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Equal Pay for Equal Work? What do the Ten-Year-Olds Say?

© Lea Moore

I went to the Relay For Life last night, to support my husband's team and to visit with friends. While I sat talking with a teacher from his school, the topic turned to what I do for a living and the trails faced by women in the world of business.

My partner in coversation is the teacher for the gifted students in the school and she told me of a discussion the class had regarding professional athletes. I found myself fascinated by the things that children notice in this century.

As a child of eight or ten I never would have dreamed of worrying about how much money my family made or how much I would make when I grew up to be...well we change our minds a hundred times, don't we. But the world is changing. Along with those changes comes a change in the way our children veiw the world and the things that interest them.

This teacher informed me that, during a discussion about professional athletes in regard to the economy, one of the girls in her class asked her why female athletes make so much less money than the male athletes do. This little girl wanted to know why women in sports couldn't earn the six figure income the male athletes were earning. (The average male professional athlete earns over $100,000 annually while the average female athlete earns less the $40,000.)

At a loss for what to tell them, and the reasoning behind it the discussion turned to the price of hotdogs ($5.00+) and soda pop ($3.00+) once a person has paid a minimum of $15.00 just to get through the gates to watch the game.

Our athletes "work" an average of 6-7 months out of the year and 5-7 hours a day, including preseason and post-season games, matches, meets, etc. In exchange for those few months, they are paid handsomely (or not so handomely if they just happen to have the "disadvantage" of being born female).

The average working-class person, on the other hand, works yearround with a couple of weeks off for vacation and maybe a personal day or two, along with between 9 and 11 holidays per year. In return for their dedication, loyalty, dependability and joyous licking of the boot of their superiors, they are finely rewarded with a take-home pay of somewhere around $500-$600 a week. That is, if you are male.

As much as we in America would like to think that we are on the cutting edge of social advancement, it surely is a shame when a 10-year-old notices that the women in our society are paid so much less than the men for performing the same tasks and working the same number of hours.