“We Just Keep Short-Changing Women”: Same Job, Same Size Budget Equals Less Pay For Women
Hey, married men – wake up! Your working wives are getting shorted on pay and that means your family has less money than it should.
A new report on pay, made public today by Guidestar USA proves discrimination against women is pervasive.
The new report compares men and women with the same positions at similarly sized nonprofit enterprises, so the fact that women often work in lower-paid occupations such as waitressing, retail and clerical work is irrelevant in this study.
While women who become waitresses or retail clerks should expect to make less than lawyers and executives, there is no reason that women executives and lawyers should make less than men doing the same jobs — but they do.
Men holding the top spot at nonprofits averaged between 10 percent and a third more than women in the same jobs, Guidestar found.
In general, the bigger the organization and the bigger the job responsibilities, the greater the gap between what women and men are paid — and the greater the share of top jobs held by men.
Guidestar is a nonprofit organization that compiles data reported to the IRS, and the public, by all nonprofits. The 2010 data cover not just charities that solicit donations, but trade organizations, small mutual insurance operations and social welfare organizations among the 29 types of nonprofits authorized by Congress.
This is Guidestar’s 12th annual Nonprofit Compensation Report and it draws on disclosures by more than 77,000 nonprofits.
The report used names to determine sex. Androgynous names like Pat or Chris were excluded from the analysis, Charles McLean, Guidestar’s research director, told me.
At small nonprofits, those with an annual budget of less than $250,000, men in the top job averaged $53,389. That is 10 percent more than the $45,038 paid to women.
More than half of these small nonprofits, 57 percent, were led by women.
At the top, these gaps grew to chasms.
Among organizations with budgets of $50 million or more, men in the top job averaged $644,375. That is almost a third more than the $488,249 average for women CEOs.
Even more telling, women held just 1 in 6 of the CEO jobs at the biggest nonprofits.
The only CEOs who made more than $1 million a year on average were men at $50 million-plus nonprofits who, at the 90th percentile, averaged almost $1.2 million, compared to less than $924,000 for women at the same percentile of pay.
The pattern is pretty much the same for the top legal and finance jobs at nonprofits. However, pay disparities are smaller for public relations.
The same pattern of men dominating in the highest-paid jobs is found in the latest ORS data on wages reported on income tax returns.
Among people with wages of $10 million or more, just one in 29 was a woman. These 60 highly paid women workers averaged $18.8 million in wages in 2010, IRS data shows.
Men accounted for more than 96 percent of all top wage earners. The 1,664 men were paid on average $20.1 million or almost 7 percent more than the highest-paid women workers, the IRS data shows.
The IRS data also shows that as workers get older, the pay disparities between men and women increase. Among workers under age 26, the average pay of men was $16,000 in 2010, just 22 percent more than women of the same age.
But for workers ages 45 to 60, men averaged about $67,000, which was 70 percent more than women, who averaged slightly less than $40,000.
This may reflect occupational choices, but it may also indicate that as time passes, the gap between what men and women make will narrow.
Guidestar gets its figures from the Form 990 tax returns that all nonprofits must file with the IRS. It then analyzes them in many ways, including pay by gender and size of organization budget.
The data is exceptionally robust because Congress micromanages nonprofit pay, a cause championed by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a Republican who is the only pig farmer in the Senate and a longtime antagonist of charities and other nonprofits.
One benefit of Grassley’s instinctive suspicion of nonprofits is that he persuaded Congress to require much more complete disclosures on what nonprofits pay than corporations. Profit-making enterprises only have to disclose what their top five executives were paid, and then only if they have publicly traded stock or bonds.
Even more significant, Congress requires rigorous and costly review of pay comparability for nonprofit leaders.
The zone of discretion for paying nonprofit executives under the laws Grassley sponsored and rules the IRS issued is exceedingly narrow, unlike the wide-open rules for profit-making corporations. For nonprofits with budgets of $5 million to $10 million, the zone of discretion is perhaps $10,000 above or below what the Guidestar and other pay studies show, compensation consultants have advised me when I sought their advice because nonprofit boards on which I volunteered assigned me to recommend the top executive’s pay.
Discrimination against women is pervasive and significant. It is also only slightly less severe than it was in Guidestar’s first pay study in 2001.
McLean, the Guidestar research director, said, “There is progress being made, but it is very slow.”
Two ways to speed up that process:
—Women who are married should make sure their spouses know how much money the family loses because of gender discrimination.
