MALE MATTERS LOOKS IN-DEPTH AT PAY EQUITY FOR WOMEN

"When like-minded people deliberate as an organized group, the general opinion shifts toward extreme versions of their common beliefs." --Mark Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University

This commentary reflects a view on the gender wage gap that ideological feminists and the liberal component of the mainstream media struggle mightily to keep you from hearing.  

CONTENTS

Introduction

Part I: Humanist Magazine Article — “Comparable Worth As Misguided Effort”

Part II: Refuting the “Justifications” Used by the National Organization for Women to Push Pay Equity For Women

INTRODUCTION

"Pay equity for women” is a term that supposedly appeals more to one's sense of justice than the emotionless and uninspiring "comparable-worth pay” of some years ago. But for the most part, although pay equity for women has come to generally mean "equal pay for women," pay equity and comparable worth are, for probably most feminists, one and the same since both seek equal pay for similar work. A definition of women's pay equity is at the bottom of the page at National Committee on Pay Equity:

Pay equity — evaluating and compensating jobs based on their skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions, and not on the people who hold the jobs₁— is a solution to eliminating wage discrimination and closing the [sexes'] wage gap [often expressed as “women's 76 cents to men's dollar,” a figure derived from women's and men's median yearly earnings].

In other words, pay equity for women, like comparable worth in the past, aims to eradicate differences in wages across male- and female-dominated occupations. It could require, for example, that a company's predominantly female secretaries be compared to the company's higher-paid predominantly male maintenance workers. If pay equity deemed that the secretaries were worth as much to the company as the maintenance workers, it would require the company to raise the secretaries' wages in order to eradicate the pay difference. (Companies would not be permitted to lower “male” wages to eliminate differences.)

The “true” worth of secretaries, as well as that of all other workers in traditionally female jobs, is something pay-equity advocates imply only they know. “...[I]f we are not college bound,” says the National Organization for Women-New Jersey, “we also want occupations that have long been filled predominantly by women to be recognized and paid for their true worth. When a man working as a general laborer on a union construction job can support a family, yet a woman working as a waitress or a cashier cannot, we see a problem....” This vision largely explains the impetus behind pay equity.

Each year pay equity for women is brought to the nation's attention through a campaign called “Equal Pay Day.” This year Equal Pay Day falls on Tuesday, April 25. It is observed in April by organized feminists who use “women's 76 cents to men's dollar” to show “how far into each year a woman must work to earn as much as a man earned in the previous year.” [By this, women must work 16 months to earn what men earn in twelve months.] The day is observed on Tuesday to symbolize “the day when women's wages catch up to men's wages from the previous week. Because women on average earn less, they must work longer for the same pay.”

PART I

Humanist Magazine Article:

“Comparable Worth as a Misguided Effort"

Foreword: Twenty years ago, The Humanist magazine published my article (below) in which, among other things, I criticized the National Organization for Women (NOW) for pushing comparable-worth pay (pay equity) as a way to close the gender wage gap. I said the gap “will persist as long as men and women continue coupling and agreeing, for whatever their personal reasons, that the man will be the primary breadwinner and the woman the supported childraiser.”

NOW pushed pay equity then, and continues to push it today just as rigorously, even though the group is no closer to getting it legislated than in the mid-'80s.

The Humanist | May/June 1986₂

Comparable Worth As Misguided Effort

By Jerry A. Boggs

Many feminists conveniently ignore crucial factors when arguing for comparable worth.

   "We simply won't accept a ruling that justifies injustices,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the National Organization for Women.

     That and other feminist denouncements quickly followed the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling on comparable worth on September 4, 1985. The ruling overturned a prior one by U.S. District Court Judge Jack Tanner. Tanner had ordered substantial pay raises for state-employed women based upon comparable worth — the idea of paying men and women similar wages for different jobs determined to be of equal value to an employer.

     Why do feminists continue pushing a doctrine viewed more and more as illogically conceived and totally intractable?

     For many feminists who may have changed their minds about comparable worth, the motivation is probably fear of their cohorts' scorn and rejection. Other feminists still promote the concept because they believe it is the only remedy for the “pervasive wage discrimination against women,” a notion they have invested as much belief in as its sister notion, job discrimination against women.

     But do feminists present an accurate appraisal of these two discriminations — an appraisal which justifies a radical plan like comparable worth? To me, their conclusions need much rethinking. To begin with, two important points have never been decisively and officially cleared up regarding job discrimination.

