Dancing on the Glass Ceiling
Has anyone else noticed this trend?
I went to Club Sound (“Where a kid can be a kid!”) last weekend, and noticed that a large percentage of the gay men there were wearing hard hats. Strange, I know. Earlier this week I attended QUAC and noticed that most of the swimmers were also wearing hard hats. Yeah, kind of weird. As if that wasn’t unusual enough, last night I attended my monthly meeting of Gay Men Against Hard Hats and sure enough, a hard hat covered the head of every Tom, Dick and Karen (who’s just one operation from becoming Harry).
What’s the deal, why are so many gay men wearing hard hats? Is it because a recent study was released claiming that gay men hit a glass ceiling in the workplace, not earning as much as their straight counterparts? Furthermore, is it obnoxious for me to use a very long setup involving hard hats, simply so that I can make one joke about hitting a glass ceiling? The answer to both questions is yes.
The recent study in the Journal of Labor Research to which I refer, titled “Sexual Orientation and Labor Market Discrimination,” comes to us from the wonderful researchers at the University of New Hampshire Whittemore School of Business and Economics, home of the Live Free or Die Wildcats. In the study, researchers spent two years dissecting data from the 2004 U.S. census, determining how the income of homosexual men and women compared to that of heterosexual men and women. What researchers found was that homosexual men earned considerably less than heterosexual men – 23% less on average. In other words, a glass ceiling only looks good on the top floor of a penthouse – and even that looks tacky.
Not as surprising, is that the findings also reveal most of the bias is found in blue-collar jobs. Said researcher Bruce Elmslie, professor of economics at the University of New Hampshire, “It was surprising to see how consistent it was that gay men tended to be more discriminated against in traditionally heterosexual male dominated professions – blue collar, labor, and management too.” What was also interesting about the study was the fact that despite the blatant income discrimination felt by gay men, lesbian women were not found to be as discriminated against. Continued Elmslie, “Employers could reasonably infer that a lesbian applicant or current employee will have a stronger attachment to the labor force than will a heterosexual woman.” As they summarized in the report, gay men may be from Mars, but lesbian women aren’t discriminated against on Venus.
Why is the reasoning for this? Why do gay men make less money than straight men? The study suggests several reasons for this, such as “employers disapproving of gay lifestyles,” “concern that customers would not want to interact with gay men,” and “most gay men who face discrimination in the workplace have failed to notice their employer is Ann Coulter.” Gay men, like other minorities, often have to fight an uphill battle simply to receive the same respect that so many others take for granted. Why do we stand for this? Are there steps we can take to remedy such a problem? I assume that even Banana Republic, my former employer, must owe me at least six or seven bucks in backpay.
Here are a few steps we can take to avoid such income discrimination:
1.) Embezzle.
2.) Sue.
3.) Sleep with the straight-but-curious boss, then blackmail him.
Ok, that’s about as far as I got. Short of a Desperate Housewives plotline, I clearly have no suggestions on how to overcome such income discrimination. Regardless, aren’t there steps that gay men and women everywhere can take to ensure we’re paid on the same level as our straight counterparts? Perhaps not. Studies have proven that tall people make more money; studies have proven that white people make more money; studies have proven that men make more money; therefore, shouldn’t it come as no surprise then that straight people make more money?
Maybe we can’t change the rules of the game – even if tall white straight men are clearly passing Go and collecting an extra $200 when no one is looking. If anything though, perhaps we can learn from the short non-white women who have come before us – is it any wonder why most gay men are infatuated with Oprah? Like the Oprahs before us, gay men can’t change the rules – so we’ll simply perform better at the game. I would be willing to bet that Bruce Bastian, a gay man whose net worth at one time was estimated to be $1.1 billion, doesn’t concern himself with such rules.
The rules of the income discriminatory game may be unfair, but there’s no reason we can’t perform better than our straight peers and overcome the glass ceiling.
Cause really, hard hats don’t look good on anyone.
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