—Men should be in the forefront of demanding for equal pay for women, especially the majority of married men with a working wife.
Or we could do nothing, and just keep shortchanging women.
By: David Cay Johnson, The National Memo, September 16, 2013
“A Wingnut For Everyone”: Nowadays, Every Fringe Group Has Its Republican Politician
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is pretty much detested by women in Virginia — Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who once left his crying wife and their infant child in a car so that he could make an appearance at a fundraiser, currently leads Cuccinelli among women by 12 points — but he’s got the support of some of the men who used to be married to some of those women, according to this Washington Post story. The “fathers’ rights” movement, a small but vocal group of men fighting for deference in the divorce, child support and custody process, is firmly behind Cuccinelli. Cuccinelli has represented the former leader of a local group in a custody case, and when he was a legislator he supported the fathers’ rights policy agenda.
Cuccinelli is not specifically, openly pro-fathers’ rights (and to be clear, the No. 1 “fathers’ rights” issue is wanting to pay less child support). His support for their agenda is honestly more about his opposition to legal divorce, something else he doesn’t talk about much anymore.
“If you are sued for divorce in Virginia, there’s virtually nothing you can do to stop it,” Cuccinelli said in 2008 to the Family Foundation, a socially conservative Richmond-based advocacy group. “This law has everything to do with the breakdown of the family. The state says marriage is so unimportant that if you just separate for a few months, you can basically nullify the marriage. What we’re trying to do is essentially repeal no-fault divorce when there are children involved.”
As a state senator in 2005, Cuccinelli offered a bill that would have made it so parents initiating a no-fault divorce could have that action counted against them “when deciding custody and visitation.” The measure never came to a vote, but Cuccinelli won praise from Stephen Baskerville, then-president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, for fighting against the no-fault divorce “epidemic.”
On the one hand, banning no-fault divorce is a strange priority for a modern supposed conservative, committed rhetorically to lessening the intrusion of the state into private affairs. The notion that people ought to be able to associate (or disassociate) willingly without the interference of the government is supposed to be the core belief of these guys, I thought. But on the other hand, banning divorce does make more sense, as a policy priority, than preventing gay marriage, for people whose justification for anti-gay beliefs is a desire to make sure that the “traditional” link between marriage and child-rearing is maintained.
But whether or not Cuccinelli is personally pro-”fathers’ rights,” he has their support and has voted the way they like. He does not have a lot of company — even psycho Florida Gov. Rick Scott has vetoed legislation supported by fathers’ rights groups — but they got Cuccinelli, and he might be the next governor of Virginia.
This is truly a golden age for conservative fringe groups. No matter how obscure — or widely reviled — your pet cause is, it’s now easier than ever to find a Republican politician, often a fairly prominent one, willing to support it, or at least allow you to believe that he supports it. Republican politicians now aren’t just responsive to the desires of the big interests, like oil and gas. Nowadays a pol on the make is willing to fight for almost any crazy cause.
If you’re a “fathers’ rights” guy you have Ken Cuccinelli. If you’re a neo-Confederate you have the Paul family. If you’re a hardcore goldbug, you have, well, the Pauls again, but also sometimes most of the rest of the party, it seems like. If you love dogfighting, you have Steve King. If you’re the government of Georgia you have John McCain, though it’ll cost you. (If you’re the government of Malaysia you have whatever conservative pundits you can afford.)
The hardcore Shariah-fearing Islamophobes have their stalwart allies. The Austrian economists are made to feel welcome by major GOP figures. A party that can make room in its tent for the pro-dogfighting lobby has room for any white person with a crazy grievance. And if it weren’t for the fact that most of what these people want is terrible, this would almost be admirable. Because on the other side, the Democrats barely ever listen to some of the biggest and most “mainstream” elements of their political coalition, like the labor movement and environmentalists. The Republicans indulge everyone, which surely makes being a crazy conservative feel much more satisfying. Unfortunately it also generally leads to horrible laws.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, August 29, 2013
“Now Is The Time, Still”: The Invisible Issues Of 1963 Are Just As Invisible To Some Today
“So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., August 28, 1963
This is “tomorrow.”
Meaning that unknowable future whose unknowable difficulties Martin Luther King invoked half a century ago when he told America about his dream. If you could somehow magically bring him here, that tomorrow would likely seem miraculous to him, faced as he was with a time when segregation, police brutality, employment discrimination and voter suppression were widely and openly practiced.
