Independent Women's Forum - Research Areas > Wage Gap

More on Equal Pay Day

info@iwf.org (Allison Kasic) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 09:56:00 EDT

Over at Human Events, Jessica Peck Corry of the Independence Institute looks at factors that often get overlooked when talking about the "wage gap":

Women earn less largely because we have the luxury of decisions that men generally can only dream of. We work less hours in the average work week, we are more likely to take time off to have kids or care for aging parents, and we choose lower paying fields requiring less formal education. Oh, and we're less far less likely to be killed at work, a little detail often neglected at the NCPE.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, men are much more likely to suffer fatal workplace injuries than women. According to 2006 BLS statistics, the most recent year available, 428 American women were killed on the job. Compare this with the 5,275 men who lost their lives.

The reason: Men take more dangerous, laborious, and physically demanding jobs, and they are compensated heavily for taking such positions. According to the BLS, the most deadly fields for 2006 were those heavily dominated by men, including logging, mining, waste management, law enforcement, construction, and transportation projects.

Conversely, as the BLS statistics demonstrated, the fields with the lowest death rates, including education and social services, are female-dominated. Ultimately, the average man is more willing than the average woman to spend his days inside dark mines to extract coal.

Read more here. IWF materials on this subject here and here.

The Steve Largent Show: Equal Pay Day No More

info@iwf.org (Carrie L. Lukas) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:43:00 EDT

Carrie Lukas disscusses the social relevance of Equal Pay Day on The Steve Largent Show.

Equal Pay Day No More

info@iwf.org (Stacy Chin) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:03:00 EDT

Listen to Allison Kasic and Carrie Lukas discuss the social relevance of Equal Pay Day here.

IWF Podcast: Equal Pay Day No More

info@iwf.org (Allison Kasic) info@iwf.org (Carrie L. Lukas) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:59:00 EDT

IWF's Allison Kasic and Carrie Lukas discuss the social relevance of Equal Pay Day.

Radio America: The G. Gordon Liddy Show

info@iwf.org (Carrie L. Lukas) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:28:00 EDT

IWF's Carrie Lukas on The G. Gordon Liddy Show, discussing more on Equal Pay Day.

Is Equal Pay Day Still Relevant?

info@iwf.org (Stacy Chin) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:22:00 EDT

IWF's Carrie Lukas describes why Equal Pay Day has lost its relevance in today's Baltimore Examiner.

Political experts have just begun to analyze why Sen. Hillary Clinton, considered a shoo-in for her party's nomination just a few months ago, lags behind Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries. Surely one factor has been that compared with the fresh-faced Illinois senator, Clinton seems like an anachronism. She may as well be wearing horn-rimmed glasses and bell bottoms as she attempts to rally the sisterhood to join her in the cause of electing the first female president.

The problem for Clinton is that most women today don't think in terms of gender solidarity. Women take for granted our access to education and job opportunities. The steady march of women into positions of political power reassures most that, regardless of the fate of her candidacy, it's only a matter of time before we have a woman in the Oval Office.

The Ron Smith Show: Equal Pay Day No More

info@iwf.org (Carrie L. Lukas) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:29:00 EDT

IWF's Carrie Lukas on The Ron Smith Show discussing Equal Pay Day.

The Andy Caldwell Show: Equal Pay Day No More

info@iwf.org (Carrie L. Lukas) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:31:00 EDT

Carrie Lukas disscusses the social relevance of Equal Pay Day on The Andy Caldwell Show.

The Thom Hartmann Show Equal Pay Day No More

info@iwf.org (Carrie L. Lukas) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:22:00 EDT

IWF's Carrie Lukas on Air America's The Thom Hartmann Show discussing Equal Pay Day on Tuesday, April 22, 2008.

