much in two decades.

Women Don't Deserve to Be Paid As Much As Men

(source)

In fact, during COVID I sat in on my Girls Zoom Young Women’s lesson where a guest speaker told of her experience at work where she was frustrated that a man, who had less experience on a job than she, was getting paid more than her. She wrestled with her feelings of discontentment and concluded that those feelings were coming from Satan, therefore her desire to be paid more or at least equally was wrong and of the devil. She didn’t asked for a raise or bring up her concern. She must have concluded that women don’t deserve to be paid as much as men…right?

September 18th has been established as International Equal Pay Day by the United Nations in an effort to bring attention to the gender wage gap.

If you live in Belgium, Congratulations! You live in a country with the most equal pay with a wage gap rate of 1.1%. However, if you live in South Korea, your wage gap rests at 31.2%. And these are the countries that have committed to “democracy and market based economies that want to develop policies and standards to promote sustainable economic growth.” Therefore, the countries that don’t fit these parameters, well, may not be working toward equal pay among all humans…due to more pressing issues.

Bringing the magnifying glass closer to the headquarters of our shared theological roots (if you are or ever have been Mormon), we can examine how our women fair in relation to equal pay in Utah. Amy Allebest in her Podcast Breaking Down Patriarchy, focused our glass on the issue nicely.

Can you guess where Utah stands against other states in relation to gender equity in the United States? Drumroll please……..number……50!! Last, dead last. But don’t worry, when it comes to the pay gap Utah rests around 45th or 47th, says Susan Madsen (founder of A Bolder Way Forward). Sorry Wyoming, Alabama, and …sniff…New Hampshire, you’re worse.

Why do I point Utah out? Well, besides being the epicenter of where all church decisions are made, its lawmakers are by large majority members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Utah’s laws are a reflection of what this church’s leaders and lawmaking members think of any gender other than male.

Reading what it’s like to teach seminary for the church, also points to this fact. Found here as well. Women are undervalued and underpaid or not even paid in jobs that are presented as callings. I say women in this case, because the majority of paid seminary teachers are men, and the unpaid callings are, in my experience, reserved for women. Women shouldn’t be paid working mothers, but no problem with unpaid service.

Salt Lake Community College in an article written from their slcc.pressbooks.pub sums this up well:

“Without exception, women in every developed and undeveloped country in the world suffer from higher rates of poverty than men. Women are not paid for doing work—cleaning, childcare, senior care, shopping, cooking, laundry, bookkeeping—associated with their own household. This category of domestic work is not commodified as an economic activity, which severely devalues the financial worth of the woman and the services she provides. This devaluation, in turn, negatively affects how women are perceived as contributors to society. In short, women are expected to work for free and, at the same time, are categorized as social freeloaders.”

I volunteered to clean a multi stake girls camp nestled in the Wasatch Mountains this summer. Large groups of volunteers were directed by a woman, who for the last five years had been coming up once a week, all year round, with more frequent trips during the summer months, to manage the camp and its paid employees.

(queue the record scratching…).

“What? You manage a large group of camp employees that are paid and you are not?”

This is only normal in the LDS church (we pride ourself on not paying volunteers…not counting the top 15 men in our church that get a large living stipend on top of their retirements- $120, 000 is not modest and these men have already had their careers). Our church can hide discrimination when it’s masked as sacrifice, service, or “Gods will”. We feel guilty to want pay. Besides, didn’t we promise in the temple to sacrifice everything?! Even to the point of giving our lives for the cause?

This leaves room for abuse and manipulation of our people….of our women.

Point is, the church plays well into the gender pay gap, especially as women age…the gap grows.

So what is to be done? I am preaching to the choir on this issue to be sure. I thought at first that it was perhaps that we women don’t ask for raises as much as men (note the example I gave above), but this article proves that idea to the contrary. Woman ask, but are less likely to get a raise than when a man asks.

The other thought was this, “Men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100% of them.” Women are also willing to accept a job for less pay than a man.

So perhaps the more we know, the more brave and sure we become in trying to close the gap for ourselves. I recently emailed my employer for a raise. I had my husband proof read the email, to which he commented that it wasn’t worded strong enough. I however, was worried about coming off as an abrasive woman and did not want to play into a negative stereotype I had of how people view working women. Luckily I got the raise. I hope you do too. I am rooting for you.

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Melissa is an adventure seeker, AEMT First Responder/teacher, writer of Midwife Of the Wild Frontier, and Mom to three rad girls, three alpacas, three goats, two cats, one dog, and lots of chickens.

7 Responses

  1. I remember reading a job ad years ago that specifically said, “if meet at least 70% of the qualifications listed, please apply for the job.” I was so impressed with that explicit acknowledgement that not everyone knows that’s an option and for this org (s/o to The Washington Post) giving permission for people who might be second-guessing, which all the studies show are more likely to be from more marginalized groups.

    Also, that woman and her feelings being from Satan? That was funny … and so horrifying I don’t think I can mentally process it.

  2. I get it about the woman believing that her feelings of wanting more money for her job are from Satan. I work in LDS publishing as a free lance editor and it is constantly in the back of my mind that doing this for money is “priestcraft” – straight out of the Book of Mormon that getting money for giving spiritual guidance is from Satan. And greed and pride and … and … But obviously the authors published by Deseret Book are getting money for their spiritual advice books, and DB itself is financially well-off. So yes, I should be fairly compensated for my time and effort, it’s helping support my family, my skills have value … But I have to talk myself through this every. single. day.

  3. I think that more to the point is that the current system doesn’t want to “pay women” in terms of money, status, authority, respect, or equality. They would rather work through “a male covering” or coverture.

    When my oldest was getting baptized, the leadership wanted to “work through my husband” to relay logistical information to me. That decision as far as I am concerned is a traumatic disaster.

    I learned that at the system level, any authorization given to me in the family to act as the authorized agent is functionally rejected because of my XX chromosome and that I may be benignly rejected or just downright contested against.

      1. At the baptism, the master key to the cabinet holding the font key was a logistical detail I was supposed to account for. The Primary President caught wind of me not having a clue I was supposed to arrange for the key, and 4 different parties were contacted searching for the blasted thing before the ward clerk (not the leader I was working with) brought it. The local leader wanted to blame me (or not accept any blame) for the logistical nightmare that was.

        Words were exchanged between the local leader and myself the next Sunday I saw him. I do not remember the catalyst (whether I talked to him first or he talked to me first) – but I remember understanding that he was “blaming me” for how it went down and I was like, “H.E double-hockey sticks No”.

        I totally channeled Mrs. Rachel Lyde the bossy, helpful neighbor from “Anne of Green Gables” from that point on.

        I had asked specifically to be contacted about any logistical updates I needed in getting the baptism arranged.
        He freely admitted emailing my husband and was expecting my husband to tell me rather then emailing me at the same time (or in a different email) about the logistics. He thought that “was good enough”.

        I gave him the extended bombastic side eye and was like, “From a practical perspective – you know how the church works. The women get stuff done. You know better then to entrust husbands with logistical information if you actually want to get the thing done.”.

        [Apologies to any male rebels who handle the executive functioning for your family and your calling and all this type of planning – I appreciate you (and the idea of you) even if I don’t know you]. I also suspect that you would have “mourned with me” over it.

        The conversation ended and we haven’t actually talked since then – and it’s been years.

  4. “This devaluation, in turn, negatively affects how women are perceived as contributors to society. In short, women are expected to work for free and, at the same time, are categorized as social freeloaders.” That quote is a gut punch. Hit the nail on the head with this post, Melissa.

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