Here in tomorrow, after all, the president is black. The business mogul is black. The movie star is black. The sports icon is black. The reporter, the scholar, the lawyer, the teacher, the doctor… all of them are black. And King might think for a moment that he was wrong about tomorrow and its troubles.
It would not take long for him to see the grimy truth beneath the shiny surface, to learn that the perpetual suspect is also black. As are the indigent woman, the dropout, the fatherless child, the suppressed voter and the boy lying dead in the grass with candy and iced tea in his pocket.
King would see that for all the progress we have made, we live in a time of proud ignorance and moral cowardice wherein some white people — not all — smugly but incorrectly pronounce all racial problems solved. More galling, it is an era of such cognitive incoherence that conservatives — acolytes of the ideology against which King struggled all his life — now routinely claim ownership of his movement and kinship with his cause.
When he was under fire for questioning the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for instance, Senator Rand Paul wanted it known that he’d have marched with King had he been of age. And he probably believes that.
But what people like Paul fail to grasp is that the issues against which African-Americans railed in 1963 were just as invisible to some of us back then as the issues of 2013 are to some of us right now. They did not see the evil of police brutality in ’63 any more than some of us can see the evil of mass incarceration now. They did not see how poll taxes rigged democracy against black people then any more than some of us can see how Voter ID laws do the same thing now.
So there’s fake courage in saying, “I would have been with Martin then.” Especially while ignoring issues that would press Martin now.
No, being there took — and still takes — real courage, beginning with the courage to do what some of us are too cowardly, hateful, stubborn or stupid to do: see what is right in front of your face.
Because when Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream,” he was not, contrary to what some of us seem to believe, calling people to co-sign some vague, airy vision of eventual utopia. No, he was calling people to work, work until “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” This was not a sermon about the someday and the eventual. “Now is the time,” said King repeatedly. So it was. And so it is.
We live in King’s “tomorrow” and what he preached in that great rolling baritone at the temple of Lincoln 50 summers ago ought to inspire us anew in this post-Trayvon, post-Jena 6, post-Voting Rights Act, post-birther nonsense era. It ought to make us organize, agitate, educate and work with fresh determination. It ought to challenge you to ask yourself: What have you chosen not to see? And now, having seen it, what will you do to make it right?
Because, we face tomorrows of our own.
Thankfully, we move into them with the same elusive hope — and towering dream — of which King spoke, the one that has always driven African-American people even in the valley of deepest despair.
Free at last!
Free. At last.
By: Leonard Pitts Jr., The National Memo, August 26, 2013
“Orange Is The New Black”: It’s Time To End The Needless Social Harm Our Justice System Inflicts
America is facing up to one of its greatest failures: our grossly unfair criminal justice system.
In and out of the public eye, corrections officials, legislatures and law enforcement authorities have been inching toward reforming it.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced a historic about-face on how low-level, nonviolent drug crimes will be prosecuted; in particular, he instructed U.S. attorneys to avoid bringing charges against certain offenders that would trigger severe federal mandatory sentencing. If allowed to go forward, Holder’s gambit could lead to significant reductions in the number of people locked up in America.
The U.S. holds the distinction of the world’s highest incarceration rate. One in every 100 adults — 2.3 million people — was behind bars in 2010, according to the Pew Center on the States.
Holder’s announcement is the obvious follow-up to the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act. The legislation sought to correct the inequities between the sentencing of people caught with crack cocaine and those convicted of crimes related to powdered coke. Five grams of crack, the form of cocaine more likely to be in the possession of African-Americans, carried the same obligatory sentence as that triggered by 500 grams of powder, the preference for many white people.
An ongoing issue is whether the legislation will apply retroactively, something that both Congress and the courts are weighing.
A July report by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that about half the states have taken significant steps in recent years to reduce the size of their prison populations, thereby cutting costs to taxpayers. Reforms such as alternative sentencing and lower mandatory sentences for some crimes all played a role.
Also this summer, the Federal Communications Commission voted to lower interstate prison phone rates. This change helps the families of more than 2 million inmates who often paid predatory rates when their incarcerated loved ones called them. The decision was more than 10 years in the making and will greatly affect the ability of families to stay in touch, crucial for reducing recidivism.
While these changes are encouraging, reshaping America’s prisons and our punitive mentality will not be easy. What is the human cost of our penchant for revenge, our emphasis on punishment without much attention to the equal need for rehabilitation? Just consider the newest Muppet introduced by the Sesame Workshop. “Alex,” whose story appears online only, is a character whose father is serving time.
