Many economists explain women's 78 cents to men's dollar (women's median pay vs. men's median) as the choices women make in the job market. They assert that women, far more often than men, choose jobs that best accommodate child-raising and jobs that interests them the most, as opposed to jobs that pay the best (men, more than women, do the opposite). But why do women continue to make these choices? Perhaps more important, why are so many women able to make these choices and help create the gender wage gap? Despite women's 40-year-old demand for equal wages, millions of women as wives still choose to have no wages at all. In fact, according to Dr. Scott Haltzman, author of The Secrets of Happily Married Women, stay-at-home wives, including those who are childless, constitute a growing niche. "In the past few years,” he says in a CNN August 2008 report at http://tinyurl.com/6reowj, “many women who are well educated and trained for career tracks have decided instead to stay at home.” (“Census Bureau data show that 5.6 million mothers stayed home with their children in 2005, about 1.2 million more than did so a decade earlier....” at http://tinyurl.com/qqkaka.) As full-time mothers or homemakers, these women earn zero wages. How can they afford to do this while in many cases living lives of luxury in big homes in affluent neighborhoods? Virtually any teen-ager knows the answer: “Dkuh-uh! They are supported by their husband.” So if millions of wives can work for zero wages, millions of other wives can work for low wages in full-time or part-time work, can refuse to work overtime, can refuse promotions, can take more unpaid days off ... all because their husbands are willing to support them. What about single women who hope to marry? Most are keenly aware of men's extant general willingness to sooner or later economically support the woman they marry. Thus countless numbers of these women configure their jobs, careers, and aspirations accordingly. Many hope to marry — and actively look for — a man who earns enough to offer them the three options cited by Warren Farrell in his book Why Men Earn More: work full-time, work part-time, or work full-time as a housewife. These women often regard a husband as their primary employer. In return for their husband's media-unappreciated generosity, these women plan to offer him three slightly different options: work full-time, work full-time, work full-time with overtime when the wife departs from the workforce, nearly always at a time of her choosing. Men's willingness to support their wives is the true, unacknowledged cause of the sexes' infamous (to ideological feminists and the mainstream media) wage gap, women's 77 cents to men's dollar. The belief that women earn 77 cents to men's dollar in the same jobs has been the sole driving force behind the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act and the recently passed Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Lilly Ledbetter supposedly represents proof of women's 77 cents. But putting her case aside for the moment, do you yourself personally know of any woman who works right along side a man in his exact same job, and, all things being equal, earns 23 percent less than he does? In your office, do the female managers, editors, and reporters earn 23 percent less than their male counterparts? At the troubled auto makers, do the non-union female workers earn 23 percent less than the non-union men? If so, why haven't these women, as members of the group long taught to sue over the slightest injustice, already sued under the well-known 1963 U.S. law mandating equal pay for equal work? And if the women don't know they earn less than the men, how would anyone else know besides their employer? But suppose some newspaper reporters — because they unofficially have the secret “side job” of helping women, the “oppressed” — dug up wage data showing that at XYZ Company the women, after all factors such as seniority are figured in, are paid less than the men for performing the same jobs. Having uncovered this injustice, why would the reporters do nothing more than write a report called “Women Paid Less Than the Men at XYZ Company?” Since they can't be sure all the XYZ women were apprised of and heeded the report, wouldn't the reporters want to make sure — shouldn't they make sure — that the women were in fact alerted to their lower-paid status so they could take action? Suppose the reporters took it upon themselves to go so far as personally advise the women of their status, and the women went to their company manager and demanded, “Make our pay equal, or we will sue for the usual millions.” Wouldn't the reporters then want to do a follow-up report titled “Women Workers File Wage Discrimination Suit After Being Alerted of Their Unequal Pay”? Wouldn't that be the fitting follow-up to the injustice, a follow-up that dutifully tells employers they can't get away with sex discrimination? Yet, although I've read hundreds of news reports and editorials (thanks to Google alerts) stating that “women earn only 77 cents to men's dollar for the same work,” I have seen not a single follow-up to any instance of women's lower pay that the reporters and editors supposedly had in mind but failed to mention — not one follow-up showing that the women, as members of the group men often feel will sue for being looked at “wrong,” subsequently sued their employer under the provisions