Free Republic

Many progressives today insist that gender is fluid and that American law should abolish any distinctions between the sexes. Yet, ironically, many of these same people point to overly simplistic statistics derived from binary male-female categories to claim that women are the victims of wage discrimination and to demand more regulation, more government monitoring, and many, many more lawsuits. Surely, such a binary approach to categorizing workers and comparing wages is woefully outdated in our new woke world! According to progressive activists, sexism is the reason that the average woman earns only about 80 cents for every dollar earned by...

A federal judge threw out the unequal pay claim by players on the U.S. women’s national soccer team in a surprising loss for the defending World Cup champions but allowed their allegation of discriminatory working conditions to go to trial. Players led by Alex Morgan sued in March 2019, claiming they have not been paid equally under their collective bargaining agreement to what the men’s national team receives under its labor deal. They asked for more than $66 million in damages under the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In a 32-page decision...

Before getting to the topic at hand, allow me to join the rest of the chorus in congratulating the USA women’s soccer team on winning the world cup. I neither know nor care enough about the sport of soccer (for either gender) to comment on the performance, but I’m assured it was masterful. Also, I’m always ready to cheer for a U.S. team kicking the butts of any other nation’s teams in any sport. Well done, ladies.Unfortunately, the celebrations were immediately embroiled in political disputes, and I’m not talking about the widely publicized spat between the President and one...

Gayle King’s deal negotiations at CBS are taking so long that staff now fear there’s not enough money to keep her. The star is working on a new deal to stay on “CBS This Morning.” As we revealed, she is in talks to double her current $5.5 million annual salary. And while the contract was expected to be wrapped up earlier this month, it’s still not done. A high-level source told Page Six: “It’s not like CBS News can all of a sudden find ABC or NBC money — it has to come from somewhere.”

The back-to-back bombshells of abuse allegations against New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman and President Donald Trump's decision to leave the Iran nuclear agreement dealt a tough blow today to Amy Spitalnick, who before signing on as press secretary for Schneiderman worked for nuclear deal advocate group J Street. The news that Trump would be leaving the Iran deal came just a few hours after Spitalnick had to alert reporters that her boss wouldn't be coming in to the office after he was accused by four women of nonconsensual sexual violence and resigned. Spitalnick had called Schneiderman a "proud feminist"...

If you want to empower women, stop talking about the mythical gender pay gap. ... It’s important to understand how the left is twisting numbers for political purposes, but it’s also vital to rebut the destructive message they’re sending. The subtext of Equal Pay Day is that women can’t. No matter how hard women work, no matter how smart they are, no matter their choices, women can’t earn as much as men. Try your hardest, sister, but your gender will keep you down.

The people most responsible for the much-hyped gender pay gap are women. Tuesday was Equal Pay Day, a chance for liberals to lament that women in America make only 80 cents — or 81 cents in Nevada — for every dollar a male makes. Activists say a woman has to work more than 15 months to make as much as a man did in 2017. The hyper-liberal National Partnership for Women and Families calculates this by comparing the median annual earnings of men and women working full-time. Democrats and the national mainstream media take this as proof positive that America...

A European country has become the first in the world to make it illegal to pay men more than women. In Iceland, firms that employ more than 25 people must now obtain a government certificate demonstrating pay equality, under new rules that kicked in on 1 January. Those who fail to show equality will face penalty fines, according to broadcaster Al Jazeera. The law was announced on March 8 on International Women's Day 2017 as part of the Nordic country's drive to eradicate the gender pay gap by 2022. It comes after the UK reported a 16.9% pay gap between...

A European country has become the first in the world to make it illegal to pay men more than women. In Iceland, firms that employ more than 25 people must now obtain a government certificate demonstrating pay equality, under new rules that kicked in on 1 January. Those who fail to show equality will face penalty fines, according to broadcaster Al Jazeera. The law was announced on March 8 on International Women's Day 2017 as part of the Nordic country's drive to eradicate the gender pay gap by 2022. It comes after the UK reported a 16.9% pay gap between...

