This issue has bothered me for a long time.To feminists, it’s Equal Pay Day, a pseudo-holiday when National Organization for Women and National Council of Women’s Organizations lament the disparity between men’s and women’s wages. Feminists groups claim that the first four months of the year were spent making up for last year’s gap. On April 25, women have finally earned as much as men in 2005.
It is so obvious to anyone that knows a woman that women make lifestyle choices that affect their earning potential. It is the same as my own choice to enter the ministry. In my mid-20s, I was earning upwards of $70k. I made a lifestyle choice to remove myself from the marketplace for a number of years and engage in a "profession" that is notoriously underpaid (unless you are Episcopalian, which I am not). When NOW and others start protesting for my right to earn as much as others in my IQ/skills range in spite of my life choices, perhaps I will begin to see feminist rhetoric as something other than "me-first/screw-you" politics.
There’s one problem with Equal Pay Day—the premise is bogus. Department of Labor data confirms that the median wage of a full-time working woman is three-quarters of that of a full-time working man, but like too many statistics, this fact ignores more than it reveals. This data doesn’t account for relevant factors such as occupation, experience and educational attainment.
Feminists may not like it, but the evidence shows that women’s choices—not discrimination—cause wage gap.
The crazy thing is that, if real systemic wage discrimination existed, I and other socially-conscious religious conservatives would ally ourselves to the cause - which might give these organizations a wider receptive audience on other issues. As it is, they would rather be shrill and stupid with the facts and remove the possibility of working together for the common good.