With over 15 million Americans out of work, women have it good. They face an 8 percent unemployment rate, compared with 10 percent for men, who have been disproportionately displaced from construction and manufacturing. Fewer women work in dirty, dangerous jobs, and none were killed in this month’s tragic mining accident in Upper Big Branch Mine, West Virginia.
Yet feminists say that men can wait. Today, April 20, is Equal Pay Day, the day of the year, according to the National Committee on Pay Equity, when women’s wages, allegedly only 78 percent of men’s, “catch up” to what men have earned the year before. The story is that women have to work those extra months to get their fair share.
The 78 percent figure is flawed and bogus. The latest figures show that comparing men and women who work 40 hours weekly yields a wage ratio of 87 percent -before accounting for different education, jobs, or experience-bringing the wage ratio closer to 95 percent.
Figures such as 87 percent and 95 percent are less dramatic-and would place Equal Pay Day in January or February, poor months for outdoor rallies.
To remedy the supposed inequity, feminists are pushing for passage of the Paycheck Fairness bill, introduced by Hillary Clinton when she was still a Democratic senator from New York. It has 38 Democratic cosponsors.
The bill would vastly expand the role of the government in employers’ compensation decisions and has already passed the House and is under consideration in the Senate.
The Paycheck Fairness bill would require the government to collect information on workers’ pay, by race and sex, with the goal of equalizing wages of men and women, by raising women’s wages. (Fortunately for men, depressing their wages to achieve pay equity is not permitted under the proposed law.)
The bill would increase class-action suits and be a boon to plaintiffs’ lawyers. Now, if a worker wants to participate in a class-action suit against her employer, she has to affirmatively agree to take part, or opt in. Under the bill, she would automatically be included unless she opted out.
Penalties that the courts could levy on employers would be higher. Now, employers found guilty of discrimination owe workers back pay. Under the pending bill, they would have to pay punitive damages, with a quarter or third going to plaintiffs’ lawyers.
The bill would require the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to analyze current pay data and collect more, including information about the sex, race, and national origin of employees. The paperwork required would be a ruinous burden to small business.
This all responds to a false problem. There is far less pay discrimination against women than is alleged. When the data are understood correctly-taking account of choice of vocation and on-the-job years-the pay gap largely disappears. The professional feminists try to conceal that, lest they be out of business.
With Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Equal Pay Act, and the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act all on the statute books, women do not need more remedies for discrimination. The pending bill would only burden small businesses with more regulations and paperwork, further discouraging hiring.
When differences in jobs, hours worked, and time in the workforce are considered, a 2009 study by the economics consulting firm CONSAD Research Corporation, prepared for the Labor Department, shows that women make around 94 percent of what men make. The remaining six cents are due to unexplained variables, one of which might be discrimination. The study, posted on the Labor Department’s Web site under President Bush, was removed when President Obama took office, but can be found http://consad.com/index.php?page=an-analysis-of-reasons-for-the-disparity-in-wages-between-men-and-women here.
Women have been relatively fortunate in this deep recession. Rather than yet another redundant legal remedy for discrimination, why doesn’t Congress focus on reducing unemployment and getting Americans back to work?
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
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