The White House has halted an Obama administration rule that would require businesses to report worker pay data by gender, race and ethnic groups in hope of narrowing wage gaps among workers. The plan was announced by President Obama in early 2016 and was set to take effect early next year. But the Trump administration, siding with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others, contended that the data collection would be too burdensome for firms and questioned how effective the information might be in fighting wage discrimination. Critics of the White House move, which came in a memo from the...

Warren's women staffers earned 71 cents for each dollar earned by men in 2016 Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) spoke out on the issue of gender pay equality in a speech on Thursday without noting the equal pay shortcomings in her own senate office, where women earned a fraction of what was earned by men in 2016. In an address to liberal activists of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Warren said that she is continually reminded on Capitol Hill that she needs to push equal pay. "Boy, do they keep reminding me about this on Capitol Hill the need to...

Quite a headline, I realize, and I won't even mention the screaming conflict between her status as a celebrated Social Justice Warrior and her decision to perpetrate a racial hoax -- whether through reckless sloppiness or willful intent -- in order to advance her own career. She was never a Native American, but nevertheless, she persisted in claiming that false origin story. Until she became a tenured professor at Harvard, that is. As I've discussed at greater length elsewhere, it turns out that celebrity leftists who violate certain lefty pieties are eligible for waivers to wash away their cultural...

The global gap in earnings between men and women will not be closed for another 170 years if current trends continue, according to a new report from the World Economic Forum. The Switzerland-based forum’s annual Global Gender Gap Report, released Tuesday, lists economics and health as the most challenging disparities between men and women worldwide. […] The U.S. placed 45th in the index, down from 28th in 2015. The report cites a decline in the number of women participating in the labor force over the past year as a partial reason for the drop. However, it also notes that the...

Ten cantons have signed a new charter vowing to combat salary inequality between men and women in Switzerland. Home affairs minister Alain Berset launched the salary equality charter on Tuesday to fight against discrimination in the workplace and promote the principle of equal pay for equal work. Representatives of ten cantons and 15 communes have signed the agreement, which concerns public administration bodies and companies engaged by the public sector. […] Despite equality being enshrined in Swiss law, women on average earn between 15 and 20 percent less than their male colleagues. …

Donald Trump's eldest daughter introduced two progressive issues her father hasn't championed on the campaign trail: equal pay for women and making childcare more widely accessible. "He will fight for equal pay, equal work, and I will fight for this too, right alongside of him," Ivanka Trump said in remarks introducing the GOP presidential nominee at the Republican National Convention Thursday night. ..... < snip > ..... "As president, my father will change the labor laws that were put in place at a time when women were up a significant portion of the workforce," she said. "He will focus on...

This public service announcement is to remind you why you should vote for any Republican rather than leave the Democratic Sisterhood of Traveling Victims in power.Yesterday was Equal Pay Day: the day we celebrate yet another injustice suffered by one of the Dem’s favorite victim groups du jour: women.  Ben Shapiro explains, “women must be treated as victims… because victimhood equals virtue, and women must be granted cherished minority victimhood status.”And what better way to cherish your victims than by declaring “Equal Pay Day” to address their victimhood? Despite the fact that the pay disparity between men and women has...

Annapolis Update #4 - Outlook for Maryland Businesses There is some truly bad legislation coming through the Maryland General Assembly which will have a huge negative effect on businesses presently in the State and on businesses considering moving here. 1. HB 610 Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Act - Reauthorization has passed the House and is now in the Senate. These greenhouse gas initiatives will continue to punish conventional utility producers (coal and natural gas), forcing them to pay fines for carbon output. These fines will be passed on to the rate payers -- residential and commercial -- which will drive...

“Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is nobel, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth." "What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza. "The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very...

President Obama proposed a new rule Friday that would require every large company in America to report employees' pay based on race and gender, an effort to reduce longstanding pay inequities for women and minorities.

The Obama administration is expanding a data collection program aimed at ferreting out abuses of equal pay laws. President Barack Obama in 2014 directed the Labor Department to collect data from federal contractors about what they pay employees, sorted by gender, race and ethnicity. Obama's new proposal will cover all businesses with 100 or more employees, regardless of whether they contract with the government. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will collect the data. ...