Pay Equity

A new book, "Why Men Earn More" by Warren Farrell, looks at a broad array of wage statistics and concludes that, contrary to popular opinion, women earn just as much as men, and sometimes more.

For example:

- Women are 15 times as likely as men to become top executives in major corporations before the age of 40. The glass ceiling is for men only.

- Never-married, college-educated males who work full time make only 85 percent of what comparable women earn. In other words, the supposed “male pay advantage” was really always a “family pay advantage,” an advantage of married men over single men and women recognizing and resulting from their need to support a wife and kids—and their greater workplace stability as a result. Now, all women are paid at the married rate. But men are not.

- Female pay exceeds male pay in more than 80 different fields. If “Equal pay for equal work” is the issue, affirmative action should be introduced to help men. But of course, it has not been.

- Part-time female workers make $1.10 for every $1 earned by part-time males. Women have the advantage at the bottom of the work ladder as well as at the top.

- Even in the early 1980s, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that companies paid men and women equal money when their titles and responsibilities were the same.

- Even in 1969, data from the American Council on Education showed that female professors who had never been married and had never published earned 145 percent of their male counterparts. Women were given an advantage even before the current “affirmative action” regime.

- Even during the 1950s, the gender pay gap for all never-married workers was less than 2 percent, while never-married white women between 45 and 54 earned 106 percent of what their white male counterparts made. There never was a general gender pay gap. It was a married vs. single pay gap.

- Citing Internal Revenue statistics, Farrell notes that women who owntheir own businesses net only 49 percent of what male counterpartsmake. Obviously, bosses cannot be holding women back in such circumstances. This, therefore, is presumably the free market demonstrating the proper pay differential between men and women. That women make more than this demonstrates discrimination against men.

- Women are more likely than men to pick glamorous jobs that pay less. It makes sense. They can afford to consider other things than money, not being normally obliged to support a family, and not having their social worth judged on their earning capacity.

Women have choices. Men do not.