Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
Stephan: Recently I have run several pieces on the gender wage disparity, a subject about which I have very strong feelings. Why? Well, because independent of basic fairness, societies that both recognize gender differences and affirm fundamental equality are healthier and prosper in direct proportion to the degree such gender equality is authentic. The evidence for this is overwhelming. Poverty almost always is associated with extreme gender inequality. And when this is severely out of balance, history shows us there is also a deadening of creativity and innovation within that society. I have predicted and state flatly that two of the defining determinants of societal health and prosperity in the 21st century are the assimilation of minorities and gender equality. On both counts the Right is in explicit opposition to those goals.
Several readers have complained about my emphasis on this subject. If you have been following this you will note that their comments are almost entirely polemic and fact free. The one exception was citing this piece from the Wall Street Journal, which I am happy to run today.
If you have a moment, read the stories I have run and compare their very clear facts -- based on U.S. Census and Labor Department figures -- with this very artfully worded WSJ piece. Pay particular attention to the Atlantic piece in comparison with the WSJ piece. Then do a Google on 'pay disparity between men and women' and peruse the 874,000 results that come back on that query, and reach your own conclusions.
Ms. Lukas, the author of the piece is executive director of the far Right Independent Women's Forum. Here is their URL: http://www.iwf.org/. Take a moment and go to their site and read what they post there. Then reach your own conclusions.
Tuesday is Equal Pay Day-so dubbed by the National Committee for Pay Equity, which represents feminist groups including the National Organization for Women, Feminist Majority, the National Council of Women’s Organizations and others. The day falls on April 12 because, according to feminist logic, women have to work that far into a calendar year before they earn what men already earned the year before.
In years past, feminist leaders marked the occasion by rallying outside the U.S. Capitol to decry the pernicious wage gap and call for government action to address systematic discrimination against women. This year will be relatively quiet. Perhaps feminists feel awkward protesting a liberal-dominated government-or perhaps they know that the recent economic downturn has exposed as ridiculous their claims that our economy is ruled by a sexist patriarchy.
The unemployment rate is consistently higher among men than among women. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 9.3% of men over the age of 16 are currently out of work. The figure for women is 8.3%. Unemployment fell for both sexes over the past year, but labor force participation (the percentage of working age people employed) also dropped. The participation rate fell more among men (to 70.4% today from […]