     First, how much of women's underrepresentation in the generally better-paid “men's” jobs is attributable to discrimination and how much to choice?

     Feminist Colette Dowling, in her prodigious study of female behavior entitled The Cinderella Complex — Women's Hidden Fear of Independence (1981), contends that the main reason women are underrepresented in traditionally male fields is not employers' bias. Says Dowling, “It is the thesis of this book that personal, psychological dependency — the deep wish to be taken care of by others — is the chief force holding women down today.” (Italics Dowling's) In other words, choice, not discrimination, is a factor conveniently overlooked by feminists seeking an explanation for apparent inequities in the workplace.

     Indeed, The Cinderella Complex leads one to believe that, contrary to the media portrayal of women's cheery surge into the labor market, few women willingly choose to leave the hearth; that, of those who go to work, most in time resent having done so; that many career women soon find their ambition collapsing under the weight of their desire “to be taken care of.”

     In the January 27, 1986, issue of The New Republic, researcher Barbara Ehrenreich also points to choice as a major factor keeping women out of the labor market when she writes of career women:

A small but significant number of women are deciding not to have it all after all, and are dropping out of the corporate world to apply their management skills to kitchen decor and baby care. There is no doubt, from the interviews in Women Like Us as well my own anecdotal sources, that some successful women are indeed using babies as a polite excuse for abandoning the rat race.

     Discrimination appears even less an influence when some statistics are considered, according to an editorial in the November 28, 1985, Detroit News. Of the more than seven million new jobs created in this country since 1980, 78.4 percent went to women, as did 65 percent of all wage increase since then — this despite the fact that men still outnumber women in the workforce.

     These statistics imply that employers in general not only do not disfavor women but often bend over backwards for them. Preferential treatment of women can be found even among the publishers of Penthouse magazine, where, one would think, the suppression of females would be written into office policy. “Our company,” says Kathy Keeton, wife of co-owner Bob Guccione, “is run by more women than men, and they get paid more than the men.”

     All these factors combined imply something quite different from the feminist assertions that discrimination is the cause of female under- representation in traditionally male occupations. Indeed, it seems clear that the opposite has occurred: we have ventured into blatant, systematic job discrimination against men. And this raises my second point in our consideration of comparable worth.

     Antimale employment discrimination is hardly new. How many years ago was the first male denied a job, a promotion, or a training opportunity because of his selective service classification? How long have males alone been forced to interrupt their education and careers with military duty during which they earn a pittance? When did employers begin routinely assigning men, regardless of their individual size and strength, the rigorous, dangerous, out-in-the-elements jobs for which the pay cannot begin to compensate for the increased health risks?

     The final reconsideration of the comparable worth argument entails a close look at wage discrimination.

     Many economists see influences other than bias acting on the earnings gap between the sexes. Seniority is one example: in work where men and women perform the same tasks and where the pay differential only slightly favors men, women, on average, accumulate less time on the job because they leave the labor force at intervals to care for children. Furthermore, as Colette Dowling thoroughly documents, women in all types of work tend more than men to shy away from unionizing and from hard-selling their achievements for pay raises — techniques long used by men to secure wage increases.

     But what about the much wider wage gap between “female” jobs and “male” jobs, at which comparable worth is specifically aimed? What accounts for the wage difference between, say, a secretary and a truck driver of the same company? Is the male trucker paid substantially more because the employer values “female” work less, as some feminists charge?

     In reality, one job is no less valuable to a firm than another — pay differences not- withstanding. Many disagree, of course, and cite such things as stress, complexity, and responsibility as the determinants of a position's value. Unfortunately, in the process of trying to judge the point value — to compare the worth — of each of the countless small and large tasks involved in manufacturing, selling, and servicing, value-rating runs into a snag: as everyone soon discovers, responsibility, difficulty, complexity, and so forth are, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder; something complex to the comparable worth advocate strikes the employer as simple and vice versa.

     Many defenders of value-rating, including, no doubt, many women in “undervalued” work, in truth want importance bestowed not on their jobs but on themselves. Nearly everyone grows up developing a strong need to stand out and be recognized. Work evolves as a natural path to that, and we learn to think that certain occupations — lawyer, engineer, or manager, for example — are more important than others. The higher pay for these positions confirms, we think, their higher value to our employers as well as to ourselves.

