The gender pay gap is complicated. Luckily @HMReilly & @elizareilly_ have a solution #LeaveAt343 ⏰ #GrowingUpGracefully pic.twitter.com/omaMswFI40
— ABC TV Australia (@ABCTV) August 10, 2017
The Australian TV show Growing up Gracefully recently shared a musical number, “Leave at 3:43,” which jokingly suggests that women should be “fucking off and going home” early, since they’re not getting paid for that time relative to men anyway.
“3:43!” they sing, “All us bitches should leave work at 3:43 / ‘Cause time is money, and money is time / And since I’m being paid for 84% of mine, then / We’re fucking off and going home / At 3:43!”
This video is quite white, and it doesn’t touch on the ways that most women of color suffer more from the wage gap than white women. Australia is admittedly a whiter country than the United States, and the government’s own Gender Equity Insights report doesn’t even tackle the statistics by race, so it’s possible the numbers were trickier to find. But women of color in Australia – especially Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women – still face significantly higher income disparities. A video which took the time to highlight specific professions definitely should have taken the time to mention the racial wage gap, as well.
That said, I love how catchy this song is, how it pairs aggressive language like “fucking off” with the faux-cheeriness of a musical number, and how it acknowledges the unpaid, under-recognized domestic labor that millions of women perform, with no one to worry about their working conditions. “And stay-at-home mums? Just kidding! You work for free!”
I’ll definitely be humming this one to myself at work.
(Via Ms. Magazine; image via screengrab)
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