By Selwyn Duke

Hillary Clinton recently scored political points talking about that infamous wage gap between the sexes.  This inspired Carey Roberts — a writer who mainly focuses on issues relating to feminism — to pen a piece exploring the notion that this gap is attributable to discrimination.  Roberts makes an excellent point as one of his opening salvos:

Let’s say you have a job opening and two persons apply who
have identical skills and qualifications. Joe wants to be paid the prevailing
wage, while Jackie says she is willing to work for only 77 cents on the dollar.

Who would you hire? Jackie, of course.

So if women are doing exactly the same work as men and getting paid 23% less,
every profit-maximizing entrepreneur would hire only women. But last I heard,
men are still getting jobs. Obviously there’s something wrong with the gender [I must mention that it’s a mistake to use the word "gender"; this piece explains why]
wage gap theory.

This is just common sense, yet we still have to explain the statistic that women earn only 77 cents to a man’s dollar.  Common sense suffices here as well; however, there are other statistics that complete the picture.  I’ve written about this myself, but I’ll let a woman, journalist Carrie Lukas (yes, today is a Carey/rie day), carry this ball.  She writes in "A Bargain At 77 Cents To a Dollar":

In truth, I’m the cause of the wage gap — I and hundreds of
thousands of women like me. I have a good education and have worked
full time for 10 years. Yet throughout my career, I’ve made things
other than money a priority. I chose to work in the nonprofit world
because I find it fulfilling. I sought out a specialty and employer
that seemed best suited to balancing my work and family life. When I
had my daughter, I took time off and then opted to stay home full time
and telecommute. I’m not making as much money as I could, but I’m
compensated by having the best working arrangement I could hope for.

Women
make similar trade-offs all the time. Surveys have shown for years that
women tend to place a higher priority on flexibility and personal
fulfillment than do men, who focus more on pay. Women tend to avoid
jobs that require travel or relocation, and they take more time off and
spend fewer hours in the office than men do. Men disproportionately
take on the dirtiest, most dangerous and depressing jobs.

And here’s just one relevant statistic: As far as people with MBAs go, just 1 in 20 men decide to work only part-time, versus 1 in 3 women. 

Does this really surprise anyone?  If we’re even slightly observant, we have probably noticed this pattern ourselves.  For instance, I can think of a couple I know that fits this mold; both spouses have the same training and career (making them an ideal example), but the man earns far more.  Why?  He has become the primary breadwinner, while she decided early on to work only part time and avoid more onerous  duties, which, in their field, is where the majority of the money lies.

In other words, most of the statistics the left bandies about are either false or at least deceptive, in that they’re not placed in perspective and thus cause people to draw the wrong conclusions.  And when you draw the wrong conclusions, you tend to embrace the wrong policy.

This is why, insofar as workplace wage discrimination exists, it mainly redounds negatively upon men.   I warned years ago that the perpetuation of the lie that women suffered wage discrimination would lead to policies that visited same upon men, as an effort to fix what isn’t broken often breaks what didn’t need fixing.  Well, Roberts provides an example of this very phenomenon:

Female physicists are getting $6,500 more. Co-eds who
majored in petroleum engineering are being offered $4,400 more. And women
computer programmers are being enticed with $7,200 extra pay. In fact for
dozens of majors and occupations, women coming out of college are getting
better offers than men, reveals Warren Farrell in his book, Why Men Earn
More.

Why these disparities? Because in traditionally male-dominated professions,
employers are willing to ante up more greenbacks to attract females in order to
forestall a costly discrimination lawsuit.

And this problem will only get worse.  The mainstream
media aims to perpetuate the wage-gap lie, and, as we continue to try to
balance scales that were already balanced, the result will be an increasing
imbalance hurting sons, brothers and husbands — and the women who will rely on
some of them to be the primary breadwinner.

Unfortunately, the divide-and-conquer strategy of playing groups against each
other and encouraging a victim mentality works like  a charm.  It
works with the races — and with the sexes.  And leftist demagogues
execute it masterfully.

               
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