Equal Pay Day has lost relevance

info@iwf.org (Carrie L. Lukas) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:14:00 EDT

The Baltimore Examiner

Political experts have just begun to analyze why Sen. Hillary Clinton, considered a shoo-in for her party's nomination just a few months ago, lags behind Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries. Surely one factor has been that compared with the fresh-faced Illinois senator, Clinton seems like an anachronism. She may as well be wearing horn-rimmed glasses and bell bottoms as she attempts to rally the sisterhood to join her in the cause of electing the first female president.

The problem for Clinton is that most women today don't think in terms of gender solidarity. Women take for granted our access to education and job opportunities. The steady march of women into positions of political power reassures most that, regardless of the fate of her candidacy, it's only a matter of time before we have a woman in the Oval Office.

Other dealers in gender grievance face a similar challenge. Tuesday, April 22, has been labeled "Equal Pay Day" by old-school feminist groups: By their logic, it's the day that women finally get to stop working to make up for last year's pay discrimination. They will issue news releases containing the same statements about the need for more government oversight to end this unfairness.

Yet few people actually believe this rhetoric. The statistic that women make about 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man has been ingrained into public consciousness, but most people intuitively understand discrimination isn't solely to blame; something else is going on.

And in fact, studies of pay differentials reveal that it's not discrimination, but the choices men and women make, that are the primary cause of the wage gap. The wage gap statistic comes from the Department of Labor's comparison of the median income of a full-time working woman with that of a full-time working man, and it regularly shows that women make about 80 percent of what men make. But this statistic fails to take into account critical factors, such as occupation, number of years and hours worked, and education.

For example, in addition to taking more time out of the labor force, full-time working women spend less time at their jobs than their male counterparts. According to the Department of Labor, women spend .7 hours a day less in the office than men do. Should it be a surprise that an extra 3.5 hours a week at work result in higher pay?

Even a study done by Equal Pay Day sponsors like the American Association of University Women found that three-quarters of the pay gap disappears by controlling for hours, occupation and other factors that affect earnings.

Might discrimination account for some of the remaining gap? Absolutely, but other explanations are also worth considering. For example, research conducted by a professor at Carnegie Mellon University found that women are less likely than men to negotiate their starting salary and to ask for raises. The differences that result are significant over a worker's lifetime and would clearly affect statistics like the wage gap.

It helps women to hear that fact and to appreciate the importance of negotiating salary. As a result, we can push ourselves to be our own advocate and take care to teach our daughters to be comfortable talking about money and valuing their time.

If feminism's goal remains to empower women, then events like Equal Pay Day, which rest on inflated statistics about the extent of sex discrimination, are counterproductive. Far from empowering, convincing women we are victims disguises the real choices we face and the power we have. Armed with knowledge about how decisions about our work life affect our lifetime earnings, women still may opt for careers that provide greater flexibility and personal satisfaction over money, but we will feel better knowing that it was our choice, not a conspiracy against us.

Thankfully, most American women are too busy living their lives to worry about fighting the gender wars of the past. That may not be welcome news to Hillary Clinton, but it should be to the rest of us.

Equal Pay Day has lost relevance

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:29:00 EDT

Equal Pay Day is held annually in April to signify the point into a year that a woman must work to earn what a man made the previous year. According to the 2006 Census Bureau, women on average earn 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts however, Carrie Lukas, vice president of policy and economics for the Independent Women's Forum, has an op-ed in today's Baltimore Examiner debunking the myth that discrimination is the cause of the wage gap. As Lukas describes, it's women like her who take into account many factors--not just salary--when pursuing jobs that cause this statistical discrepancy.

Excerpt:

Political experts have just begun to analyze why Sen. Hillary Clinton, considered a shoo-in for her party's nomination just a few months ago, lags behind Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries. Surely one factor has been that compared with the fresh-faced Illinois senator, Clinton seems like an anachronism. She may as well be wearing horn-rimmed glasses and bell bottoms as she attempts to rally the sisterhood to join her in the cause of electing the first female president.