     Yet, as mentioned earlier, all jobs are equal in value. Consider the “lowly” busboy job in a restaurant — one of many poorly paid “male” endeavors. Most would declare that a busboy position is worth less to the owner than the better-paid chef's position. But imagine the result were the owner to abolish the job one morning without, of course, redistributing the duties.

     Comparable worth advocates are correct on one point: “female” work is just as valuable to business and society as “male.” But if the value of a job does not determine its pay, what does? Supply and demand does, but this has been argued so much in the comparable worth debate, apparently, that feminists have grown deaf to it. Perhaps a different approach will inspire them to lend an ear again.

     Our experience of life is, in large measure, regulated by the degrees to which we can tolerate life's offerings — by, in words appropriate here, what we can bear. For instance, as my friends know, I cannot bear much mugginess. I could not, for very long, reside in Florida; I leave that state and its kind to the rugged souls able to put up with heat and humidity unbearable to me. My intolerance thus restricts me to more northern climes.

     The “what we can bear” principle also affects us in our dealings with the consumer and labor markets. The goods and services we purchase are, if we are prudent, governed by what we believe our incomes can accommodate. Likewise, the jobs we consider taking are decided by the principle of what we can bear. If, for example, a $15,000-a-year job is needed to support one person with a dependent, that person will not go looking for work paying $10,000 per year. With his or her expenses, he or she could not accept that amount. On the other hand, if the individual was like the typical busboy — a young adult provided free room and board by living at home — then he or she could accept it.

     Despite a women's movement twenty years in duration, most women are still in two categories: supported by men fully or almost fully, or anticipating to be. With all or nearly all their needs provided for, or with the provision of them in the offing, women as a group are able and willing to bear lower pay than men, who are still expected to be at least primary providers and who, as such, must earn enough to handle the expense of supporting two or more persons when the need arises.

     Thus, we still have scenarios like the following perpetuating the income gap between the sexes: an employer advertises a “female” position at, say, $10,000 annually (or at any salary which the employer might choose), and far more women than men respond, because the imposition on males to earn more than women renders them unable to bear the offered pay and permits women, in the competition for jobs, to underbid men for the lower-paying ones. The income gap, then, is not just a matter of women being paid less than men. It is also a matter of men as primary providers generally needing a higher income than women. Therefore, the gap will persist as long as men and women continue coupling and agreeing, for whatever their personal reasons, that the man will be the primary breadwinner and the woman the supported childraiser.

     Comparable worth poses serious threats. Its enforcement in the public and private sectors could result in a cost of billions to the economy, and it could drive many small businesses out of business and many large ones out of the country. Moreover, it would hand women in “female” occupations a victory of the pyrrhic kind: many men working the dirty, dangerous, out-in-the elements jobs will seek the cleaner, safer, more comfortable “female” positions and can demand, as is their right, that affirmative action open those jobs up to them. These are factors all comparable worth advocates ought to consider.

If a female secretary wants to earn the same pay as her company's truck drivers, what is stopping her from becoming a truck driver herself? That's exactly the question female truck drivers would ask her.

Women will begin earning more when they cease viewing a husband as a first-choice employer. 

__________________

Now that you have read my 20-year-old perspective on pay equity — a perspective I still hold — it's time to read NOW's, along with my responses.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PART II

Refuting NOW's “Justifications” for Pay Equity For Women

The National Organization for Women (NOW) probably pushes harder for pay equity than any other ideological  feminist group, perhaps harder than even the National Committee On Pay Equity. NOW's undated site “Pay Equity Now!” says, “The National Organization for Women has a long history of supporting equal pay and comparable worth. In 2001, the National Conference adopted a resolution to support the 'Pay Equity Now!' petition, which was developed by the International Wages for Housework Campaign together with Philadelphia NOW, Pennsylvania NOW and the Philadelphia Coalition of Labor Union Women....”

