Busting the Wage Gap Myth

Busting the Wage Gap Myth- The Wages of Spin


Pay equity is one of the last battles in a gender war that started with women’s suffrage in the 19th century, and raged through the 60s and 70s. Unfortunately, it is a battle that continues for naught.

All the fighting is predicated on the notion that women earn less than men for the same work. Depending on who you listen to, the actual numbers vary. Back in the 70s, feminists wore "59 cent" pins to protest the fact that a woman earned only 59 cents for every dollar earned by a man. They also protested the "glass ceiling," claiming that women were shut out of the highest rungs on the professional ladder.

The stats are right.  Men do earn more than women.  But that surface reality is clarified when you take a deeper look into the pond.  The numbers are based on a raw average of men’s and women’s income.  Thus a female receptionist who works forty hours per week has her income averaged in with the male CEO of the company she works for, who works seventy hours per week.

Different? Yes. Sex based discrimination? Hardly.  But that is the implication people are given when the faulty methodology that the wage studies use to reach conclusions is intentionally hidden.  That was what happened in the 60s and 70s, and that is what is happening now.

In April of 2007 The American Association of University Women (AAUW), released a study with the following conclusion in the executive summary:

“One year out of college, women working full time earn only 80 percent as much as their male colleagues earn. Ten years after graduation, women fall farther behind, earning only 69 percent as much as men earn.”

So according to the AAUW women have gone from a 59 cent wage gap to a 69 cent wage gap.  But there remains one fundamental problem.  The methodology hasn’t changed.  Please note the very next line from the executive summary.

“Controlling for hours, occupation, parenthood, and other factors normally associated with pay, college-educated women still earn less than their male peers earn.”

Note that they did not say that after controlling for hours and other factors that women still earned only 69 cents for a dollar earned by men, but that they earned less.

In other words, they presented their statistical conclusions without the controls so that misleading statistics would be remembered and passed on to others.  It was a clear act of deception; a distortion fabricated and marketed as science in order to pursue and invalid political agenda.

Naturally, the question arises, if the AAUW and other feminist studies are distorting the facts, then what is the truth?

June O’Neill, former director of the United States Congressional Budget Office, conducted a study of the wage gap allegations.  She found, after controlling for experience, education and number of years on the job, that women earned 98% of what their male counterparts earned.

That is a wage gap of 98 cents to the dollar, or what most statisticians would say is statistically insignificant or within a suitable margin of error to call EQUAL.


That is what the AAUW should have concluded, and would have if they were interested in disseminating accurate information.  But the truth about the wage gap myth undermines the feminist agenda to paint women as victims to the male dominated work place.  Understand that the AAUW and other similar organizations use these results to raise funds and to put themselves in the media limelight.  If there is no problem, and there isn’t, then there is no need to give them money or even to pay attention to them.


While feminists maintain that feminism is about empowering women, we all to often see that the agenda depends on making victims of them, even if those victims need to be fabricated.


We can and should dig into this some more.  It is important to understand much more about why studies indicate a wage gap before the statistics are clarified by considering variables that affect the outcome.

Warren Farrell, Ph.D., the only man ever elected to the National Organization for Women’s national board of directors three times, was one of the early feminists incensed at the alleged pay gap. Dr. Farrell dedicated a great deal of his life to challenging the culture to address this injustice.

Then, one fateful day, he asked himself questions that would change the course of his life and, eventually, convince him to leave that organization, reportedly to the relief of his feminist peers.

He thought, “Wait a minute, if women actually earn only 59 cents for every dollar earned by a man for the same work, why wouldn’t companies only hire women? Wouldn’t they be able to produce products much cheaper than companies that employ men, and put the competition out of business?"

He spent the next several years in painstaking research of the subject, and came to a conclusion that has been verified as many times as it has been ignored.

Women make less money because of their choices, not because of discrimination.

When given the choice between more money or a better quality of life, women are much more likely than men to choose quality of life. Women work fewer hours per week than men on average, take more time off, and frequently choose to put family and personal life ahead of their jobs. This speaks to their intelligence much more that it does to their status as victim.

Men not only work longer and harder, they are much more likely to choose work that puts them in physical danger, exposes them to the elements, shortens their lifespan and increases the level of job related stress.

These jobs, as a rule, pay better. It is the increased wages of risk and hardship. And the fact that more men than women choose to do those jobs is not a matter of discrimination, except to the extent that we still socialize men much more than women to put themselves on a chopping block for a paycheck.

And this illustrates a concept of Farrell’s seldom mentioned when discussing matters of pay inequity and glass ceilings.

The glass cellar.

At the very bottom of the employment ladder are the death jobs. Police work, fire fighting, construction, truck driving, commercial fishing, manual labor and other jobs that form the backbone of our civilization. They are also the most dangerous and life diminishing professions imaginable. All of them are as male dominated as the halls of power.

And they point to something many may not want to hear. Pay equity for women is found not in board rooms and corner offices, but behind the wheel of a semi, driving forty tons of steel through an icy mountain pass in January. Inclusion and parity is in the blistered hands that hold shovels and hammers; in the Bering Sea, laboring like a dog in unthinkable cold and fifty foot swells; in facing down sociopaths with knives in the darkened back alleys of urban America.

These realities call on us to examine a truth that many don’t want to utter in today’s politically correct culture.  But it is the truth nonetheless.

If you want to get paid like a man, you have to work like one.

Sometimes, real justice is a real surprise, and equality, though noble and just, a step down.