“This is why employers can legally pay women less than their male coworkers,” a Buzzfeed News headline promised to explain last week.
In a video breaking down a recent ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Buzzfeed covered the decision by interspersing legal commentary with footage of shocked women on the street reacting to the news. The video, unsurprisingly, makes a clear effort to frame the decision as a symptom of the pervasive and outmoded sexism feminists believe to be plaguing American workplaces.
“In late April, a federal appeals court ruled that it’s legal for employers to pay women less than men for the same work based on the worker’s previous salaries,” lamented a narrator, later citing a study that found women’s salaries are likely to be lower than men’s based on “gender bias”.
Reacting to another study cited in the video claiming that full pay equity won’t be achieved until 2059, one female interviewee exclaimed, “I’m going to be an old lady by that time!”
The video might as well have been headlined, “This is why employers can legally pay Seinfeld fans less than Friends fans,” or “This is why employers can legally pay people who drink Pepsi less than their Coke-drinking coworkers,” because the explanation for both of those scenarios is the same. Buzzfeed’s headline, like those two examples, is factually accurate, so long as the person in question has a lower salary history. That’s the trait that matters to employers.
Sex and salary history could be connected in some cases, but that does not make the ruling necessarily sexist. In fact, it’s really just a common sense affirmation of basic sexual equality. Salary history is obviously a valid determinate in quantifying a new employee’s income — or, on the other side of the coin, in deciding whether to hire.
Gender bias, of course, is not the only reason (or even the primary reason) women may come into job interviews with lower salaries than their male counterparts. Hypothetically, it makes perfect sense for a less-experienced woman who has to that date commanded a lower salary to be paid less than a more experienced man for the “same work.”
To be sure, gender bias exists, and employers’ typical reliance on past pay could have an effect in exacerbating any pay inequities that already exist. As Sheryl Sandberg highlighted in Lean In, women can and should learn more competitive negotiation skills.
But the headline, “This is why employers can legally pay women less than their male coworkers” egregiously misrepresents what the ruling was about. The way Buzzfeed framed this bit of news is an instructive example in how the mainstream media carefully and harmfully engages in feminist fearmongering, priming women to see themselves as victims.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