NOW agitates for pay equity with these seven “justifications” (my response to each follows this list):

1. WHEREAS in the US, the richest, most powerful nation on earth, women's average pay has dropped from 76% in 1992 to 73% of men's wages, 62.6% for Black women, 53.1% for Latina women; and

2. WHEREAS women are often segregated in caring and service work for low pay, much like the housework they are expected to do for no pay at home; and

3. WHEREAS closing the wage gap between women and men cannot be achieved without revaluing the responsibilities and skills women use in their work compared to what men use in theirs;

4. WHEREAS underpaying women is a massive subsidy to employers that is both sexist and racist;

5. WHEREAS by opposing pay equity in international forums, the US government encourages multinational corporations to underpay women everywhere in the global economy; and

6. WHEREAS all women, particularly mothers, who do the vital but unpaid job of caring for children and/or other dependents, are penalized by getting the lowest pay when they go out to work and are discriminated against in such areas as pensions, health care, and social security credits, among others; and

7. WHEREAS pay equity is a major step toward revaluing all women’s work, raising all women's wages and status, and establishing all women's entitlements;

THEREFORE we the undersigned demand that all branches of the US government stand with women, the vast majority of whom are overworked and underpaid, and
1) withdraw all objections to – and actively endorse – pay equity and maternity care provisions for all women;
2) Sign, ratify and implement provisions in international conventions entitling women to the pay and benefits they have earned many times over.

_______________________

My response (in italics) to each of these “justifications”:

1. WHEREAS in the US, the richest, most powerful nation on earth, women's average pay has dropped from 76% in 1992 to 73% of men's wages...

In truth, the richer the nation, the bigger the gender wage gap tends to be. That's because in rich nations the men earn more. The more men earn, the more they are able to give wives the option of staying at home or working part-time or full-time for wages less than their husband's. (See "New mothers with husbands in the top 20 percent of earnings work least, the report notes. As Ernest Hemingway said, the rich do have more money. So they also have more freedom to leave their jobs.") That option is considered a luxury by women the world over. In the old Soviet Union, women longed for that option because they were treated as equal to men and required₃ to work.
In poor nations, men earn less and perhaps a majority cannot support a wife. So women are more likely to work and earn an income closer to the male average. For example, in the United States, in the “nation” of the black community, the men average less pay than white men. One result is that employed black women with small children average a higher wage than employed white women with small children. Should we believe that these black women benefit from discrimination against white women, especially given that black women face the added barrier of racism? Or should we believe that black women must work more because black men earn less?

Another income gap: Tall men earn more than short men. In March 2004, Playboy magazine said, “In the U.S., a man's salary is directly related to his height. A recent University of Florida study found that every additional inch of height represents $783 in annual pay.” Men who are 5'9'' earned in 2004 only $36,149 to the $44,762 earned by 6'8” men. Does shorter men's 81 cents to tall men's dollar result from discrimination against shorter men? Or does it result from the fact that tall men are more likely to marry than short men, and hence strive harder to advance because they more often incur greater financial obligation as providers? And did the following seemingly absurd and irrelevant phenomenon have an effect: “Among the 500 in the control group, shortness was found twice as often among those with hearing loss compared to those with normal hearing. The short men were also more likely to have family histories of hearing loss — but not an association with a noisy workplace. Short men were three times more likely to have hearing loss than tall men — and 12 times more likely to be taking medication for some type of illness.” The point is that when you look beyond discrimination as a cause of wage gaps, you can find surpirsing influences. (Source) See also "Study Shows Taller People Earn More Money."

In poor nations, there is another kind of gap that NOW conveniently ignores: “Men in countries with lower per capita income commit suicide more frequently than men in countries with higher per capita income.” This is not true of women in poor or rich nations. (Source: The Journal of Men's Health & Gender) (Men who fail at being economically successful commit suicide at a higher rate than do women who fail at being physically attractive. And most ideological feminists tell us women are more troubled than men.)

What NOW ignores: The more women choose the option of staying at home with those they love — their children — the more money their husbands must earn and the more time they must spend away from those they love and with those they may hate — overbearing bosses and back-stabbing, competitive co-workers trying to look good by making others look bad — frequently working exhausting hours in soul-destroying jobs to support a growing family.

What NOW ignores regarding women's 73% of men's wages [for the same work]: NOW, like many other feminist and socialist groups, assails male employers as greedy competitors willing to do anything for the all-important profit. In so doing, NOW contradicts its own theory behind women's 73 cents to men's dollar. According to Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Earn More, if employers paid women 73 cents to men's dollar for the same work, why would any company, especially one that is greedy and profit-obsessed, want to hire men at all, at any level? How could Manufacturer A, which employs only men, compete with Manufacturer B, which makes the same product and employs only women? Why would a consumer buy “greedy, profit-obsessed” A's product when she could buy “greedy, profit-obsessed” B's for 27 percent less? If women replaced all the non-union men at General Motors this afternoon, the auto maker would be in the black tomorrow morning. And it would drive its competitors out of the market.