The problem for Clinton is that most women today don't think in terms of gender solidarity. Women take for granted our access to education and job opportunities. The steady march of women into positions of political power reassures most that, regardless of the fate of her candidacy, it's only a matter of time before we have a woman in the Oval Office.

Read the complete article here.

To interview Carrie Lukas or Allison Kasic, please call Carol Eberly at 202-349-5882 or carol.eberly@iwf.org.

How is your school celebrating women's history month?

info@iwf.org (Allison Kasic) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:20:00 EDT

Jenna Ashley Robinson of The Pope Center for Higher Education reports on the following activity at the University of North Carolina:

I was torn. The cookies at the Gender Gap Bake Sale looked delicious, and I could buy one for only 75 cents. That's because I am a woman. Men had to pay $1 each. Trouble is, it would have violated my sense of justice; getting a cheaper cookie struck me as a handout or maybe a sly trick to get my consent to policies to raise women's wages. I considered paying full price but I didn't want to cause a scene. So I walked by.

The bake sale sponsored by the Women's Center at UNC-Chapel Hill was designed to raise awareness about the discrepancy between women's and men's wages. In 2005, women in the United States earned about 77 percent of what men earned, on average.

More info here.

Trouble is, the premise of the bake sale is bunk, as explained here by IWF's Carrie Lukas. More IWF commentary on the wage gap is available here.

Thomas Sowell on Higher Education

info@iwf.org (Allison Kasic) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:50:00 EST

National Review's website has featured a series of interviews with Thomas Sowell this week. In the third installment, Peter Robinson and Sowell discuss several issues pertaining to higher education including grade inflation, the problems associated with faculty tenure, and the lack of market forces within the academy. It's well worth a watch.

The video is available here.

Update: The rest of the series is great, too. Part onedeals with women in the workplace (note that Sowell's research shows, as IWF has said for years, that the key variable in women obtaining high level positions is child rearing, not discrimination as the wage gap theorists claim), part two deals with income levels and social mobility, part four tackles more issues pertaining to higher education including the price of tuition, and the final installment deals with fallacies associated with race.

CNBC: Gender Wage Gap - Myth or Reality?

info@iwf.org (Carrie L. Lukas) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:49:00 EST

IWF Policy Brief #4: Eliminating the Wage Cap Won't Fix Social Security

info@iwf.org (Carrie L. Lukas) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 18:43:00 EDT

Executive Summary

In a recent op-ed, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) suggested that policymakers should consider eliminating the wage cap on Social Security payroll taxes in order to solve the program's looming financial crisis.i However, eliminating the wage cap will not meaningfully change Social Security's financial problems, and it would be a significant tax increase on millions of working Americans and small businesses.

Social Security's financial problems stem from its system of financing. Payroll taxes collected from current workers are immediately used to pay benefits. Nothing is saved for future benefits. Due to changes in lifespan and birthrates, there are fewer and fewer workers paying benefits to support each retiree. As a result, in ten years, Social Security taxes won't be enough to pay all promised benefits.

Simply raising taxes or reducing benefits won't fix Social Security's underlying problem. As long as Social Security uses this "pay-as-you-go" system of financing it will always be vulnerable to demographic changes. The only way to make Social Security truly financially secure is to pre-fund future benefits through a system of personal retirement accounts.

KARN Mid-Morning Show: Wages, Education, and Energy

info@iwf.org (Michelle D. Bernard) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:34:00 EDT

IWF President and CEO Michelle D. Bernard joins the KARN radio program, Mid Morning Show to address common social "myths" related to wages, education and energy issues.

Do you want to get rich or maintain the patriarchy?

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Hays) — Tue, 08 May 2007 15:31:00 EDT

Commentator Ashley Herzog planned to sit out Equal Pay Day this year. But so many dumb things have been said that Herzog could not hold her tongue. I'm glad because she really nails it:

"First, the belief that employers get away with paying women 77 percent of what men make can only be explained by a lack of understanding of basic economic principles. If it were true, money-grubbing employers would hire only women, since it would lower costs and increase profits. We know that doesn"t happen, so feminists have invented a preposterous explanation: male businessmen care so much about keeping women 'in their place' that they're willing to lose money by hiring men. Is it just me, or do people like Donald Trump seem slightly more concerned with getting rich than maintaining patriarchy? Already, the pay gap theory has serious flaws...

