Posted on 04/15/2014 7:54:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
President Barack Obama and his feminist friends have been trotting out their tiresome slogan that women are paid only 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. Every reputable scholar who has commented has proved that this is a notorious falsehood that anyone should be embarrassed to use.
U.S. law calls for equal pay for equal work, but the feminist slogan is not based on equal work. Women work fewer hours per day, per week, per year. They spend fewer years as full-time workers outside the home, avoid jobs that require overtime, and choose jobs with flexibility to take time off for personal reasons. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, men are twice as likely as women to work more than 40 hours a week.
Women place a much higher value on pleasant working conditions: a clean, comfortable, air-conditioned office with congenial co-workers. Men, on the other hand, are more willing to endure unpleasant working conditions to earn higher pay, doing dirty, dangerous outside work. In 2012, men suffered 92 percent of work-related deaths.
If a man is supporting his family, at the peak of his career, he often works longer hours to maximize his earnings. By contrast, a successful woman who reaches a high rank in her career is more likely to reduce her working hours.
All these reasons for women voluntarily choosing lower pay are now beyond dispute among those who have looked at the facts. But even those explanations for the alleged pay "gap" are still only part of the story.
Perhaps an even more important reason for women's lower pay is the choices women make in their personal lives, such as having children. Women with children earn less, but childless women earn about the same as men.
Another fact is the influence of hypergamy, which means that women typically choose a mate (husband or boyfriend) who earns more than she does. Men don't have the same preference for a higher-earning mate.
While women prefer to HAVE a higher-earning partner, men generally prefer to BE the higher-earning partner in a relationship. This simple but profound difference between the sexes has powerful consequences for the so-called pay gap.
Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate.
Obviously, I'm not saying women won't date or marry a lower-earning men, only that they probably prefer not to. If a higher-earning man is not available, many women are more likely not to marry at all.
In colleges, there are no gender separations in courses of study, and students can freely choose their majors. There are no male and female math classes. But women generally choose college courses that pay less in the labor market.
Those are the choices that women themselves make. Those choices contribute to the pay gap, just as much as the choice of a job with flexible hours and pleasant working conditions.
The pay gap between men and women is not all bad because it helps to promote and sustain marriages. Since husband and wife generally pool their incomes into a single economic unit, what really matters is the combined family income, not the pay gap between them.
In two segments of our population, the pay gap has virtually ceased to exist. In the African-American community and in the millennial generation (ages 18 to 32), women earn about the same as men, if not more.
It just so happens that those are the two segments of our population in which the rate of marriage has fallen the most. Fifty years ago, about 80 percent of Americans were married by age 30; today, less than 50 percent are.
Just a coincidence? I think not. The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.
The real economic story of the past 30 years is that women's pay has effectively risen to virtual parity, but men's pay has stagnated and thousands of well-paid blue-collar jobs have been shipped to low-wage countries. Nobody should be surprised that the marriage rate has fallen, the age of first marriage has risen, and marriage, in general, has become more unstable.
Some ladies do have a great temperament for working with the computer gear. They tend to be harder to hassle.
That guy looks like a candidate for a heart attack.
Has he gone for his first Obamacare checkup yet?
And somehow, “Wichita Linewoman” wouldn’t be the same.
Please.....
Women enter the jobs arena with a permanent and distinct ‘favored status' advantage. A woman will always be hired (whether qualified or experienced or NOT) in ANY job where a qualified man can do the same job.
Example: I have been in the same place for 13 years.... no man has EVER even been considered for the many positions which have been available, here.
There is not a single male (and there never WILL be) in this office.
Yeah, looks so chubby that he ought to be riding a Clydesdale, not the horse shown in that picture. Almost as chubby as yours truly.
So you’re a smarty lady?
It's all about power, not about virtue. Power is the ultimate dis-equalizer.
Power for the sake of what, though.
Power for the sake of God, great.
Power for the sake of self, not so great.
Just tax males 13% more than females and transgenders.
Problem solved.
It’s easy. All you have to do is “think” like a ‘rat.
Good news for you then, Michelle Obama will be opening her new Fitness and healthy living cable channel in 2017.
Since by then Obamacare will fine you for being overweight.
And they'd be right.
And....you're correct: "I am a non-gender specific person who services the Power Lines for the Coun-teee" just doesn't have a good ring to it. :-)
Oops!
I meant to tax males 23% more.
Sorry, I was trying to “think” like a lib.
I guess so :)
The pay of an employee, should be between employer and employee, only.
If the repubs had half a brain, they would turn this whole paycheck fairness on it’s ear.
How fair is it for woman and men to have to work until late April just to pay their taxes?
And all the while, those that pass these tax laws live like courtesans in pre revolution France.
And what happened to them?
smarty pant(yhose)
Yup... when the wolf is at the door, it seems petty to fret over the cockroaches.
All new hires are slotted into the appropriate titles and pay grades based on their skill sets and experience. There is no separate "women's pay grade" and "men's pay grade" for any given job title. The notion that there would be is silly and ridiculous and no company would ever attempt something like that as they would get terrible PR and would likely be litigated out of existence.
I love Phyllis Schlafly, but this is really the same old arguments again.
Often the real situation is that women have been at the job longer and actually do it better than the men making the higher salary. Women are often disparaged for being good at the unimportant detail work, but in some jobs this work is important and the men are more slapdash and careless.
To repeat myself a bit from another thread, I think our emphasis in countering this phony “war on women” stuff should not be the so-called conservative “women belong at home anyway” argument, or anything getting close to it, but the truly conservative argument that it is none of the government’s business what criteria people use in hiring and determining salaries.
If we stick to the economic, free-market principles we are supposed to stand for, we might make better headway against this divisive tactic.
Because really, when you think about it, the only way to solve it the way the Dems want us to solve it is for companies to publish all their salaries. That is nobody’s business but theirs.
That would not be a solution in their eyes. What they want is for everybody to be paid by (ergo, working for) the government, which, by right and definition, should be themselves. Any measure short of this is just a speed bump on the way to the real destination.
They don't believe in such things as a "free market" or "private business", and as long as they have their way, there certainly won't be.
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