Women don't even
want equal pay, according to Michigan Republican Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land. Speaking in 2010,
Land argued, in fabulously dismissive, condescending tones:
"Well we all like to be paid more and that's great, but the reality is that women have a different lifestyle. They have kids, they have to take them to get, you know, dentist appointments, doctors appointments, all those kinds of things and they're more interested in flexibility in a job than pay."
Apparently men don't have kids. Women reproduce by themselves. And if a man should by some bizarre accident obtain a child, that child doesn't need to go to the dentist or doctor. Women, on the other hand, can eat and be sheltered by flexibility. Give a woman enough flexibility as her income and she'll live in a palace, dining on dishes forged of shining gold flexibility.
It must be nice living in whatever dimension Land is describing, but here in the real world, it almost sounds like she's explaining that one way women are disadvantaged in the economy—the expectation that they will take on the vast majority of family responsibilities in addition to working—is a solid justification for continuing another way women are disadvantaged in the economy—unequal pay. Her way of thinking works if all women and children are supported by a man with a middle-class (or above) income and women aren't looking to have their work outside the home respected or valued like men's work. Last I looked, though, neither of those things was true. Land may be describing the reality among a certain subset of very privileged women, but if she wants to represent all the women in Michigan, she maybe should talk to a few women who have to work if their families are going to be clothed and fed, or to a few women who just plain want to be treated—and paid—like the men at their jobs are treated and paid.