"What women's studies majors who lament about the pay gap don't realize is that they're contributing to it. According to economist June O'Neill, a major reason women make less than men is that they often choose college majors in lower-paying 'humanities' fields, such as education, journalism, English and social work, while men are more attracted to high-paying fields like business and engineering. If women's studies majors are so outraged by the pay gap, maybe they should all drop out and enroll in the College of Engineering. That act alone would do much more to close the pay gap than blaming sexism.'"

Comparable Worth: Upping the Ante

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:02:00 EDT

Although the Equal Pay Act of 1963 already requires equal pay for equal work, presidential candidate Obama wants more. Thus he is co-sponsoring the Fair Pay Act, which calls for equal pay for "equivalent" jobs, however that is to be interpreted. Compared to this bill, Senator Clinton’s Paycheck Fairness Act is restrained. It directs the secretary of labor to "develop guidelines to enable employers to evaluate job categories." Employers would not be made to comply with the guidelines, although they would certainly be pressured to do so. Burdensome as these provisions are, the Fair Pay Act is worse.

Writing in The New York Sun, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a former economist at the U.S. Department of Labor and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, goes to the heart of the matter:

"Comparable worth" is based on an assumption that women are inferior and weak, chronic victims, and unable to succeed on their own, and so need government wage protection. [Obama's bill] may get more female votes in Iowa, the first 2008 battleground - but he demonstrates lack of judgment as a presidential candidate.

Why women don't need the ERA...

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Hays) — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:27:00 EDT

Eleanor Smeal and Martha Burke have a piece in today's Washington Post explaining why we need to pass the Equal Rights Amendment:

"Why is the amendment needed? Twenty-three countries -- including Sri Lanka and Moldova -- have smaller gender gaps in education, politics and health than the United States, according to the World Economic Forum. We are 68th in the world in women's participation in national legislatures. On average, a woman working full time and year-round still makes only 77 cents to a man's dollar. Women hold 98 percent of the low-paying 'women's' jobs and fewer than 15 percent of the board seats at major corporations. Because their private pensions -- if they have them at all -- are lower and because Social Security puts working women at a disadvantage and grants no credit for years spent at home caring for children or aging parents, three-quarters of the elderly in poverty are women. And in every state except Montana, women still pay higher rates than similarly situated men for almost all kinds of insurance. All that could change if we put equal rights for women in our Constitution."

There are numerous flaws in all the "facts" cited to justify the ERA. The wage gap, for example, almost vanishes if the right data is fed into the factoring. (See below, the item on comparable worth.) Young women now outnumber young men on college campuses.

We have a female Speaker of the House and a woman is running for president. I can't believe that women are better off in the 67 countries, whatever they are, that have a larger percentage of women as national legislators. Social Security is garnered from our wages, and, if people such as the authors want to change this, there must be a thoroughgoing debate about Social Security and the solvency of the program.

I can't speak to insurance issues, but I'll bet the rates, if the information cited in the op-ed is accurate, are based on actuarial figures rather than any anti-woman bias.

Is comparable worth really good for women?

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Hays) — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:54:00 EDT

I just realized that I am following Carrie Lukas on Diana Furchgott-Roth's excellent piece in which she explains what adopting Senator Barack Obama's position on comparable worth would mean. Since Carrie and I chose to highlight some of the same and some different quotes in Diana's piece, I am going to leave this up. Her summary of Senator Obama's position is so exquisitely clear:

"But Mr. Obama wants still more [than was mandated by the Equal Pay Act of 1963], and he is a co-sponsor of the Fair Pay Act, proposed by Senator Harkin of Iowa. It calls for equal pay for ‘equivalent' jobs, whatever that means. Section 3 (a) prohibits employers from paying women in female-dominated occupations salaries different from those paid men in male-dominated occupations, unless ‘a differential is based on a bona fide factor ... such as education, training, or experience. ...'