2. WHEREAS women are often segregated in caring and service work for low pay, much like the housework they are expected to do for no pay at home...

"Often segregated...” implies that when women apply for a job outside the caring and service industries, they are often discriminatorily denied that job and forced to accept “caring and service work for low pay.”

What NOW ignores: Men, too, says Warren Farrell, are often discriminatorily denied a job, such as dental hygienist, nursery school teacher, cocktail waiter, and any of many other job categories reserved for women. Worse, after being denied one of these jobs, many of the men, unlike women, are forced to accept work that is often not only low-paying but also dangerous. Of the 25 most dangerous jobs listed by the U.S. Department of Labor, according to Farrell, men occupy between 90 percent and 100 percent of them. As a result, of the nearly 100,000 American workers who died from job-related injuries over the past 15 years, 95 percent of them were men. If women represented 95 percent of the workplace deaths, ideological feminists' — and the media's — explosive outrage would have produced programs to close the “gender workplace death gap” 20 years ago. But because this death gap affects virtually only men, both feminists and the media give it little or no thought. Clearly, they value women's wages more than they do men's lives, the lives of our fathers, brothers, uncles, nephews, and sons. This partly explains why there is no Male Death and Injury Recognition Day.

As for a woman being discriminatorily denied a job, she knows full-well she can sue the employer. She also knows she can solicit NOW to put on additional heat publicly to embarrass the employer into complying with NOW's agenda — a tactic long-used by NOW.

What NOW ignores in “...the housework they are expected to do for no pay at home...”: When NOW makes such fatuous statements, I lose, hard as I try not to, even the tiniest shred of respect that I may have had for the organization.

First, bear in mind two important aphorisms dispensed often by CBS's women-embraced “Dr. Phil.” The aphorisms no doubt threaten NOW's most cherished tenet — that in our “oppressive patriarchy” all women are powerless in all areas all the time (and therefore should be given everything gratis, should be given rights but not held responsible). The aphorisms:

No one can control you without your permission.

No one does anything with a pay-off.

So...do husbands expect their wife to do the housework? Yes, many do. But for every man who does, a woman expects her husband to do the income work.

Unmarried women, too, expect things of men. Even high-earning single women often expect their date, even one earning less than they, to pick them up, then pick up the tab for dinner and everything else during the evening. This female expectation signals that single women expect men to pay all the expenses, and that they believe “My money is mine and yours is ours.” Once married, a woman is apt to expect her husband to be the primary payer/provider.

“A female lawyer I know — who earns close to a quarter million dollars a year and still insists men she sees pay for meals — explained it to me. 'I want to know they value me,' she says. 'It makes me feel like he's a man, and I'm a woman.'” More...

And for every wife who is expected to make up for her husband's unequal homemaking, a husband is expected to make up for his wife's unequal money making.

What NOW ignores in “...for no pay at home”: Is NOW suggesting that stay-at-home wives, who it says do domestic chores “for free,” should be paid for doing them? That suggestion seems also to be made by NOW's New Jersey chapter: “Young women want to have options when it comes to raising our children — options that are not limited to 'career oriented' and 'stay-at-home mom.' We want our government and our employers to support us socially and economically in these family options, and not just pay lip service to the wonderful role of motherhood.” (Stress mine.)

Assume NOW does want stay-at-home moms to be paid for choosing domestic work over employed work. (See Amy Fried's commentary .) Who does it think should pay them? Since NOW appears to be as much socialist as feminist, it must think the task of remunerating these wives should fall to the government. (And what about single men and women who must do ALL of the housework? Does NOW think they, too, should be paid for doing their own domestic chores?)

Suppose the government did cave into NOW and began paying women for their domestic labor. Obviously, it would have to pay them enough to live decently (a “living wage”), and would have to give them regular cost-of-living raises. If the government announced it was going to do this, millions of working wives might immediately quit their job and join the formerly “unpaid” wives, tickled pink to be paid a nice salary to stay at home and do the domestic chores NOW has condemned for decades as oppressive and demeaning. (Such condemnations, I suspect, increased husbands' aversion to picking up the slack!) The result? A gender labor segregation by government fiat! The very segregation NOW opposes!

If in fact NOW does think the government should pay wives for doing their domestic chores, does it also think the government should pay husbands for doing theirs, such as handling the finances, doing the yard work — mowing, raking, fertilizing, climbing trees to trim branches, etc., risking injury and death — and repairing the plumbing, the family cars, the appliances, the computers, the children's bicycles? Somehow I doubt it.

