printDistaff America’s claims of disadvantage can be easily dispelled: “If women with the same skills as men were getting only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, men would have long-since priced themselves out of the market. The fact that the wily entrepreneur doesn’t ditch men in favor of women suggests that different abilities and experience are at work, rather than a conspiracy to suppress women.” [“Barack Against The Boys“] Yet the White House has preferred to perpetrate the myth, starting with a pay equity act the president signed at the beginning of his interminable term, and now with a new report affirming that “the earnings gap between men and women” is a result of all sorts of discrimination. HERE.
Scholarly reams have been written disputing this phony calculus, as it omits vital variables: How long the woman has been in the work force, her age, experience and education; or whether her career has been put on hold to marry and mother. Just as women are more likely than men to have had an interrupted career trajectory, so too are they more inclined to enter lower-paying professions: education instead of engineering, for example.
UPDATE: BEWARE THE WASPS. It was interesting to observe the neoconservative programmed response to the news about a “Texas college scholarship that targets only white male students.” I am referring to the obligatory PC huffing and puffing of Greg Gutfeld and his crew, last night, as to the “low-life racists” who would dare dream-up such a scheme.
Tucker Carlson, a kind of paleoconservative, chimed in with a full-throated denunciation, but, at least, pointed out the obvious: how is this scholarship different to the affirmative action programs that have infested every nook and cranny of the American labor force, public and private, for decades?
The thing that makes these gilded, neocon elites mere retread left-liberals is the fact that they mock the brute fact that poor white men are extremely marginalized in the workforce. The data abound. They ignore the Frank Riccis of the country. In my forthcoming book, I cite, among other sources, sociologist Frederick R. Lynch’s “Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action”(1991).
But in case you need a reminder of the jeering contempt the neoconservative faction of the left-liberal establishment has for the plight of white (poor) males in American society, watch last night’s “Red Eye” segment (it’s generally very amusing, by the way).
Naturally, this element of the establishment has never bothered to expose Saint Bill Gates’ “No-WASP Scholarship” fund.
I heard a report, on NPR of all places, admit that “while a woman with a similar resume as a man makes roughly the same, women as a group make only 78% of what men as a group do.”
I almost swerved into oncoming traffic. First of all, they admitted that there is no real gender gap, second of all they tried to foist the utterly illogical canard of comparing unequal groups on the (albeit silly liberal NPR listening) public. If Jane and John have the same qualifications and make the same money what on earth is the problem? Are feminists really so blind to the fact that *GASP* many women take time off work to have children, and that means that they often forgo pay-raises and career advancements?
Bob, I get what you’re saying. I sometimes get so angry at this obvious buffoonery that I get tears in my eyes.
This is the old socialistic canard of COMPARABLE WORTH
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa038.html
that was a big rage in the 1980’s until the Mondale-Ferraro ticket carried only 1 state.
The real attraction of this insidious doctrine is threefold: (1) emasculate men [99% accomplished already], (2) establish the government as the determiner of all wages and prices, and (3) set up a permanent group of parasites who will cling to power as a role model for women.
The alternative is having the MARKET set wages. Ironically, in the capitalist-run porno industry, the men who have to do more in terms of “performance” get paid less than women – a perfect example of supply and demand.
In the COMPARABLE WORTH argument, why should “male dominated” electricians who are high school dropouts out-earn a “female dominated” librarian who has masters degrees? Neo-Marxists consider this an insidious sexist conspiracy. – – – Well – here is why … You come home on a hot summer night, someone stole all your books and the temperature in your home is 104 F (40 C) – you have one phone call – do you call the librarian to make a house call or the electrician to fix the air conditioner?? I rest my case!
This leftist hoax is going to continue. Eventually men will become less and less viable as this new generation of ritalin soaked mamas boys are turned out by our feminist, socialist controlled education system. Then women will become truly superior in the work place.
This is such a crock – if anything, employers are bending over backwards to accommodate mothers. Consequently, there is high absenteeism and lateness due to problems with sick kids, etc. So, do the feminists want these women paid & advanced the same as men/women who show up on time, are rarely absent, and are fully engaged??? That’s just nuts.
I remember back in the 80s (or was it the 90s), there was a new doctor show with all female surgeons in the group practice. They were going to “show the world how it’s done.” It wasn’t long before this one or that one couldn’t do this or that because she was pregnant or the baby was sick, whatever. The practice (and the show) didn’t last by pointing out the hazards of having a “man-free” work place.
A “Pay Equity Act” eh? Why do we even pretend we live in a free country anymore?
Also, men are more inclined to take on more dangerous jobs, which have their own “risk premium” factored into the pay.
Another thing that feminists have probably never considered is that there are undoubtedly some women who marry men pursuing lucrative (though not necessarily personally satisfying) fields who thus have the luxury of going into careers which may not pay as well but are in other ways more satisfying to them. Such a rational and beneficial decision would, when analyzed using crude statistical measures, show up as evidence of harmful and unjustified discrimination!
Bill Gates is himself a WASP. This sort of thing really astounds me. And then fools go on blaming the Jews.
For those who know H. G. Wells “The Time Machine” – it seems that under our current trends, women and non-heteros shall become the ELOI – the elite who rule but do no work and men shall become the MORLOCKS – a subterranean apelike subspecies that does the crud work and must hide from sight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine
“Low life racists”. It is now and has been for the longest time that any white male who dosen’t drop his pants and bend over for any lame scheme forwarded by non-whites or women is a low life racist. I would think this sort of thing would be getting old, even for the hysterical left.
Gutfeld is just demonstrating his “urbanite” inner hatred for anyone who happens to disagree with whatever he and his fellow New Yorkers decide to think about an issue. This is demonstrated most clearly in the way he disses religious people all the time on his show, especially if they don’t like the holy and untouchable gays. What’s worse is the aging metrosexual hipster will go to his grave claiming he is a “libertarian.”