I failed to grasp in a previous post the difference between Senator Clinton's stand and Obama's approach to the subject. Furchtgott-Roth explains:

"Compared to the Harkin bill, Mrs. Clinton's Paycheck Fairness Act is restrained. It instructs the secretary of labor to ‘develop guidelines to enable employers to evaluate job categories.' Employers would not be required to comply with the guidelines, although surely there would be pressure to do so. Onerous as these provisions are, the Fair Pay Act goes further.

"Consider a large firm such as Exxon. Would it have to pay clerical workers, mostly women, as much as it pays refinery hands, mostly men? With such ‘equality,' who would be willing to work at the distant, more dangerous jobs in the refinery?...

"Into how many categories would the commission divide hospital jobs? Bank jobs? Insurance jobs? Would employers with, say, 40 employees split themselves into two companies to escape the paperwork? Wages change constantly and job classifications are imperfect, and can be changed. Employers might not know the race and national origin of workers, and workers might not want to be asked."

Furchtgott-Roth was coauthor of Women's Figures, an important IWF publication on the subject of the so-called wage gap (which almost vanishes when the proper data is fed into the equation). In today's piece, Furchtgott-Roth notes:

"Some women are paid less than some men because of the choices they make about field of study, occupation, and time out of the work force for child-raising. Compared to men, women tend to choose more college majors in the lower-paid humanities rather than in the sciences. Men and women who choose computer science and engineering have higher incomes.
"Women take time out of the work force to have children and care for them; some choose jobs with more pleasant working conditions, fewer hours, or more flexible schedules. Employees who stop working for a while for any reason miss out on promotions and raises that others get.
"Although Congress has not enacted comparable worth, a few states, such as Washington and Minnesota, have done so on state and local government operations. The extra funding for increased women's salaries comes from the taxpayers and does not cause the governmental entity to go out of business. Requiring private businesses to adopt comparable worth would raise costs of hiring, hurting women's opportunities."

The Return of Comparable Worth

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:50:00 EDT

Some Democratic politicians are attempting to appeal to women by resurrecting one of the worst policy ideas in recent history: comparable worth. As the Hudson Institute's Diana Furchtgott-Roth describes in today's New York Sun, this policy would have bureaucrats assigning wages to various job sectors to the great detriment of the economy:

[This legislation] instructs the secretary of labor to "develop guidelines to enable employers to evaluate job categories." Employers would not be required to comply with the guidelines, although surely there would be pressure to do so. Onerous as these provisions are, the Fair Pay Act goes further.
Consider a large firm such as Exxon. Would it have to pay clerical workers, mostly women, as much as it pays refinery hands, mostly men? With such "equality," who would be willing to work at the distant, more dangerous jobs in the refinery?
Mr. Harkin's bill would require the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to define male- and female-dominated occupations and review wage reports of firms with more than 25 employees, "including information with respect to the sex, race, and national origin of employees at each wage rate in each classification, position, job title, or other wage group."
Into how many categories would the commission divide hospital jobs? Bank jobs? Insurance jobs? Would employers with, say, 40 employees split themselves into two companies to escape the paperwork? Wages change constantly and job classifications are imperfect, and can be changed. Employers might not know the race and national origin of workers, and workers might not want to be asked.
For better or for worse, our economic system rewards workers on the basis of how much employers are willing to pay for their service. There is no other measure of a job's "inherent value."

She continues:

Although Congress has not enacted comparable worth, a few states, such as Washington and Minnesota, have done so on state and local government operations. The extra funding for increased women's salaries comes from the taxpayers and does not cause the governmental entity to go out of business. Requiring private businesses to adopt comparable worth would raise costs of hiring, hurting women�s opportunities.
"Comparable worth" is based on an assumption that women are inferior and weak, chronic victims, and unable to succeed on their own, and so need government wage protection.

