First published in the Sonoma County Gazette .
Dear Editor:
In the March ’24 Gazette editor Amie Windsor asked why women are still paid less than the male dollar. One only has to look at The American Association of University Women (AAUW), who concede that while there is a gender wage gap, the differences in the life choices of men and women — most notably women leaving the workforce when they have children, make it problematic to use this simple comparison as evidence of discrimination.
Indeed, women’s income is equal to men until they choose to have children. BLS data show that women who have never married have virtually no wage gap; they earn nearly 94 cents for every dollar a man earns.
The AAUW actually call this a “motherhood or caregiver penalty.” [Emphasis Mine.] And Windsor speaks with disdain that men’s earnings tend to raise after child birth while failing to point out that their work place hours tend to increase as women are more likely than men to have the option of lowering their hours of employment to care for the children. A fair-minded person would view this sacrifice that men tend to make as a “male form of nurturing” but not Windsor, who calls this phenomenon “frustrating” only because women still earn less than men.
A 2019 Korn Ferry study found the pay gap virtually disappears when analyzing men and women who work at the same level at the same company and perform the same function. “When factors such as experience, industry and job level were taken into account, women earn 97.8 cents for every dollar earned by their male peers for doing the same work.
While there have been isolated incidents of gender wage discrimination, when these aggregate elements, and others, e.g. men work more dangerous jobs, commute longer distances, are more likely to relocate and are more likely to work in IT, are taken into account the gap narrows considerably – in some studies, to the point of vanishing. A recent survey found that young, childless, single women in metropolitan areas earn 8 percent more than their male counterparts, mostly because more of them earn college degrees.
Finally, Windsor’s “The future is female” headline was misandrist and sexist (against boys and men), not to mention insensitive to the boys who see/hear this divisive slogan when they are the gender to most likely be diagnosed with a thought, behavior, and conduct disorder, more likely to be disciplined, held back, and enrolled in special ed., less likely to graduate and proceed to college, etc. and are four times more likely than girls to commit suicide.
Joe Manthey
