Start Date: April 27, 2022

In the 1970’s the actress Mary Tyler Moore had a TV sitcom show which was deemed a social breakthrough because her character, Mary Richards, was a 30 year old single woman working in a news room at a time when most women beyond their 20’s were likely to be home raising children.  Even Mary, the character, had been in a long-term relationship that was meant to lead to marriage. But when her gentleman was still unwilling to commit after years, she picked up and moved to Minneapolis to make a new life.

While the comedy program was in no way strident it took gentle and humorous takes on cultural issues of the day, one of which was pay inequality.  In one episode Mary was going through some financial records at the office and learns that her male predecessor was paid $50/week more than she was earning.  That was a not at all negligible sum of money in 1971. She asks her beloved boss, Mr. Grant, if there was a difference in duties or performance.  He reassures her that, if anything, she does a better job than the man who came before.

She very squeamishly, and agonizingly, asks if the predecessor was paid more because he was a man. To which he, Mr. Grant, calmly and cheerfully replies, “Of course”.  In shock she explains that “You can’t do that”.  The live audience laughs heartily understanding her objection. The boss then explains that the man had a wife and children to support, whereas she was just a single woman. In fact those who followed the show know that Mary lived in a studio apartment and slept on a sofa bed. Obviously the man needed more money. How could she not see the logic?

She withdraws and then returns, again with audience recognition of the rebuttal.  She claims that paying someone based on need would require paying men with three kids more than men with two kids, men with a child more than the man with a stay at home wife, but no child.  She was clear that “You don’t do that” and in fact the station did not. She insisted that you pay someone for the job they perform not for the cost of their household.

it was obvious. This kind of approach had held women from from advancement for time immemorial. It begat the civil rights issue of the day: equal pay for equal work. Lifestyle be damned. So the argument of pay for value added to the organization, at least as an ideal,  is something we supposedly resolved decades ago.

Yet a 21st century progressive would reframe Mr. Grant’s argument as nothing more than the modern concept of “the living wage”.  While it may have the benevolent intent of some minimum wage, it can have the follow-on effect of rising the “cost of living” and ergo generate a vicious cycle harming low income people who have the least discretionary income to pay for someone else’s wage package. 

But the overarching and inherent flaw is that if you pay people for their life choices and lifestyle, your “progress” is not “Back to the Future” but, in fact, “Forward to the Past” where  equal pay for equal work will be only a memory and women like Mary will toil on as associate producer, making less than the men with families. “Progress?”, I think not.