Clearly, women and men are better off when the market determines wages. After all, we all know that how much a job pays isn't the only factor that we consider when we assess potential job opportunities. We all consider other factors like the number the hours of work, if we personally will find the work interesting, how long our commute will be, the amount of travel required, the workplace environment, the dress code, the potential for advancement, the flexibility, and many others. No one can know how much value any individual places on each of those attributes, which is why we need to let individuals-not the government-sort it out.

Would I ask my lawyer for a raise?

info@iwf.org (Charlotte Hays) — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:43:00 EDT

Democrats are debating whether the blog Firedoglake-you know the pro-Lamont blog that that made racially-charged slurs against Joe Lieberman-was the wisest venue for Hillary Clinton's posting on the so-called Equal Pay Day.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama seized upon Equal Pay Day to jump on the comparable worth bandwagon. Mickey Kaus says best:

"Dealbreaker: Obama has apparently just endorsed one of the worst ideas of Carter era liberalism, 'comparable worth,' which would have lawyers and judges deciding what every job is 'worth' according to some bureaucratic, non-market criteria that would inevitably punish 'unskilled' manual work--i.e, the very workers who are screwed the most by globalization. Are truckdrivers really paid too much? ... [You are just refighting the battles of the '80s--ed Hard to avoid when the '80s keep coming back.] ... Too bad neoliberalism is dead, or else there might be some Democrats pointing out what a dreadful, recycled idea this is."

Kaus seems to think that Hillary doesn't go as far as Obama. You be the judge. Maybe she's content with collecting data and intimidating employees with legal threats.

Here is a better take on the pay equity issue by IWF's Carrie Lukas.

Equal Pay Day

info@iwf.org (Allison Kasic) — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 11:16:00 EDT

On "Equal Pay Day" IWF's Carrie Lukas takes aim at a wage discrepancy that you may not have heard of:

"Department of Labor statistics that show the wage gap among full-time workers reveals a gap among those who work part-time. But this time it's the men who are the victims. The median male part-time worker makes about 90 percent of the earnings of the median part-time woman. Their 'Equal Pay Day' would fall in mid-February, not April, but the concept is the same.

"Men who are enthused by things like Equal Pay Day rallies should demand answers: Why are men who work part-time being targeted for discrimination? They should picket the Department of Labor and demand that officials contact the biggest employers of part-time workers; investigations must be made into the roots of the anti-male bias that motivates their payment practices.

"Of course, this won't happen. And most people who learn of this statistic will intuitively sense that there must be some explanation more benign than discrimination. By thinking of the individuals you know and using your common sense, you can come up with many other factors that might contribute to this outcome. Many part-time workers are young. For many, their part-time job may also be their first job. Yet we also know that many women who have previously spent years in the workforce later seek out part-time employment, particularly when they have young children.

"The Department of Labor's data confirms these presumptions. Seventy percent of women working part-time are over age 25, compared to less than half of part-time men. It's no surprise that the female part-time workers, who are older and more experienced, would make more than their male colleagues.

"Yet someone who looked simply at the discrepancy between the wages earned by male and female part-time workers might conclude that these men were victims of discrimination. That would be a mistake, and it's exactly what happens in the national conversation about the wage gap among full-time workers."

Check out the whole article here.

Is it time to pass the ERA?

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EDT

The Sioux City Journal

by Micahel McNeil

Time-warping Teddy Kennedy wants Americans to relive the 70s by way of the Equal Rights Amendment. House and Senate Democrats reintroduced the measure (March 27th) under a new name -- the Women's Equality Amendment and vowed to bring it to a vote in both chambers by the end of the session. This newly elected Congress is full of fresh ideas aren't they?