By saying “...for no pay at home,” Now ignores a painfully manifest fact: Stay-at-home wives do get paid for doing housework — by their husbands. Where on earth does NOW think the money comes from to pay for these wives' (and children's) essentials such as food, shelter, and clothing, and for their non-essentials such as dining out, going to the movies, and taking vacations — in short, for a standard of living equal to their husbands' and for options more than equal to their husbands'?

But for the moment, let's loosen our grip on reality and side with NOW. How much, exactly, should a housewife be paid for her domestic labor? We get a clue from NOW's own founding mother, the late Betty Friedan herself: “Housework is peculiarly suited to the capabilities of feeble-minded girls; it can hardly use the abilities of a woman of average or normal human intelligence." Hmm. Maybe husbands or the government should pay stay-at-home wives just three or four bucks a week.

"Many stay-at-home moms I know have the luxury of a nanny, a maid, handy-man, and landscaper." says Laine, Huntsville, Alabama, in Comments at the end of MSNBC's "What's a Mom's Work Worth?"

Even if NOW doesn't go so far as to think the government should directly cut a check to women for staying at home, they want women's domestic work to have economic value that is reflected in Social Security and tax credits. But giving stay-at-home wives these credits can also produce unintended negative consequences. (To see some of the consequences, see the article that says, “Working moms would rightly view [these credits] as unjust favoritism for those who stay home.”) The credits could add to an employed woman's reasons for wanting to put in less time at work and more at home. They might inspire some employed married women to look at stay-at-home wifery as a bona fide career! Hence they would widen the gender wage gap that sends NOW into a storming rage.

3. WHEREAS closing the wage gap between women and men cannot be achieved without revaluing the responsibilities and skills women use in their work compared to what men use in theirs...

What NOW ignores: In truth, closing the wage gap between the sexes cannot be achieved until men stop giving wives the option of earning less than they do, the option of doing unequal money making.

In the past, wives gave their husband the option of doing less housework than they do. But because of NOWesque feminists, many wives, including some of those who don't come close to doing their equal share of income work, complain that their husband doesn't do his equal share of housework. I suspect some see this one issue as reason to head for the divorce court. (Women's feminist-fueled angst over unequal housework is, I believe, one example of why many men reject ideological feminists' assertion that feminism promotes gender harmony.)

As long as a wife works for less pay than the average husband earns, she is not doing her equal share of money-making. She can't be viewed as making an equal contribution, even if she puts in as many hours as her husband. She is similar to, suggests Warren Farrell, the husband who doesn't do his equal share of domestic chores if he spends all his equal domestic-work time baking cakes....

You may now understand that “women's 73 cents to men's dollar” has a much more complicated cause than NOW's simplistic “discrim- ination against women.”  Yet NOW continues to cling to this simple explanation, but for a remedy, it prescribes the incredibly complex pay equity.

And it is this complexity of pay equity that would, by all objective accounts, wreak havoc on employers.

NOW would have better luck with a prohibition on men supporting wives. "Without husbands," says Warren Farrell, "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." If men were prohibited from supporting women, every unemployed wife would have to scramble for a job and millions of employed women for a better one. And how would this prohibition effect men? Millions would no longer feel the need to compete so ruthlessly at work. When men compete in this way, many experience a diminished capacity to empathize and nurture. They are less able to become the loving fathers they may want to be, the fathers many feminists say men aren't capable of being and thus conclude that divorcing mothers should always be awarded the kids in a divorce. (Some of these same feminists also say men should not always be awarded the best jobs). Millions of men would no longer seek a high-paying job to gain society's respect and 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 close with a thunderous clap. An ideological feminist fantasy come true!

Although such a prohibition would of course never be proposed, let alone enacted, it strikes me as less destructive than pay equity. (For a few examples of pay equity's destructive effects, refer to the above Humanist article.)

What NOW ignores in “revaluing the responsibilities and skills women use in their work compared to what men use in theirs”: In this, NOW expresses the core issue of pay equity. It wants “female” jobs to be “revalued” so that they are considered just as important and valuable — code for “paid the same” — as “comparable” jobs held by men. (Again, refer to my Humanist article.)

4. WHEREAS underpaying women is a massive subsidy to employers that is both sexist and racist

This mindlessly rehashes NOW's false contention that employers, despite the 40-year-old law requiring equal pay for equal work, pay women less than men for the same work. See response to number 1 above...

