Hillary Clinton's Equal Pay Tweet Is Patronizing

Tuesday morning, Hillary Clinton’s campaign tweeted out information about her own plan for closing the gender wage gap, complete with the following caption:

“Donald Trump’s equal pay plan for women: ‘You’re gonna make the same if you do as good a job.’”

OMG. Horrifying!

Oh, wait . . . isn’t making the same amount of money for doing the same job the absolute definition of equal pay?

Yes. Yes it is. So what the hell is the problem?

First of all, to be fair, let me say that I do reject the idea that every woman out there who isn’t making as much as a man with the same job is just simply not doing as good of a job as he is. Although studies do show that gender discrimination is not the main factor contributing to the wage gap, it should also be obvious to anyone with eyes and ears that sexism does exist in our society, and it would be foolish to assume that women never face it in terms of wages. What’s more, as a libertarian, I’d also question just how Donald Trump would be able to guarantee that women are “gonna make the same if you do as good a job” without unconstitutionally interfering in the private dealings of private businesses. That said, I also think it’s fair to assume that this concern was not why big-government Hillary Clinton’s campaign had a problem with Trump’s statement.

Now, if you click on the link in the tweet, the campaign does provide some statistics as “proof” that Donald Trump would be a disaster in terms of equal pay. For example: His campaign pays women less than men. That could be fair criticism — if Clinton Foundation leadership hadn’t had a gender pay gap so large that campaign staff was worried about journalists noticing it, and if, during her time as Secretary of State, Clinton didn’t pay women 72 cents for every dollar it paid men, according to a report by Washington Free Beacon.

But the most shocking thing about this tweet isn’t even the hypocrisy of the statistics in the accompanying release. It’s that the campaign actually shared Trump’s “you’re gonna make the same if you do as good a job” as if it were some kind of damagingly sexist statement.

Again, you can argue that “you’re gonna make the same if you do as good a job” is hardly a plan to address the issue, and you can also argue that perhaps it isn’t the government’s job to be making these kinds of plans at all. But to consider that statement itself to be objectionable? Well, that I just can’t understand.

#related#Trump is saying he wants women to make the same amount of money as men for doing the same work. How is that a bad thing? Ideologically speaking, that seems to me like the perfect goal. If that isn’t what women should want, then what should it be? More pay for doing work that isn’t as good? A “just because you’re a woman” bonus? Giving excessive special treatment to women simply because they’re women seems more patronizing than “feminist” to me, but the fact that Clinton’s campaign was so triggered by the “you’re gonna make the same if you do as good a job” quote seems to suggest it advocates precisely that.