of the 1963 Equal Pay For Equal Work law. As for Lily Ledbetter, I don't know how her one case can prove “women are paid less,” sometimes without their knowledge. I do believe, however, that many politicians turned Ledbetter into the martyr they needed to create legislation that would give feminists, women, and trial lawyers the promised pay-back for their votes. But where are the thousands of other such cases that to me are needed to justify a Congressional act bound to burden the country's employers with added cost at one of the worst times? For the record, I as a man was once paid less than another man who was hired six months later than I to do the exact same work. (My employer had negotiated for a talented person whom they had to woo from another employer — a common practice.) This raises a question: How many reporters have ever thought about learning whether men are sometimes paid less — all things being equal — than other men for the same work? If they found just one case similar to Ledbetter's, whose case is less than ironclad as indicated by the commentaries linked to below, it would blow the Ledbetter case out of the water. Which may explain why reporters and women's pay-equity advocates haven't looked for such data on men. (Perhaps they are less interested in being objective than in casting women as victims of discrimination who, incidentally, should vote Democratic.) Those who were in a hurry to pass the Ledbetter Act side-stepped an important point: Women have long been “notorious” for being on average less aggressive than men when negotiating for salary. Upon being asked to state their salary preference, women consistently give a lower range than men. This female pattern is acknowledged by the very feminists who urge women seeking management positions to be more aggressive in asking for what they want. (See Linda Babcock's co-authored book Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide.) The pattern is acknowledged also by the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act itself! Note in the act this discriminatory provision at www.tinyurl.com/r85kh3: “In addition, the bill would require the [Dept. of Labor] to make competitive grants available that would help provide 'effective negotiation skills training' for girls and women.” I'll wager that Ledbetter asked for less than her employer's other managers. So although she may have received the same percent increase in yearly raises, her salary over time fell more and more behind. (Another discriminatory gesture on the part of our president is his Council On Women and Girls, which, among other things, will focus on "improving women's economic security ...." (www.tinyurl.com/cjkgxj). Who is brave enough to explain all this antimale discrimination, pushed by our first black president, to the huge numbers of young men, especially black men, who've been jobless for years? Some black men already seem to be disturbed over the White House ignoring black males (www.tinyurl.com/pe7e9b.) Or maybe she received smaller raises based on poor performance reviews. “...[H]er years of poor performance evaluations, plus repeated layoffs that affected her eligibility for raises, convinced a federal magistrate judge (although not the jury) that her relatively low pay did not prove sex discrimination. Maybe Ledbetter was a victim of discrimination, as the jury found. Maybe not. The evidence is too stale to allow for a confident conclusion -- which is one reason the justices ruled against her.” See Stuart Taylor's commentary in National Journal at www.tinyurl.com/oeaf3e. All this is detail that the Ledbetter advocates, needing a symbol of “female oppression,” apparently don't want to be troubled with. There are many people who insist — almost always without giving an example — that women earn 23 percent less for the same work. A lot of them also say employers are greedy profit-mongers bent on doing anything to beat out their competitors. If so, and if employers can so easily get away with paying women less than men despite the 1963 Equal Pay for Equal Work Act*, why, as people like gender expert Warren Farrell have asked, don't the banks, the Big Three auto makers, and our nation's other troubled companies fire all their (non-union) male employees and employ only women at 77 cents to the dollar paid to the men? Think about it: the Big Three might then be able to undersell the foreign auto makers, even allowing for their healthcare costs. Presto! Less red ink! Less need for taxpayer bailouts! Says Richard A. Epstein in Forbes at www.tinyurl.com/9xvvna: “Even if this new law helps people like Lily Ledbetter — who conveniently bring their discrimination claims only after retiring — going forward, the law will force employers to incur higher costs to minimize potential liabilities that can never be removed from their balance sheets.” Thusly encumbering employers in an effort to stamp out “wage discrimination,” the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act may motivate more employers to move out of the country. It may spur others into hiring as few women as possible — or hiring none at all. “Whether the result will be to bring better justice for victims of job discrimination,” says Stuart Taylor in the National Journal at www.tinyurl.com/ppewsk, “or to make employers more reluctant to hire women and minorities who might end up suing them remains to be seen.” To many people, the current