{"id":53011,"date":"2021-02-25T08:46:20","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T08:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=166655"},"modified":"2021-02-25T08:46:20","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T08:46:20","slug":"nomadland-the-impact-of-gender-bias-in-wages-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/25\/nomadland-the-impact-of-gender-bias-in-wages-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Nomadland: The Impact of Gender-Bias in Wages"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n

Still from Nomadland.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you grew up agitated that \u201cwomen earn 59 cents on the dollar,\u201d for the same work as men, there\u2019s a movie for you.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the new film, Nomadland<\/em><\/a>, one of the characters tells Fern, the lead character played beautifully by Frances McDormand: \u201cMy social security check is $550.  How am I supposed to survive?\u201d<\/p>\n

In a film that is destined to win many accolades for McDormand and director Chloe Zhao, it\u2019s important to appreciate the context of the individual stories \u2013and the deep reporting that brought it to light.<\/p>\n

When I first read Jessica Bruder\u2019s work of non-fiction narrative, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> I told everyone I knew to read it.<\/p>\n

As a work of nonfiction reporting, it opened up a whole world of people who described themselves as \u201chouseless, but not homeless.\u201d  Like Matthew Desmond\u2019s book Evicted<\/em><\/a>, Bruder brought human faces to the statistics that sociologists puzzle over.  What is the real impact of a life-time of unequal wages for women \u2013and therefore lower Social Security payouts?  How do elders, especially women, economically survive losing a home, a spouse, a community?<\/p>\n

Nomadland<\/em> powerfully depicts both emotional loss and the economic upheaval \u2013and the skills people bring to survival.<\/p>\n

It is true that the gender wage gap has slowly narrowed over the decades.  The gap is still an unacceptable 82 cents on the dollar<\/a>.  But what about the women who earned 59 cents on the dollar for much of their work careers \u2013and are now retired or approaching retirement?  Or the women who took time away from the workforce to have and raise children, a job that is both uncompensated and, still, overwhelmingly held by moms<\/a>, not dads?<\/p>\n

As I wrote for the blog at Project Twist-It<\/a> \u2013about \u201creimagining how we talk about poverty\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

For example, why do women retire with significantly lower Social Security benefits, after a lifetime of gender prejudiced earnings? I just read Jessicah Bruder\u2019s terrific book Nomadland<\/a>, about elders who lose or give up their housing and live in mobile homes and vans and do seasonable as \u201cworkampers\u201d at national parks, Amazon warehouses and beet harvests. Many of them are women with monthly social security checks of less than $700. If these women had been paid the same amount over their lifetimes as their male cohorts, they wouldn\u2019t be in the same circumstances.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A friend of mine from Arizona said that after reading Nomadland,<\/em> she never looked at another van or mobile home camp the same.  \u201cI always thought these were snowbird retirees looking for some sunshine,\u201d she told me.  \u201cI didn\u2019t appreciate that for some of them, these were their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bruder spent three-years living<\/a> with the nomads in her own van, documenting their vibrant community of the road, including the mutual aid and kinship networks \u2013alongside the loneliness and precariousness.  She accompanied her subjects as they worked the seasonal jobs \u2013 campground hosting at national and state parks, the beet harvest, seasonal gigs at Amazon warehouses, working 12 hour shifts in 70-year old bodies.<\/p>\n

Many of these people would say they made a choice, that they choose the mobile life over the settled life. Most probably knew some aspect of a middle class life, but have the experience of being castaway, disposable workers in the Great Recession.  Most but not all are white, taking advantage of the fact that they can travel the blue line highways and Walmart parking lots without the fear of racial terror.<\/p>\n

Bruder was an advisor on the film<\/a> \u2013and without her insights, there would be no Nomadland<\/em>.  Common advice is you should read the book before the movie.  But in this case the movie is so good, maybe it opens hearts and minds to another set of often invisible stories of people struggling in an unjust economic system.<\/p>\n

Watch the movie.  Then read the book.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Still from Nomadland. If you grew up agitated that \u201cwomen earn 59 cents on the dollar,\u201d for the same work as men, there\u2019s a movie for you. At\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":295,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53011"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53012,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53011\/revisions\/53012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}