WILLFUL
IGNORANCE IN WAGE GAP DISCUSSION, By Daniel
McLaughlin, 4/11/17
With the official “Equal
Pay Day” behind us, we have heard over and over that woman workers in America
earn significantly less than men do. So much of the discussion embraces a
willful ignorance of important facts and principles that it begs further
insight and a deeper look.
Many writers either
knowingly overstate the case for effect or simply follow the crowd in
unthinking populist fervor. It is certainly true that women, as an aggregate
statistical group, earn significantly less than males earn as an aggregate. For
many activists, those aggregate statistics necessarily imply gross injustice
and a disturbing systemic unfairness that cries for government intervention.
The question that few
people seem even the slightest bit interested in asking and answering is how
valid are aggregate statistics in measuring differences in populations that
have vastly different compositions. There is a mountain of pertinent detail
hidden under the aggregates, so let’s lift the veil a bit and discover. It’s
not very difficult to understand.
There are certain career
paths that earn more money that others. A waitress at a greasy spoon cannot
realistically expect the earnings or benefits of plumbers, construction
managers, or offshore-drilling roustabouts, but more women than men take such
greasy-spoon-waitress and similar jobs, and more men take the others.
As much as
class-warfare, cultural-Marxist activists resist the idea, there is much more
to it than discrimination and greed, and there are real actions that women can
take now to decrease the pay gap, the most important of which is to be more
like men. Make the decisions, have the preferences, and make the same
sacrifices that highly-paid men do.
Women who do make those
choices, entering fields such as law, engineering, or architecture, and who
dedicate the time and do what the job requires, earn as much as men in those
fields, and earn significantly more than the average female.
Though women make up
forty-six percent of the labor force, men have ninety-two percent of all
job-related deaths. Another way to trim the gap is for women to take more jobs
that tend to pay risk premiums. They should be mine workers and drilling-rig
roustabouts instead of daycare workers or receptionists.
More women are going
into STEM fields, and thus to higher earning careers, and that is much of the
reason that the gap has been narrowing, but there is still a profound
difference in career preferences between the sexes.
One thoughtful report on
the issue was prepared by Harvard economist Claudia Goldman. It addressed
various social factors and was more nuanced than others, not using the standard
screechy discrimination charges.
It recognized various
economic realities, yet she still refused to acknowledge the vast differences
in career paths between the average man and woman, falling prey, again, to the
aggregation fallacy. She assumes that work flexibility is the real problem, and
that “we” need to do something about it. The goal, even in that report, is
complete gender equality on an aggregate basis.
The fairly obvious fact,
which the majority of people can’t seem to grasp, is that independent economic
factors determine wages for job classes. Even if pay for every job was gender
equal, complete gender equality on an aggregate basis is not even remotely
possible without having 50/50 representation by both genders in every type of
work, equalizing all physical or mental capabilities with technology.
That is neither desirable
nor advantageous in free society, because it assumes interchangeability of the
sexes and identical preferences. Men and women are different and will continue
to be so even as society changes to accommodate new attitudes and norms, and
that is a good thing.
Originally published on DanielMcLaughlin.com.
Comments
Remember
the Statistician who drowned in a lake with a mean depth of 3 feet.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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