Say Anything Blog

The problem, of course, is that pay should be set by what workers (including women) are willing to accept for compensation and not what the government thinks they should earn.

And, frankly, a lot of women just aren’t worth as much compensation as men.

Before the torch-wielding feminists attack me, let’s remember that a lot of women take career paths that make them worth less to employers than men.  Warren Farrel, a former board member of the New York Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and author of Why Men Earn More, pointed out in his book 25 decisions that women make which impact their pay.

Among those decisions?  Staying home with children.  Staying home with sick family.  Women, in general, tend to log fewer hours in the office than men do.  Women also choose to work at less dangerous jobs (9 out of 10 workplace deaths happen to men) and often drop out of the workplace for months, or even years, due to pregnancy.  Also, women are less likely to take jobs that require a lot of travel, require them to work outside or require them to move.

And then there’s the fact that women tend to be motivated in their careers differently than men.  According once again to Mr. Farrel:

A 2001 survey of business owners with M.B.A.s conducted by the Rochester Institute of Technology found that money was the primary motivator for only 29% of women, versus 76% of men. Women prioritized flexibility, fulfillment, autonomy and safety.

In short, the gender wage gap is not driven by some widespread anti-female conspiracy but rather decisions women themselves make.  If anything the wage gap cuts the other way as, according to studies, when women make the same choices men make in their careers they tend to get paid more than men:

But what happens when women make the same lucrative decisions typically made by men? The good news--for women, at least: Women actually earn more. For example, when a male and a female civil engineer both stay with their respective companies for ten years, travel and relocate equally and take the same career risks, the woman ends up making more. And among workers who have never been married and never had children, women earn 117% of what men do. (This factors in education, hours worked and age.)

At the end of the day the question we need to ask ourselves is this: Do we really believe that rational employers across the nation are choosing men to do jobs that women could do even though those men cost them more in wages?

There’s no conspiracy.  Just another victim’s group trying to leverage entitlements out of the government.