gills_et_all-third_wave_feminism_a_critical_exploration

Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake 15
This data reveals the feminisation of poverty. It also reveals a blind spot in
standard feminist analysis of women’s wages. According to the United States
Congress Joint Committee on Taxation, 90 per cent of American families
make less than $100,000 a year, and, according to Bernie Sander, the annual
income per person in the US is $28,553. This makes the $25,000–30,000
category – in which women’s and men’s wages are largely equal – very close
to the national average. However, feminist analyses of these numbers often
emphasise the fact that men comprise the vast majority of top wage earners,
despite the fact that the majority of women are not ‘topped’ in this particular
manner. For example, Rory Dicker and Alison Piepmeier refer to the data
that ‘97.3 percent of top earners are men’ to help make their valid point that
there is still very much a need for feminism today (6). Yet, as is characteristic
of much feminist work on the gender wage gap, they fail to mention the
situation of men who are not ‘top earners,’ and the relatively equal wages of
men and women at lower income levels. If feminist analysis is truly differentiated
for class, it becomes clear that for the majority of American women,
especially in post-boomer generations, there is more gender parity in terms
of wages except for the richest ten per cent of the population.
Even Newsweek has emphasised the fact that, increasingly, women earn
more of the family income. Peg Tyre and Daniel McGinn note that women
who make more money than men is ‘a trend we had better get used to’ (45).
In 2001, in 30.7 per cent of married households with a working wife, the
wife’s earnings exceeded the husband’s (ibid., 45). A 2002 report from the US
Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that women now make up 46.5 per cent
of the labour force. However, the highest debt-to-income ratio in history
undermines real wages and the progress that many women have made
(Casper 4). 2 People coming of age after the baby-boom generation have
attained middle-class status only with both women and men in the labour
market working longer hours; setting up dual or multiple income homes;
going into debt; postponing marriage and children; and/or having fewer
children (Casper 3–5). In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,
Barbara Ehrenreich pointed out that, according to the Economic Policy
Institute, the living wage for one adult and two children is $30,000 a year
(213). But 60 per cent of American workers earn less than the $14 hourly
wage that this standard of living requires. The economic situation may look
better in terms of gender equality, but in terms of overall economic well-being,
the situation is worse for both women and men with the exception, again,
of the very top wage earners.
Third wave feminist thinking, then, is informed by the fact that the
majority of young Americans have experienced relative gender equality in
the context of economic downward mobility. It has also been shaped by the
racial and ethnic diversity of post-boomer generations. According to the 2000
US census, non-Hispanic whites account for 73 per cent of baby boomers
and an even larger proportion of older Americans, but they account for only