The Gender Feminist Wage Gap Myth Appears to be Growing Legs!

When I turned my computer on this afternoon, this Yahoo news story, originally from AP, was the first thing to come up.

http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/jobseeker/tools/ept/careerArticlesPost.html?post=103

“NEW YORK, April 23 — Women make only 80 percent of the salaries their male peers do one year after college; after 10 years in the work force, the gap between their pay widens further, according to a study released Monday.

The study, by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, found that 10 years after college, women earn only 69 percent of what men earn.

Even after controlling for hours, occupation, parenthood, and other factors known to affect earnings, the study found that one-quarter of the pay gap remains unexplained. The group said that portion of the gap is “likely due to sex discrimination.’”

This latest gender feminist wage gap propaganda appears to me to be yet another gender feminist, myth-making attempt, taking shape before my very eyes.  One can only wonder if we’re seeing, yet again, the gender feminist process, where gender feminist propaganda is repeated, again and again and again, until it becomes unquestionable in the public consciousness (grows legs and runs).

The timing of this report is curious, coming, as it does so coincidentally close to Hillary Clinton’s promotion of this same gender feminist, “wage gap” propaganda.

http://www.hillaryc linton.com/ video/13. aspx

Let’s not forget FOX News contributor, Lis Wiehl’s contribution to this issue.  She just released a new book that apparently parrots this same gender feminist propaganda.  One editorial review attributes to the book, “A woman earns seventy-three cents for every dollar a man makes.”

http://tinyurl.com/2oxgzg

The 51% Minority: How Women Still Are Not Equal and What You Can Do About It

Warren Farrell in his book, Why Men Earn More, refutes the wage gap myth in a scholarly manner so I’m a little surprised to see the same old gender feminist propaganda being recycled, and put forth, yet again.

http://tinyurl.com/yp48nf

Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap — and What Women Can Do About It

Before Warren Farrell wrote on this subject, the Independent Women’s Forum debunked the “wage gap myth,” and has veritably been debunking the “wage gap myth” from the beginning of the new millennia.

http://www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=515

http://www.iwf.org/issues/issues_list.asp?sType=73

IWF provides a succinct refutation to the Wage Gap Myth here:

http://www.iwf.org/issues/issues_print.asp?ArticleID=117

Myth #1: Women earn 72 cents for every dollar that men earn.
If this myth were true, employers would be eager to replace their male workers with cheaper (and better) female workers, and thus increase their profits. But the “72 cents” claim is misleading because it only refers to the median wages of all men and all women in the work force, without regard to age, education, occupation, experience or working hours — factors that even the NCPE admits are valid explanations for different pay rates.  When those key factors enter the equation, the “wage gap” disappears. Studies based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, taking into account these key variables, reveal that among people ages 27-33 who have never had a child, women’s earnings are actually 98 percent of men’s.

Myth #2: The “wage gap” is the result of discrimination.
Remember, such discrimination has been unlawful since 1963. You would not be surprised to know that bosses earn more than their assistants or that full time workers are paid more than their part-time colleagues.  Market forces and common sense dictate that some people earn more than others because of their education and skills, their experience, the demand for their services, or their willingness to work longer, harder or under more difficult conditions. Differing wages exist for many reasons and are not in themselves an indication of discrimination.

Myth #3: Women are funneled into low-paying jobs by a sexist society.
The NCPE claims that certain jobs (like sales, clerical and service work) are paid less because they are held by women, and they say that any earnings differences not explained by differences in education, experience or time in the work force are “proof” of discrimination. But the NCPE is overlooking some important facts. First, the value of a job is determined by the supply and demand of able and willing workers.  Women who might be able to hold a better-paying job often choose a job that pays less but provides more flexibility.  This is not discrimination

From an even earlier time, “Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba” as one Amazon.com reviewer comments, “’explain with tons of data why the “wage gap” and “glass ceiling” are myths based on bad statistics and a less than thorough investigation of the facts.’”

http://tinyurl.com/2hsgpk

Women’s Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America

I am left to wonder, “’Who in America will exert the lobbying power of a Hillary Clinton, to bring to America’s attention, the “real” truth about men’s and women’s wages?’”  I mentioned that Hillary Clinton is actively promoting the “wage gap myth” as fact in her campaign, but did I mention that she is actively calling for legislation to remedy it?  Who in America’s pantheon of politics will counter her fallacious and biased legislative proposal?

http://www.nysun.com/article/49942

As I blogged this afternoon, I found the comments of a certain Dr. E of the Stand Your Ground blog to be of particular interest, concerning the AAUW study.  He appears to be pointing out that the AAUW is misreporting the results of their own study.

http://standyourground.com/forums/index.php?topic=13018.0

He writes: “From the AAUW study (bottom of page 40 of a 45 page paper, buried in the methodology section):

“Overall, the regression analysis of earnings one year after graduation suggests that a 5 percent pay gap between women and men remains after accounting for all variables known to affect earnings.  Women who choose male-dominated occupations appear to earn more than do other women. Undergraduate majors in business and management, engineering, health professions, or public affairs and social services enhance both women’s and men’s earnings.”

