Sometimes it seems that the feminist movement wants to confirm the sexist stereotype that women aren’t very good at complicated math. They repeat simple but misleading statistics about differences in the wages earned by men and women classified as working full time, claiming that the difference is all due to discrimination. For example, Marlo Thomas at the Huffington Post writes today (which, if you didn’t know, is Equal Pay Day):
According to the National Women’s Law Center, the vast majority of American women — working “full-time, year-round” — are still stuck in that shameful 77-cent zone. The gap, says the National Women’s Law Center, translates into “$10,622 less per year in female median earnings.” Those are real dollars that could cover real expenses — like food and school and clothes and health care and childcare.
Yet as I discuss in today’s Wall Street Journal, many other factors affect how much “full-time, year-round” workers make, such as how much time they take off during the year, how many years of experience they have, and the types of occupations they choose. And as Diana Furchtgott-Roth explains, even the categories of “full-time” and “year-round” contain a lot of variability:
And women do work less than men. The [White House report on the Status of Women] states on page 27 that “women of every educational level and at every age spend fewer weeks in the labor force a year than do men.” In addition, “on the days that they worked, employed married women age 25-54 spent less time in labor market work and work related activities than did employed married men in the same age group-7 hours and 40 minutes, compared to about 8 hours and 50 minutes.”
That’s about 5 hours fewer per week, or, in a 40-hour week, 11 percent. So, just on the basis of hours worked, women should earn 89 percent of what men earn.
Feminists who try to convince women that they earn 77 cents on the dollars for equal work are doing women a disservice. Women are better off understanding that it’s primarily decisions that they make about how much to work and what kinds of jobs to take on that will determine how much they earn.
— Carrie L. Lukas is executive director of the Independent Women’s Forum.
Women would also be well-served if they were made to understand that if there is a wage-gap, the solution to it is the open market. A business has work to be done in order to make money and remain viable, and it will seek to get that work done at the highest qualtiy and the lowest cost. Left alone, this dynamic has little to do with a employee's plumbing. And yet, laissez-faire is seldom the philosophy being championed by "feminists."
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Math is hard." - Barbie
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's hard to imagine what these geniuses think the incentive is for businesses to hire any men at all if they can pay women much less to do the same jobs.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEnvy is a poor basis for economic policy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSome businesses used to hire children before laws were passed to stop that so don't get too clever with your commentary.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't know about a wage gap universally, but there is one in my house: my wife makes more money than me. When can I protest equal pay for equal work?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAbeFroman: Most of the liberals I've talked to are convinced that businessmen are inherently evil, and that they would gladly forgoe the chance to increase their profits in order to trample on the rights of some minority group.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, perhaps I really am dumb at math, but it looks to me that even by the Furchtgott-Roth quote, there's a 12% gap from 89% to 77%. I would also suggest that - in the real world - if more women were in higher-level jobs that require more of your time and your life, they would work more, too; the issue that is for a variety of reasons - some lifestyle, some not - there are still many, many fewer women in middle-to-senior-level positions. Personally, I experience a 30-50% pay differential for unofficially working 10% less (still more than 40 hours per week, by the way) than my grade-level equivalents, and there's no sense in pretending it's "fair" or that there is anything close to a 1:1 correlation between hours worked and pay. This is attributable neither to education nor experience nor track record nor company impact nor to C-level engagement. Is it gender-related? I could make the argument, particularly by pointing to similar examples elsewhere, but that's likely not the whole story (or, I would like to think, intent). Basically, the wage gap analysis that is so often cited (on all sides of the issue) is so macro it's useless as anything other than symbolic shorthand, but that doesn't mean the issue doesn't exist.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA good friend of mine is, unfortunately, an ardent feminist. When she brings up the wage gap I always turn it around and complain that nine out of 10 people who die from work are men, more women should die at work. I'm not being serious of course but it still sends her into apoplexy every time I do it, which is the intention.
Men do more dangerous, less desirable, and more time consuming work than women and the pay reflects that. Watch Deadliest Catch and see how many women are on those crab boats. It's nasty, brutish work but at the end of the season those guys take home a heck of a paycheck.
If a woman can do the work I don't see any reason she shouldn't, and get the pay that goes along with it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is second hand, so take it for what it's worth, but... I have been told by my parents that my father's coworkers (teachers) used to complain that the female teachers, on average, made less than their male counterparts.
Of course, the pay scale was set up so your pay was determined by length of service and degree/education attained. There were no other variables. The male teachers just had typically been with the school system longer and typically did more to further their education. And, yet, somehow male teachers pay was unfairly more than female teacher pay (on average)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFinal nail into the coffin of the wage gap nonsense. As has been commented on earlier, if women really were making 77 cents on the dollar compared with men, there would be at lease SOME bright entrepreneurs hiring up all that talent to staff their all-female companies for 80 cents on the dollar. This obvious refutation of the wage gap idea doesn't even require most evil s*xist businessmen to hire women. A couple bright businesswomen would do. ;)
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse