April 12th was Equal Pay Day. You didn’t miss it, did you? That’s the day where we are all supposed to mourn the fact that women are paid seventy-seven cents for every dollar a man earns for the same work. There’s only one little problem with this whole day of remembrance; it’s based on a total load of crap.
Most of you probably already know this, but for Pete’s sake, this same old lie has lived way past its prime. This weak, sickly, feeble argument has been surviving on scraps of encouragement from fibbers with an agenda, and it’s past time for this old lie to be taken out to the back yard and put out of its misery. If you don’t already know why the 77-Cent Pay Gap argument is bunk, let me explain, and if you do already know, I urge you to memorize the basic facts so you can correct people every time you hear them repeating this nonsense.
The studies that show that women make seventy-seven cents for every dollar men make reach this figure by comparing the earnings of all men and women who work full-time. Sure enough, women do make about 23% less than men, but this stat does not take into account the nature of the work being done by the men and women. This isn’t unequal pay for unequal work but unequal pay for vastly different kinds of work.
One of the biggest causes of the wage gap is the fact that men and women tend to go into different fields. More men become doctors. More women become elementary school teachers. Doctors get paid more than elementary school teachers.
Another big factor is that women often choose to take time off from their careers when they have children. It’s not infrequent for mothers to take a couple of years or even a couple of decades off to focus on raising a family, and that’s perfectly fine, but you cannot work your way up the economic ladder when you’ve left the workforce. Plenty of women renew their careers in their fifties after raising several children and they find that they are once again starting at the bottom.
Studies that take into account these and other factors like the amount of hours worked, the number of sick and vacation days taken, aggressiveness in contract negotiation, education level, years of experience in the field, amount of time with a company and management status show that the Pay Gap all but disappears. When actually comparing apples to apples, studies have shown that women make 98% of what men make, and that’s pretty darn close to the margin of error for any statistical analysis, so the actual Pay Gap might even disappear completely.
The people perpetuating the Pay Gap myth don’t even have a defense for their views. The Huffington Post had several articles on the front page promoting, “Equal Pad Day,” but it also has an article posted four years ago where a feminist writer admitted the 77-Cents argument is nonsense. Even though they admit the Pay Gap story is untrue, leftist sites like Huff Po still promote the same old lie because they know if they can convince women that they are being abused they can get them to vote Democrat to combat this crisis which has been largely fabricated.
We have got to kill this lie. Every time somebody repeats it, we should quickly point out the truth. You can explain the way the data is being manipulated in thirty seconds, there are loads of articles from mainstream and even some leftist sites which admit the 77-cent Wage Gap is a lie and there’s no need to be confrontational about it. You share the info, mention a mainstream source that supports your case and let it go. If they care about the truth, they can learn it in a few minutes of Googling. If they don’t care about the truth, then there’s little hope for them, but maybe they’ll start to feel foolish promoting an obvious lie and stop indoctrinating women to feel victimized.
The United States provides an environment where both women and men can thrive. The only thing that will keep women from succeeding is the belief that the system is rigged against them.
Check out this video for a more detailed argument and links to more sources:
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