PHILADELPHIA — California Sen. Barbara Boxer, like nearly every other speaker at the Democratic National Convention, claimed that women are making less money than men.
Absent from her remarks and those of others is acknowledgement of the fact that the wage gap is actually an earnings gap and caused mainly by the different choices men and women make in their lives, like what careers to enter and whether to take time off to raise children.
“We need Hillary in the White House! We need a president who knows it’s just plain wrong that women make 79 cents for every dollar paid to a man,” Boxer said. “And yet her opponent refuses to support equal pay because ‘the marketplace is going to make sure of it.’ Well, it’s 2016 and we’re still waiting!”
The marketplace is fixing the gap, however. When I started seriously writing about the gap two years ago, it was 77 cents, not 79.
Since the gap is due to choices women have made, the only way to close the gap is for women to make different choices — and they are. More women than men are graduating from college, and some studies have found that young, childless, unmarried women living in cities actually earn more than their male counterparts. It’s because women are becoming more educated and getting married and having children later in life.
No law can make those gains. It has to come from women. And women are making those gains.
Women may never earn the same as men because men and women are different and tend to value different things in life. The media and the Left are so focused on making money as a measure of success, value and happiness. But there are so many women who don’t think that way, who value family and their own happiness as success. These may be the same women dragging down the median earnings for women, but there’s nothing wrong with their choices.
For a party that claims to be “pro-choice,” Democrats sure love to demonize the life choices women make when it leads to the earnings gap.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