legislation aimed at closing the gender wage gap soon begins to look absurd. But if you want to pass absurd legislation that would really work, would indeed close the gender wage gap — almost overnight — pass a law that prohibits men from supporting women. Think about it. If men were prohibited from supporting women, every unemployed wife in the country would be forced to get a job. And millions of employed women would be forced to obtain a better one, raising women's average pay immediately and dramatically. “Without husbands," says Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Earn More, "women have to focus on earning more. They work longer hours, they're willing to relocate and they're more likely to choose higher-paying fields like technology." And how would this prohibition effect men? Millions would no longer feel the need for a high-paying job to attract women and gain and hold a woman's love. A good number of the men already holding a high-paying and likely stressful job would gleefully walk away, sending employers into a frenzy recruiting women. Men wouldn't have to earn as much, and women would have to earn more. Presto — the sexes' wage gap would snap shut with a thunderous clap. An ideological feminist fantasy come true! _________ * “The Equal Pay Act of 1963 requires employers to pay women as much as men doing 'equal work' in the same establishment, with exceptions including merit pay. This law does not require proof of intentional discrimination. And it has a ... three-year statute of limitations.” -Stuart Taylor in the National Journal at www.tinyurl.com/pkszer (As of February 2, CNN reports that women face less unemployment than men at www.tinyurl.com/rbroad.) Facts to consider regarding “female oppression”: 1. Women control most of the wealth. (Per Editor & Publisher, Sept. 21, 1996, front page; see http://tinyurl.com/qmeoqx) 2. Women control most of the spending. “While men as a group may earn more money, women make more of the critical decisions about household purchasing and exercise control over many family financial resources. Women actually control 51.3% of percent wealth in the United States.” See PBS's “To the Contrary” at http://tinyurl.com/kwttea. 3. Women as a group live longer than men and in better health. See “Men die young, even when they're young” at http://tinyurl.com/c7f8cy. 4. Men incur 92 percent of the workplace fatalities and about five times more occupational accidents. (See the MSN report, “The 10 most dangerous jobs in America” at http://tinyurl.com/7vqkc.) Note that few if any women demand to occupy these jobs, which are often poorly paid as well. Note also that the report virtually masks men's burden, mentioning “men” only at the very end: “Men were still, by far, the most likely to be killed on the job. Ninety-two percent of all workplace fatalities were male.”) The death and accident gap is a workplace gender gap that is never discussed but would be considered extremely alarming and would be brought to the public's attention every day if women incurred 94 percent of the workplace accidents and about 500 percent more workplace deaths. I've said a lot. But no matter how much I and others say, it will not matter. Consider: Nothing stopped health legislation and policies from being implemented to help the healthier sex; nothing stopped the unconstitutional Violence Against Women Act from being implemented to protect the safer sex; and nothing will stop wage legislation and policies from being implemented to help the wealthier sex. Politicians' and the mainstream media's version of “gender equality” won't change perhaps until men, likely led by black men, take to the streets in huge numbers. The male courage to do won't coalesce for at least another decade (See "Why Few Men Protest Antimale Sexism" at http://tinyurl.com/px27ug.) Sincerely, Jerry A. Boggs Male Matters Blog http://battlinbog.blog-city.com Years ago, the media ignored the "female" side to the gender story for fear of offending men. Today they and virtually all other institutions ignore the "male" side for fear of offending women. Further thoughts and commentaries for the independent thinkers who want to swim against the tide: Says Allison Kasic at Townhall.com, “The wage gap — a real statistic measured by the Department of Labor — simply compares the median wage of the full-time working woman versus the median wage of the full-time working man. It is a single-variable statistic that fails to account for a variety of factors that affect compensation levels, including number of hours worked, education level, years of relevant experience, and type of occupation (just to name a few).” Still, most feminists ignore all this and insist, “When men dominate a job, the job pays more; when women dominate, it pays less.” They mean, in other words, "Which sex dominates a job determines the job’s pay." Actually it's the other way around: a job’s pay determines which sex dominates the job. Just as society has steered women into low-paid jobs, its imposition on men of a “primary” provider role, thus tying men's self-worth to their net worth, continues to steer men away from low-paid jobs and into jobs which pay more (but which men pay more for with greater seniority and education, as well as with a job accident rate six times higher than women’s and a job death rate 15 times higher — a workplace gender gap no one talks about because it's men who are