MARK J. PERRY writes about today’s holiday:

This week gender activists and feminist organizations like the American Association of  University Women will be promoting “Equal Pay Day” on Tuesday, April 2 and this is an update of my “Bigfoot” post from a year ago to help counteract some of questionable statistics and mythology that get recycled every year in early April about the “gender pay gap.” The annual event known as Equal Pay Day brings awareness to a completely bogus apples-to-oranges comparison of median incomes by gender. Specifically this year’s Equal Pay Day will publicize the 20% unadjusted difference in median annual earnings for women and men working full-time in 2018 (most recent data available) when absolutely nothing relevant is controlled for that would help explain that 20% raw differences in income like hours worked, marital status, number of children, education, occupation, number of years of continuous uninterrupted job experience, working conditions, work safety, workplace flexibility, family friendliness of the workplace, job security, and time spent commuting.

To start, let’s acknowledge that there is widespread acceptance by the general public, especially among women, progressives, and Democrats, of the completely bogus, false claim that women are paid “77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men” — in the words of President Obama in 2012 even though that’s a complete myth that is easily falsifiable and in fact was rated “Mostly False” by Politifact. Hillary Clinton repackaged the bogus claim for the campaign trail by stating in late 2015 that “On average, women need to work an extra two hours each day to earn the same paycheck as their male co-workers.”

In 2015, Linda Hallman, who was then the executive director of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), sent a mass email about Equal Pay Day falsely claiming “Think about it: Women have to work almost four months longer than men do to earn the same amount of money for doing the same job. What’s more, we have to set aside a day each year just to call the nation’s attention to it.”

The National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) claims that because women make only about 80 cents for every dollar men make, the average American working woman will have to continue work until Tuesday, April 2 — Equal Pay Day — to earn the same amount of income as her male counterpart earned last year. A Tuesday is always selected for Equal Pay Day because that day allegedly represents how far into each work week all year that women have to work to earn what their male co-workers earned during the previous week.

Despite the widespread public acceptance of the frequent “77/80 cents on the dollar for the same job” claims documented above, there is rarely ever any specific evidence presented showing that any specific organization is in violation of federal law by paying women 20% or more less than men for doing the same job….

… Just where do we find these companies that apparently have illegal dual-wage policies: one wage schedule for men and another one for women at wages 20/23% below their male co-workers for doing the same job? Which specific organizations are actually paying women 20/23% less than men and exposing their organizations to legal prosecution, fines, and penalties? Those questions are never answered by Obama, Clinton, the NCPE or AAUW.

Well, let’s next consider some examples of cases where it’s pretty clear that we would NOT find the kind of blatant gender pay discrimination that would result in women earning “77/80 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.” Here are some of those examples. [Read more.]

— Comments —

Christopher:

In the interests of equality, maybe women should be culled 5 years before their average age of death in order to compensate for their longer life spans.

Laura writes:

Equality always called for radical solutions,

Please follow and like us: