Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--And What to Do About It [Hardcover]

Evelyn Murphy (Author), E.J. Graff (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 27, 2005

Are you (or a woman you love) being cheated out of 33 percent of your earnings?

If you're a woman, over your working lifetime you will lose between $700,000 and $2 million -- simply because of your sex. Is that fair? No. Can it be stopped? Absolutely.

The wage gap is a steady drain on the daily lives of women and our families. Rarely do we step back and add up what's missing -- better medical treatment, child care, housing, food, or retirement savings that women could have afforded if they were paid as well as men.

"Getting Even" exposes the discrepancy between what women and men make -- and how it affects us all. It reveals that the wage gap is not going away on its own. And it explains how to close the wage gap -- and, finally, get women even.

In this intelligently argued and startling book, Evelyn Murphy, Ph.D., humanizes the numbers through real-life stories and a wealth of data that has never before been examined. She shows how the wage gap pinches the daily lives of families throughout the country, at every economic level and in every industry. And she explains why, even though women have more opportunities than their mothers did, the wage gap persists: The American workplace still harbors an astonishing amount of discrimination, including blatant as well as complex hidden barriers, unspoken assumptions, unexamined attitudes, and habitual ways of behaving.

But Murphy also brings good news: The wage gap can be closed. Having served as an economist, politician, public official, and corporate officer, she has a 360-degree view of the problem -- and of the solution.

In a book that will explode into public debate, Murphy issues the indictment, rouses us to action --and tells us exactly how to get even.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

More than 40 years after the Civil Rights Act prohibited gender bias in the workplace, women are still earning almost 25% less than comparably employed men. For Murphy, the reason why is obvious: persistent unintentional, and sometimes even intentional, discrimination. "Today's conventional wisdom about what causes the gender wage gap ignores anything that happens behind employers' doors," Murphy, who has a doctorate in economics and is a former lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, points out. To open those doors, she examined scores of recent lawsuits, which provided her with more than 200 pages worth of stories and statistics guaranteed to convince even the most satisfied working woman that on-the-job discrimination is "still with us, and it's not going away on its own." Murphy, with the help of Graff, a senior correspondent for the American Prospect, analyzes five types of discrimination--"blatant sex discrimination, sexual harassment, workplace sex segregation, everyday discrimination and discrimination against mothers"--and calculates that, over a lifetime, each working woman loses between $700,000 and $2 million because of them--that means less money for bills, homes, investments and retirement plans. As an antidote, the book's last third offers detailed case studies of MIT, Mitsubishi and the state of Minnesota, working sites that, under pressure, implemented large-scale changes to address inequities. Murphy gives readers the tools and the inspiration they'll need to tackle individual discrimination issues without necessarily going to court, but her goal is obviously larger than that. As the president of the WAGE Project, she aims to rile the public at large into action so that the wage gap can be closed, for good, in the next 10 years.
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Review

"[Getting Even]...calls for nothing short of another American revolution that enlists the public, top executives, and men as well as women in the cause of fairness."

-- The Boston Globe --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone (September 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074325466X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743254663
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,719,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good treatment of a complex issue. A bit too peppy., December 11, 2006

By 

Gagewyn (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--And What to Do About It (Hardcover)

As a jumping off point I want to say that the comments by previous reviewer William Wentworth suggest to me that he stopped reading the book very early. Wentworth explains away the wage gap as being tied to women working shorter hours and (incorrectly) says that Murphy missed this. In chapters other than the first one, Murphy goes on to analyze that women are paid less because they work fewer hours, but that women work fewer hour because of having more housework and childcare responsibilities. She goes through case studies of women who after having children were pushed toward shorter hours by their employers. We have different expectations for men and women as a society and we tend to push men into roles that are entirely compensated while we push women into roles that are uncompensated. That means men have more money than women. Also as Murphy points out, even at the same number of hours women get paid less, and a partial cause for that is that loosing a bit of experience early on in a career by taking time off or on part-time has repurcussions later. The wage gap is a complex issue, and Murphy is describing it in such a way that an average person without so much background in this area can grasp the situation. She does a good job at hitting many many facets of the problem without oversimplifying.

For me the biggest flaw here was that Murphy relies heavily on case studies of the women she interviewed. These demonstrate discrimination that was sometimes subtle and sometimes suprisingly blatant. At the same time, one can always find a case study to prove anything. Murphy has statistics too, but that isn't what she tends to rely on. Another flaw was that Murphy is really pushing her solution to the wage gap. The solution is basically advice to women in the workforce on what each can do. These are geared towards different positions in the company. I'm not saying it's a bad solution. I'm a pessimist and she's really peppy about that solution. It's good advice, but I roll my eyes at the suggestion of a three chapter panacea.

This is a very good intuitive approach to the subject. Likely many women should read it (men too, although the subject isn't so close to home). It deals with complex issues, and describes them in an understandable way. These issues are carefully chosen to make a big picture. This is probably the easiest read on this topic that I have found which still had me surprised and thinking.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read For Any Working Woman, January 8, 2010

By 

K. Hutchinson "Kate Hutchinson" (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--And What to Do About It (Paperback)

I got this book as a free giveaway at a women's gym I used to attend, and I let it languish for a few months before I actually read it. Once I started, though, I couldn't put it down. Murphy categorically examines the ways in which women are short-changed, from mommy tracking to outright harassment. The stories she tells are strangely familiar, either because you've either experienced them yourself, or know someone who has.

The best part of this book is the last section, with action ideas for women on how to combat getting even. There are plenty of books that explore the wage gap, but this is the best one I know of, because it tells women what to do about it.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shocking and Necessary, August 22, 2006

By 

J. Friedman (Medford, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--And What to Do About It (Hardcover)

It's hard to believe that companies and individuals can still get away with this extraordinarily misogynist behavior, but Murphy and Graff have done the legwork and the math to prove not only that they do, but how they do it and how we can begin to put an end to it. This book should be mandatory reading for anyone who is or loves a woman or girl and believes that women should be treated with basic human decency (and paid that way, too).