To fully appreciate this debate, one should immerse themselves in the era first. So, feel free to get comfortable in a bean bag chair and turn on the lava lamp. While you're at it, go grab a can of Billy Beer from the kitchen, complete with Avocado Green and Harvest Gold appliances. Call your girlfriend over for a lively ERA discussion and ask her to wear those bell-bottoms and tube top that you love. Complete the mood by popping in a Mott the Hoople 8-track and admiring your Pet Rock. Right on, man! Have a nice day.

Democrats have misread the November election results as a mandate to rekindle their youth and their "anti-establishment" glory days of the early 70s. The anti-Iraq war stance is reminiscent of the anti-Vietnam message. The chatter immediately after the elections of Bush impeachment took them back to Nixon and Watergate. Now, they are trying to breathe life into the corpse of the ERA. What's next? Another push to legalize marijuana?

Turn the page, please. The original ERA died for a reason. Many reasons actually. The first of which is the myth of pay inequality between the sexes. The often misused Labor Department stat showing the median wage of women is 77 cents compared to a man's dollar is misleading. A column by Carrie Lukas in the April 2nd Washington Post illustrates this nicely. In it, she writes about how the figure ignores seniority, hours worked, occupation, etc. Also, how surveys have shown for years that women tend to avoid jobs that require relocation, take more time off, spend less time in the office, and how "men disproportionately take on the dirtiest, most dangerous and depressing jobs".

It also died because the sugar coated Equal Rights sound bites can't explain away the downright scary consequences if passed. The very pro-ERA Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote a book titled, "Sex Bias in the U.S. Code" in which she details what would change with the passage of the ERA. A summary of the book's findings is found at Eagle Forum's website (an organization founded by ERA opponent and conservative icon Phylis Schlafly). The following excerpts should give you pause. "Women must be drafted into the military when men are drafted. Government must provide comprehensive child care. The age of consent for sex must be lowered to age 12. Bigamy laws would become unconstitutional. Same sex marriage must be legalized. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts must be sex-integrated. Mother's Day and Father's Day must not be separate holidays."

The opportunity to legislate from the bench would be enormous. The passage of the ERA is an activist judge's dream. It's also a pipe dream of liberal Congress members and radical left wing apologists. It's the last gasp of a generation longing to recapture their youth. The bill has no legs and has the staying power of a "dead cat bounce". For the sake of America, Keep On Truckin' and relive the 70s on your own time.

Michael McNeil is a free-lance writer from Dakota City.

Economics expert says gender wage gap not the result of male bias

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EDT

By Jim Brow
OneNewsNow.com

A spokeswoman for the Independent Women's Forum (IWF), a conservative women's group, says protests against the supposed "wage gap" between men and women are much ado about nothing.

Today feminists will be observing "Equal Pay Day" by holding a rally on Capitol Hill. And last month, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York) bemoaned the fact that women make "just 77 cents for every dollar that a man makes" and reintroduced the Paycheck Fairness Act. The bill would require employers to prove that wage disparities between men and women are not a result of gender discrimination.

Carrie Lukas is vice president for policy and economics at the Independent Women's Forum and the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism (Regnery, 2006). She says the statistic cited by Senator Clinton does not tell the whole story.

"The simple truth is that women often make very different decisions about their careers than men make," Lukas contends. "Women take off more time to care for children; we gravitate toward different careers -- careers that provide some flexibility so we have more time to spend with families. And even full-time working women on average spend about a half-an-hour less per day in the office than men do."

The IWF spokeswoman says she is "a perfect example" of how some of the pay-gap issues work. "I'm a full-time worker, but I've traded compensation in order to work full-time from home," she notes. "I've got a little daughter and another one on the way. Am I making as much money as I could? No, but I'm compensated by having this wonderful work arrangement where I get to work flexible hours."

That 77-cent wage discrepancy between men and women does not take into account the many factors by which women are paid, Lukas contends. She says women can make different choices if higher pay is what they are looking for, but giving the government more power to end the wage disparity between men and women "may in fact exacerbate some of the challenges women face."