vulnerable). Many feminists also believe women should average the same pay as men. This presumes, incorrectly, that women are a primary or sole provider as often as men are. Suppose men weren’t expected to be primary providers and didn’t need a well-paid job to feel attractive to women and respected by family, friends, and society at large. (Feminists and the media have said successful women drive men away. By telling women this, they likely discourage many women from moving up and therefore help keep women's average pay lower than men's.) Men, feeling little or no need for impressive pay to impress anyone, would average an income much less than it is now (meaning men's job-market choices have created the gender wage gap as much as women's choices have). If money meant nothing more to either sex than economic survival, the average pay for each sex would, of course, fall somewhere in between women’s current average and men’s current average. As it stands now, many employers, in an effort to "help" women raise their average pay to that of men’s, voluntarily replace — or are pressured to replace — equal-opportunity programs with equal-results programs. The upshot sometimes is blatant discrimination against men, not to mention lowered employee morale and gender friction if unqualified women are selected solely to yield the "proper" gender balance. [From “The Untold Side To the Gender Story” at http://www.battlinbog.blog-city.com/the_untold_side_of_the_gender_story.htm] ________________________ Advocates for women's pay equity no doubt strongly support the Age Discrimination In Employment Act. Without it, they may argue, employers who obsess over profit and cheap labor would routinely replace older employees with younger ones at lower wages. Yet these same advocates apparently believe employers' obsession with profit and cheap labor is all of a sudden irrelevant when it comes to paying men more than women for the same work! In sum, the advocates believe employers would get rid of older workers to save money, but will not get rid of men to save money. ________________________ After pay equity makes women's pay equal to men's, many men may start demanding working conditions that are equal to women's. A company's non-union staff truck drivers, who often must work in harsh weather and dangerous, stressful traffic, may make this impossible demand of their employers: “Now that you've made the secretaries' pay the same as mine, make my work conditions the same as the secretaries'.” Some of them may say, “I'm going to file a class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit to force you to make the secretarial pool 50 percent male.” ________________________ In the Canadian Hamilton Spectator's “Library caught in pay equity bind” (http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/502535) is this astonishing statement: “With 90 per cent of its positions female-dominated, pay equity is a big issue at the library.” In other words, it seems, the importance of pay equity for women increases as an employer's job equity for men decreases; a problem for men sharpens the need to focus on women. (For another example of this, see “Taking Apart the Sex-Bias Class-Action Lawsuit Against Wal-Mart" at http://battlinbog.blog-city.com/male_matters_takes_apart_the_classaction_lawsuit_against_wal.htm.") ----------------------------------------------- “A study in the U.K. indicates the gap in pay between men and women no longer exists for people in their 20s. The report from the Office for National Statistics shows that women who remain single earn more throughout their lives than men. Women tend to have pay equity from the time they leave college until about 30, the average age when women first give birth.” http://www.smartbrief.com/news/nawbo/storyDetails.jsp?issueid=EDB72386-1736-41E0-8099-444130F18021©id=32179D5C-BAF0-4013-A9F2-3A35891DE2AF ________________________ Further Reading: "A Critical Look at 'Pay Equity' For Women" at http://battlinbog.blog-city.com/male_matters_looks_indepth_at_pay_equity_for_women.htm “For Young Earners in Big City, Gap Shifts in Women’s Favor” at http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/for-young-earners-in-big-city-gap-shifts-in-womens-favor/ “Lilly Ledbetter is not quite the feminist martyr she seems” at http://www.battlinbog.blog-city.com/the_fair_pay_follies.htm “The Ledbetter Act: Sacrificing Justice for 'Fair' Pay” at http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?5a7e835b-dec4-4ae5-a24f-2908a3ea161b The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act at http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2009/01/12/ledbetter-congress-regulation-oped-cx_re_0113epstein.html “Trial Lawyer Bonanza” at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146294351966567.html “A Prominent Feminist Gets It: 'You're Not Earning as Much as the Guys? Here's Why'” at http://battlinbog.blog-city.com/a_leading_feminist_gets_it_youre_not_earning_as_much_as_t.htm The Doctrinaire Institute for Women's Policy Research http://battlinbog.blog-city.com/a_comprehensive_response_to_the_institute_for_womens_policy.htm "Obama flunks Econ 101" at http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/04/magazines/fortune/muphy_payact.fortune/index.htm Taking Apart the Sex-Bias Class-Action Lawsuit Against Wal-Mart" at http://battlinbog.blog-city.com/male_matters_takes_apart_the_classaction_lawsuit_against_wal.htm