Alex was introduced for a good reason. One in 28 children has a parent who is imprisoned. More than half of America’s prisoners are mothers and fathers with a child under the age of 18. And two-thirds of those parents are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses.
Consider that deeply. It’s the equivalent of nearly one child from every elementary school classroom in America. Twenty-five years ago, the number was 1 in 125.
Are people really that much more criminally minded than in the past? Or did America decide that locking people up would be more expedient than providing addiction treatment and mental health care and increasing the supervision of those on parole?
It’s not a tough question. And after years of policy that financed the war on drugs, more thoughtful considerations are finally gaining traction.
The fact that violent crime rates are at near generational lows helps. Cutting some sentences, providing more support for low-level offenders, can save on the high cost of prisons for taxpayers, without compromising public safety.
And don’t tell me that this is being “soft on crime.” Those involved in violent and repeat offenses will still have the book thrown at them.
The more the public learns about how mandatory sentencing needlessly degrades nonviolent drug offenders and harms their families, the sooner our legislators will restore sanity and mercy to the criminal justice system. So bravo to Netflix for creating the new series Orange is the New Black. Yes, it’s another “insider’s view” of life behind bars, a genre we can’t get enough of. It conveys the experiences of an educated, well-to-do woman used as a pawn in the drug trade, based on a memoir.
Kudos also to Piper Kerman, the memoir’s author and the one who experienced 11 months in a low-security women’s prison for a drug crime, who is also speaking out about the children of inmates.
She’s using her newfound celebrity to promote alternative, in-home sentencing for some mothers with small children. As she wrote in The New York Times, this program would not only save money but also “rehabilitate women … (and) keep families together — which we know is an effective way to reduce crime and to stop a cycle that can condemn entire families to the penal system.”
And that, more than ever, needs to be our priority.
By: Mary Sanchez, The National Memo, August 20, 2013
“I See Egg People Everywhere”: Rand Paul’s Anti-Abortion Extremism Disqualifies Him as a Libertarian
These days, it’s very Washington-chic to debate Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul’s viability as a presidential candidate. But despite what Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says – and despite the near-constant use of the word by the media – Rand Paul isn’t a libertarian.
Rand Paul is against my civil liberties, and those of every woman in America. He believes big government should be making our most private, personal decisions for us. Rand Paul is not only anti-choice, he embraces “personhood,” the far end of the extremist spectrum on opposing reproductive rights.
I’m tired of (mostly male) reporters and pundits calling Paul a libertarian because women’s civil rights are somehow a second tier issue. If you believe that, perhaps you can have a chat with Ken Buck – or the guy who beat him, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, who’s now head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
As a senator, Paul has introduced the Life at Conception Act, which codifies the notion of “personhood” into federal law.
“Personhood” is a fringe movement that would give full legal and constitutional rights to fertilized eggs under the law. It would outlaw abortion in all cases, even for victims of rape or incest. It would outlaw many forms of hormonal contraception and IUDs, and limit emergency contraception and in vitro fertilization.
That’s not a limited-government libertarian. It’s the opposite in fact. It’s government both big enough and small enough to fit in your lady-parts and in the room with you and your doctor.
When he introduced the bill in March, Paul said in a statement, “The Life at Conception Act legislatively declares what most Americans believe and what science has long known – that human life begins at the moment of conception, and therefore is entitled to legal protection from that point forward. The right to life is guaranteed to all Americans in the Declaration of Independence and ensuring this is upheld is the Constitutional duty of all Members of Congress.”
Thanks to Rand Paul and his ilk, I see Egg People everywhere. But silliness aside, personhood is a toxic issue in swing states like Colorado for elected officials and those who aspire to be. As a veteran of the two personhood ballot measures – which both failed by landslide margins – I can tell you politicians embrace it at their peril and were running away from it in 2012. Colorado voters are inherently allergic to having government tell them what to do.
There’s nothing libertarian about Rand Paul. He’s a standard-issue right wing extremist with a few opinions outside the Republican platform on military issues. That doesn’t make him cute, and that doesn’t make him acceptable to women voters or any voter with a belief in civil rights and civil liberties.
Call Paul a non-interventionist if you like. Call him an anti-internationalist or opposed to defense spending. But do not call him a libertarian, because he’s not one.
By: Laura Chapin, U. S. News and World Report, July 29, 2013
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