Double standards on singles court
Women have long sought equal pay for equal work. Which is fair. But actually the work can fall well short of equal.
My experience with female executives has been a consistent trend of working shorter hours than their male counterparts and rushing off home to be mum while their subordinates are left to do the hard graft, meet the tight deadline and make them look good. During the day, too, plenty of family crises involving leaving early, taking an extra hour at lunchtime or every other call being a personal one of an afternoon. And the impact of the boss not giving 110% (or maybe even 80) can be profound. Because it’s just ‘the way things are’ you might not notice that much. But consider the male executive who, say, has an affair. And everyone in the office knows his mind isn’t properly on his work, and is directly impacted by that. Well that level of performance degradation can be the norm for a female exec struggling to balance work and home life.
For men, it’s the elephant in the room, but for women, such observations are often seen as sexist. Well positive discrimination is still discrimination – in this case against men. While seldom stated so categorically, this reality isn’t lost on the business world, which tends not to pay the eighty percenters as much.
On the tennis court, women now get equal prize money to the men. But they play a maximum of 3 sets instead of 5! Do women run half marathons instead of full ones? No. There’s no earthly reason I can see that a professional female player couldn’t manage a 5-setter if they needed to. In fact, to assume they can’t seems insulting – a relic attitude of the Victorian era.
The conclusion of the Australian Open last weekend nicely illustrates the disparity for the spectator. The results were greatly affected by the amount of court time each player had had. In the men’s draw, Roger Federer got to the final by beating Tsonga, who’d just got through two 5-setters back-to-back, while Andy Murray had fended off Cilic in a 4-setter. (Federer had narrowly averted a 5-setter in the quarter finals against Davydenko.) These epic battles colour the men’s game and lend significance to the final victory. Be honest – how many unforgettable women’s finals have there been?
In the women’s draw, both Serena Williams and Justine Henin picked up places in the final from 2-set matches. Williams had played one 3-setter in the 6 previous rounds and Henin 2. Their other matches were all just two sets. Williams struggles in long matches. Under men’s singles scoring, as she and Henin had one set apiece, the third set wouldn’t have been enough to get her the silverware and things would have started getting interesting.
In total, Williams played 15 sets during the tournament and Henin 16. Federer and Murray each played 22. So the girls played just 70% as many sets as the boys. Yet Williams and Federer each walk away with $2.1m. Doesn’t sound very fair to me.
*ducks for cover*
Image, right: AP
I don't know if I agree about the executive example. Many men also leave during the day for anything from child emergencies to haircuts to long lunches.
However, that's really unimportant to the main point you're making. What you're saying is that there should be equal pay for equal work, something that feminists in the true sense of the word have been striving for for years.
In a way, it is sexist to assume that the women tennis players would somehow faint, collapse or have hysterics if they were asked to play 5 set matches. It would make the game more interesting, increase gender equality and longer games would equate to more advertising revenue. A good idea all around.
Thanks, Julia. That’s true, and there are individual managers of either gender who don’t pull their weight. And probably male ones are more likely to use their senior status to take ridiculously long lunch breaks, etc. But when it comes down to the serious stuff, like some big contract that needs finalizing, I think males are more likely to work long hours to finish it – because they have more flexibility with their time. That’s not fair, of course, but it’s reality.
Glad you like the idea, and thanks for taking the time to reply so articulately. And for not lynching me. :p
Totally agree with the tennis situation. No way is a three set match equal to a five set match (not that many five set matches actually get played and are only the norm in the Grand Slam events. Most other tennis tournaments are best of three for both men and women.
As for the executive scenario, most of the executive women I know, including myself, work longer hours than their male counterparts (with adancing age I try now to stick to a 10 hour day). I recently tried to encourage a young male accountant to "stay late" and the most I could get out of him was 30 minutes. Personal phone calls - hmmmmmm - not sure where you have been working, but men on their mobiles out in the corridor seem to be the norm - or worse, out in the street - the mistress perhaps?
I remember back to when I was a young 2IC and took an "urgent" call during an absence of my boss - it was his wife desperately wanting him to come home because the budgie had died and she needed him to solve the situation for the children.
Definitely in support of equal pay for equal work - but yes, it does have to be equal. More than happy to see some of the men I've worked with over the years take a pay cut for working less hours and being less productive when they were there! Browsing Facebook or Tweeting from the iPhone is NOT work, even if you are at your desk. Then working late to "catch up" doesn't count, sorry!
Apologies for the delay in publishing - your comments didn't get into the RSS feed I use to check pending comments for some reason; happened to spot them amongst the spam.
I was referring, in my observations about female executives, to those with families. I felt that such phrases as 'rushing off home to be mum' made that clear. Nevertheless, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to clarify that from the outset. I've also had experience working with female executives without children or whose kids have grown up, and they've typically worked very long hours.
Executives don't typically have to sneak around in order to make personal calls, and they all do it. But the nature of a mother taking a personal call regarding her children is often that her protective nature asserts itself and everything else becomes of secondary importance. She might go out at short notice to attend to them, or have an intense string of calls regarding a troubled teen.
Of course these are one person's observations, and the workforce may be overflowing with SNAG male execs who willingly take on all those inevitable unplanned issues that come up for parents.
A counterpoint to the above: quantity is not the same as quality. Female execs with families realise the above and work hard to make the time they do put in count. (In a system of merit-based promotion this is probably going to have been how they got through to this position.) This focus can help in a 'wood for the trees' kind of way.
Nevertheless, the total effort they're putting in isn't 100%. Or put another way, they're giving 100% and the execs without young families really are putting in 110%!