The “Gender Pay Gap” Myth

The Democrats, and Barack Obama, are pathological liars that want women to believe they are victims.

The Democrats, and Barack Obama, are pathological liars that want women to believe they are victims.

Our beloved President, the uniter, Barack Obama, and his Democrat minions are back at again. Today’s division: pay inequality based on gender.

“Today,” he said, “women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment.”

The President knows the 23-cent gender pay gap mostly the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. The faulty statistic does not account for differences in occupations, job tenure, hours worked per week, or a host of other factors. When all relevant factors are taken into consideration, when one actually compares apples to apples, the wage gap narrows: female employees earn about 5% less than their male counterparts.

Even Council of Economic Advisers member Betsey Stevenson was backpedaling from the 77-cents-on-the dollar lie:

As reported by the Washington Examiner:

“If I said 77 cents was equal pay for equal work, then I completely misspoke,” Stevenson said. “So let me just apologize and say that I certainly wouldn’t have meant to say that.”

Oh, I’m sorry, I guess when Stevenson said “we see it when men and women are working side by side doing identical work” — that was an accident?

“Seventy-seven cents captures the annual earnings of full-time, full-year women divided by the annual earnings of full-time, full-year men,” Stevenson clarified. “There are a lot of things that go into that 77-cents figure, there are a lot of things that contribute and no one’s trying to say that it’s all about discrimination, but I don’t think there’s a better figure.”

No one’s trying to blame discrimination? Isn’t that what the entire Paycheck Fairness Act and Equal Pay Day are based on?

I can attest that women are partly to blame for this pay disparity.

For example, there was a position open in my company and I had budgeted $60,000 for this position. Two candidates with equal credentials, one male, one female, were finalists. They both have a good idea that the position should pay in the $55-$65K range. When asked what salary they expect, the woman indicated she is expecting $55K; the man said he’d like to make $63K. That’s better than a 12% difference in pay.

Of course, I offered the position to the female candidate. She was pleasantly surprised she was going to make $2,000 more than for what she asked.

Not only am I saving $3,000 per year, I have an incredibly happy new team member that is willing to give extra effort to “earn” her good fortune. My guess is that she’ll be with the team for a long time.

Had I hired the male candidate for $60,000, he might have taken the job, been displeased that he did not get what he desired, and probably would have been on the lookout for a better paying job the day he started.
This is not an infrequent scenario. Generally speaking, women ask for less money that men. This is true even when the female candidate is more qualified than her male competition.

The Democrats are using the wrongly-sourced 23-cent gender pay gap to engrain even more victimhood status upon women. Without the Democrat paternalistic oversight, these hapless creatures will surely be ravaged by the GOPs imaginary war on women. Compounding the issue is a press that is all-to-willing to amplify the falsehood to an electorate that is too distracted to learn the truth.

In an attempt not to be portrayed as cruel, heartless and misogynistic, the spineless wonders of the GOP will do some sort of compromise pandering in a futile attempt to gain a few female votes.