New Zealand YWCA ad for equal pay

Shoe’s on the other foot now, huh? When you consider it perfectly acceptable to pay women less than men for identical jobs, why shouldn’t we also charge men more for identical services? Yes, it’s insane to charge someone more because they have a penis. Of course it is. So is giving women less money for the same job just because they don’t.

This ad from the Auckland YWCA for the New Zealand equal pay act is bloody brilliant. I can’t think of a proper rebuttal. I can’t think it’d be anything but political suicide to fight against such progress. I also have no idea about the gender politics or the political playing field in New Zealand, so the ad and the bill could fall completely flat. But this is framing we should damn well import the next time the evidence shows women make less than men even here, even now, even with measures attempting to correct that imbalance.

Via Copyranter.

(Also, inb4 “stop promoting a Christian organization“.)

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New Zealand YWCA ad for equal pay
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3 thoughts on “New Zealand YWCA ad for equal pay

  1. 2

    I really wish that cis feminists would stop equating penis with men. Aside from the cissexism and what Tabby Lavalamp said, it seems like it might be effective.

  2. 3

    @Tabby Lavalamp: So, what I get from those is that *most* of the discrimination in product and service cost results from gendered products that are ‘for women’ being more expensive (more elaborate hair styles – I know from experience that if one is a man with long hair who wants a woman’s style, one will pay the woman’s price, more-elaborately-adorned clothing, *possibly* more-perfumed cosmetic products, arguably-justified health insurance premium discrepancies – women tend to live longer with more health problems in later years, while men tend to die more suddenly at younger ages, though I think the entire concept of insurance is flawed, etc.), while some does still result from direct discrimination (loans, automobile costs, etc.). Solving the first problem requires people to stop buying in to gendered product divisions (after all, men buying the more expensive ‘women’s’ deodorant or blouse or getting a ‘woman’s’ hair styling – I know this one from experience – still pay more) and just get the cheaper one. The problem isn’t that some products or services are more expensive than others, the problem is that those products and services are gender-coded at all, such that women ‘have to’ (or ‘are subject to coercive social norms that pressure them to’) buy the more expensive ones. It is entirely possible to refuse to entertain that divide, though it will be more- or less-easy to do so (have more- or less-severe consequences) depending on how tolerant of gender-norm-deviant performativities one’s particular cultural spaces are (for example, in my circles, DIY buzzed hair for a woman instead of an expensive salon styling may actually be a boon to employment prospects, though I know it may be a major hindrance elsewhere). We need legislation to address the second, though it’s on the books in a lot of places and just needs to actually be enforced.

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