What NOW ignores: NOW proclaims, “Employers have for four decades gotten away with disobeying the equal-pay law.” It's as if, say, GM hires a man and a woman on the same day to work side by side on the assembly line doing the exact same thing, and pays him $20 per hour and pays her $15. (Is NOW saying women are stupid?) Question for NOW: If equal pay can't be enforced, how will the more complicated and costly pay equity?

5. WHEREAS by opposing pay equity in international forums, the US government encourages multinational corporations to underpay women everywhere in the global economy...

In other words, the U.S. government won't jump on NOW's band wagon and promote an unfeasible pay concept, so it should be held responsible for “encouraging” multinational corporations to discriminate against women everywhere.... This resonates like a childish guilt ploy to goad the government into coming around to NOW's way of thinking. But the government isn't responsible for what multinational corporations do. These corporations are free to pay wages according to local supply and demand, a concept NOW apparently does not grasp and rejects as discriminatory.

6. WHEREAS all women, particularly mothers, who do the vital but unpaid job of caring for children and/or other dependents, are penalized by getting the lowest pay when they go out to work and are discriminated against in such areas as pensions, health care, and social security credits, among others...

See my responses that already address women's “unpaid” labor.

Men, too, are “penalized” in these ways when they make the choice to leave the money-making to their wife. As for health care, if women face bias in this area, why do they have a longer average life span than men? Why do men on average die sooner of the 10 leading causes of death, including heart disease, stroke, and cancer?

And why are men's pensions bigger on average than women's? One big reason: In 2003, one in five men 65 and older was part of the labor force, compared to only one in ten women. As a group, women, who live longer, retire sooner. The earlier one retires -- need I say it? --  the smaller one's pension, 401(K)s, and benefits!

7. WHEREAS pay equity is a major step toward revaluing all women’s work, raising all women's wages and status, and establishing all women's entitlements...

Again, a rewording of what NOW has said before.

What NOW ignores: All the views that oppose pay equity.

If a NOW apparatchik reads beyond the first few paragraphs of this critical look at pay equity, she — or he; Barack Obama, for example — is unlikely to admit where I might be right. Most likely, she will assert, “You won't admit where I am right.” That's not just because ideological, politically active feminists can be as rigid in their thinking as men can be. It's also because we all tend to harbor, as I say at the bottom of my blog, an often deep-seated need to be “right” about our ideas. Or, more accurately, we harbor a deep-seated fear of being seen as “wrong” about our ideas.

This fear usually runs deep and powerful in those who go pubic with their ideas, as NOW leaders do. It is hard for me to imagine that NOW's chief Kim Gandy, perhaps after reading Warren Farrell's Why Men Earn More, would appear on television and declare, “Gee, was I wrong about the gender wage gap!” She knows this is not what her group's rank and file, who generally are steeped in female victimology and have for years been led to believe they can get something (higher pay) for nothing, want to hear. She'd be pilloried and her organization would collapse like a house of cards in a tornado. Moreover, she'd lose her high-status job, her income, and her continual, ego-gratifying moments in the sun while being handled with kid gloves by her handmaidens in the mainstream media. She is like any other public pontificator: trapped in inflexible thinking by her fear of being seen as wrong about her long-postulated ideas.

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So Gandy has no choice, really, except to continue keeping the strange-headed monster of pay equity alive and well fed.

And that's exactly what NOW has been doing, with zero progress, for at least two decades.

But even if pay equity were implemented today, how soon would the gender wage gap close?

Canada provides a clue:

Ontario’s elementary public school teachers say (February 17, 2008) "even though 20 years have passed [since pay equity legislation was implemented], women in Ontario still earn 29 per cent less than men."

In "Equity law hasn't raised women's pay" (March 12, 2008), Canada's Toronto Star feminist Antonia Zerbisias, who apparently disdains and rejects supply and demand's influence on the sexes' pay, says, "...[W]omen earn 70.5 cents on the man's dollar, down from 72 cents just over 10 years ago." 

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For more on pay equity and the gender wage gap, see:

Warren Farrell on ABC television's "20/20"
Warren Farrell on PBS television's "Unfiltered"
Why Pay Equity Day is Out of Date
Pay Equity Day or Quality of Life Day?

tags: amy fried  womens pay equity  gender wage gap  national organization for women  now  kim gandy  mark bauerlein  ledbetter  fair pay act  

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