From: hahn@sunshine.labs.tek.COM (Doug Hahn)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: relation between decreasing wages, increasing proportion of women workers
Date: 9 Oct 92 15:58:42 GMT
Article-I.D.: sunshine.9210081625.AA13014

I remember a discussion about a magazine article (I can retrieve
specifics given an interest) between me and a friend about the
average wages of fundraisers.

According to the article, the average wage was decreasing while those
of top fundraisers was increasing (don't remember if it was faster
than CPI though).   The interesting correlation was that fundraising
was formerly an almost all-male profession, and now only the
highest-paid ones are male--the trend has reversed and now the ranks
of fundraisers are almost all women, especially the newer ones.

Now, a little plain-old common sense explains what is going on.  Those
high-paid males at the top are the ones who have had mucho experience
(hence the male preponderance), while a large influx of women who want
to go into fundraising that has in general increased worker/avail jobs
ratio, driving down wages, especially for the less experienced
fundraisers.

However, as a friend to someone who wants to do fundraising, this is
really bogus!  The way I see it, there are just too many people who are
willing to work for what are really substandard wages, just because they
want to do that particular job.  And I'm not talking about a low-skill
job like sweeping streets, but one that takes a lot of dedication,
skill and training.  So basically people like my friend, who need to
earn their own living, can't really do the career they want.

I know a similar situation exists in the social work field (which also
has a high percentage of women workers).  However, as far as I know,
nursing was never this bad and it also has a high percentage of women
in it.

So here are some questions for thought.  If you post, please do
suppose you have some great insight to every question (though maybe
you do); I think more people would read
your ideas if it concentrated on just a couple of related ones.

If the low wages are simply because of the influx of new workers,
  1. why are so many of the new workers women?
  2. why do they accept wages that are poverty level (or less)?
  3. if 2) is because they have such strong feeling that this career
     is right for them, then why do more women than men feel this way?
  4. is the fact that more families are two-worker families related?
  5. has anyone seen any survey on what percentage of these low-pay
     workers feel that their low wages are a form of "charity"?
  6. if 5) is a high percentage, then why do more women than men feel
     this way?
  7. how long does it take for economic trends like this to reverse?
  8. what can people do (besides not take these jobs)?  Unionize?

If the low wages are in part because many social work/fundraising jobs
are in the non-profit sector,
  1. why are so many of the people working in non-profit sector women?
     are they? (sure is my impression).
  2. why do non-profits pay their people so little (I know several
     answers to this, but I am too close to the field to get a handle
     of what average people think (ignoring the fact that my readers
     are not representative).
  3. are non-profits paying their people less and less?
  4. if 3), why?  how could it change?
  5. If you answer 2-5, would the response be appropriate for soc.feminism?

If the low wages are in part because the majority of workers are
women,
  1. why are these jobs different than say, electrical engineering,
     where there is no gender differential for new college-grads just
     entering the market?  (there is somewhat for more experienced
     workers--see IEEE salary survey).
  2. are these jobs which juggle better around child-care? ie. are
     the women involved part-time workers who are also caretakers of
     young children? (personally, I don't think so, but...)
  3. If 2 is true, then does this mean all jobs where many workers are
     part-time will have declining wages because parents who maybe a
     decade ago would have stayed with the child has now joined the
     workforce (and at least now, most of these parents are women)?
  4. how could this trend be fought?  Unionization?

-- Doug

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