We must take our silver linings where we find them, and here is one to gladden feminist hearts everywhere: The gender pay gap has fallen during the lockdown-induced recession. Look at median weekly earnings, and the gender pay gap has narrowed from some 81% to 84%. In the first quarter, men averaged $1,054 a week, in the second $1,092. Women moved from $852 to $914. We normally measure the gender pay gap as the average female wage as a percentage of average male wages, so that gap has closed substantially in just three months.
So, time to do the Happy Dance, right? We’re told by progressives that the gender pay gap is one of the grand stains upon our society! One that we must do nearly anything to expunge.
There’s just one problem: The narrowing of the gap happened because many lower-paid women lost their jobs.
As NPR explains, this recession is sexist. Service jobs have borne the brunt of the lockdown, and women are more likely to be employed in the service industry than men. The female unemployment rate has risen. It’s also true that the sector of services which has been worst hit (hospitality) is where low wages are concentrated. So, take employment from the lowest-paid people (predominantly women), and the gender pay gap falls.
If that doesn’t tell you that there’s something wrong with relying solely on that average wage gender-pay-gap statistic, then I don’t know what will.
This is not a new finding. Italy has one of the lowest gender pay gaps among European nations, some 5% or so. Of course, Italy is not known as a hotbed of gender equity. Rather, the explanation is that women with children often choose not to, for cultural reasons, work at all. Children and childcare only affect the gender pay gap measurement in that they’re simply not measured. The pay gap is only measured by those in work only.
This also accords with the work of Christina Hoff Summers, who has been telling us for some time now that the gender pay gap exists because of the different choices men and women make. It comes down to career choices, hours worked, flexibility desired, and so on. We are a viviparous and sexually dimorphic species. The idea that this leads to differences in how men and women live their lives shouldn’t surprise anyone. This is also the desired liberal outcome: You get to live your life as you desire, liberty being the ability to have that choice.
All of this has been rather nicely proven in this recession. Employment choices for women have been limited, even removed. Thus, the pay gap falls, proof that the gap is about choices freely taken. I don’t expect the steady hum of complaints about the gender pay gap to diminish in the slightest, but the choices affecting it are worth pointing it out.
Tim Worstall (@worstall) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. You can read all his pieces at the Continental Telegraph.
