Most people agree that women make roughly 70% less than men. But the proponents of identity politics do not tell you how that number is calculated.
Over the past eight years, the gender wage gap has been a major focusing point for the Obama Administration, and it’s a favorite claim of leftists in general. The argument goes that women take home 77 cents for every dollar that a man earns in the labor market.
The evidence most often cited is simply the fact that we do tend to see men in positions of power, in politics, boardrooms, stem fields, and professions with high-risk profiles. But they fail to look beyond the surface and the specious claims that go with it.
In 2014, the topic caught the attention of the Obama White House when a reporter asked about an American Enterprise Institute study which revealed that the administration paid female staffers just 88% of the salaries their male counterparts were making. Why, the questioner asks, does the Obama Administration- which is always trumpeting ‘progressive’ values- fail to meet the standard of gender equality when it comes to their payrolls?
The White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, was quick to answer in the same way that serious critics respond to the wage gap claim in general. He explained that it was because of the life choices that female White House staffers tend to take, which tend to include more time with family, maternity leave, and a sharper focus on endeavors outside of the workplace.
Considering the fact that all serious economists who touch on the wage gap topic make the exact same claim. But they do not stop at the payrolls at the White House. These experts will explain that because of women’s stronger attachment to children and other tendencies that are fairly stable in large numbers of women and men that women across the board tend to make choices that cause them to gravitate toward 23% lower paying jobs.
Women put in 7% fewer hours than men in the workplace, studies show. They are less willing to accept travel obligations for work, less likely to work overtime, and are more averse to risk in the workplace. For all of these reasons, most respectable economists contend, women’s choices tend to lead them away from the top percentile of the highest paying jobs.
Academic feminists will argue that without exception, there are inhibiting factors like “invisible barriers” and “internalized oppression” keeping women from achieving the same pay as men. These, of course, are usually markedly career-oriented women who are unusual in their desire to avoid traditional female roles. They assume that because most women choose to orient their activities around home and family- or jobs that reflect these values- they are being forced into these roles.
They will cite the fact that while there are many women working as physicians and care providers alongside men that even there, women are paid on average 23% less than men for the same work. What they won’t tell you is that a significant number of these professional women choose specialties that pay less than the medical specialties men choose. A woman doctor is more likely to go into obstetrics, for example, whereas a male doctor is more likely to go into Invasive Cardiology.
On a separate occasion, Betsey Stevenson of the Obama White House Economic Council, when pressed on the gender wage gap made the same argument- but she insisted that the factors of women’s choice only apply to women working at the White House. She seemed to contend that women outside the White House are both more oppressed and less family oriented than women working inside the White House. A very strange claim indeed.
Of course, what you never hear from proponents of the gender wage gap is that 92% of work-related deaths are suffered by men. They never tell you that grueling, dangerous, and unpleasant jobs are staffed almost entirely by men. You will never hear a feminist calling for equal employment in garbage sanitation, or coal mining. Women are not clamoring for these jobs, in the same way that they are not pushing their ways to the tops of bitterly competitive business leadership roles.
Finally, it’s interesting to consider that if it was legal illegal for employers to pay women less than men for the same work, men wouldn’t stand a chance. They would be fired and replaced by lower wage women. But that isn’t happening, and that is why the gender pay gap is false.
Regards,
Ethan Warrick
Editor
Wealth Authority