I wasn’t content with taking just the information Dr. E provided as proof that something suspicious is afoot so I did a little online, background research on the AAUW and found some interesting “herstory.”

http://www.amazon.com/WAR-AGAINST-BOYS-Misguided-Feminism/dp/product-description/0684849577

or

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sommers-war.html

From Christina Hoff Sommers, The War Against Boys,

http://tinyurl.com/245la2

“Chapter One

In 1990, Carol Gilligan announced to the world that America’s adolescent girls were in crisis. In her words, “As the river of a girl’s life flows into the sea of Western culture, she is in danger of drowning or disappearing.”  Gilligan offered little in the way of conventional evidence to support this alarming finding.  Indeed, it is hard to imagine what sort of empirical research could establish so large a claim.  But Gilligan quickly attracted powerful allies.”

and

“Gilligan’s ideas had special resonance in women’s groups already committed to the proposition that our society is unsympathetic to women.  Such organizations were naturally receptive to bad news about girls.  The interest of the venerable and politically influential American Association of University Women (AAUW), in particular, was piqued.  Officers at the AAUW were reported to be “intrigued and alarmed” by Gilligan’s findings. “Wanting to know more,” they commissioned a polling firm to study whether American schoolgirls were being drained of their self-confidence.

In 1991, the AAUW announced the disturbing results: “Most [girls] emerge from adolescence with a poor self-image.”  Anne Bryant, then executive director of the AAUW and an expert in public relations, organized a media campaign to spread the word that “an unacknowledged American tragedy” had been uncovered.  Newspapers and magazines around the country carried the bleak tidings that girls were being adversely affected by gender bias that eroded their self-esteem. Susan Schuster, at the time president of the AAUW, candidly explained to The New York Times why the AAUW had undertaken the research in the first place:  “We wanted to put some factual data behind our belief that girls are getting shortchanged in the classroom.”

At the time the AAUW’s self-esteem results were making headlines, a little-known journal called Science News, which has been supplying information on scientific and technical developments to interested newspapers since 1922, quoted leading adolescent psychologists who questioned the validity of the self-esteem poll.  But somehow the doubts of the experts were not reported in the hundreds of news stories the AAUW study generated.

The AAUW quickly commissioned a second study, How Schools Shortchange Girls. This new study, carried out by the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women and released in 1992, asserted a direct causal relationship between girls’ (alleged) second-class status in the nation’s schools and deficiencies in their level of self-esteem.  Carol Gilligan’s psychological girl crisis was thus transformed into a pressing civil rights issue: girls w…”

I dug further to find out what university Carol Gilligan has been affiliated with and found this.
http://gseweb.harvard.edu/news/features/gilliganchair09101997.html
 

“Harvard
September 10, 1997 CONTACTS:
Ariadne Valsamis, 617-496-1895
Carol Gilligan Named to Chair in Gender Studies “

An additional hit brought up this information:
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilligan.html

“There has been criticism of Gilligan’s work and much of it has come from Christina Hoff Sommers, PhD.  She says that Gilligan has failed to produce the data for her research.  She condemns the fact that Gilligan used anecdotal evidence, that researchers have not been able to duplicate her work, and that the samples used were too small.  She thinks the field of gender studies needs to be put to the test of people from fields such as neuroscience or evolutionary psychology rather than from the area of education.  She feels strongly that promoting an anti-male agenda hurts both males and females.  Public policy and funding has been allocated based on Gilligan’s data, which Sommers says is not publicly available.”

At this point in time, after considering all of the above information, I must say that I’m very highly suspicious of the reported findings of the AAUW study.  I would forthwith call on scholars of high integrity and good will everywhere, to peer review the findings of the AAUW study and publicly report their findings, but I’m aware of the lobbying efforts of gender feminist, women’s studies departments to integrate women’s studies curriculum (propaganda) into all other college and university disciplines.

http://tinyurl.com/2qldgu

Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women’s Studies

I‘ve also just read a sizeable portion of David Horowitz‘s new book,

Indoctrination U: The Left’s War Against Academic Freedom

http://tinyurl.com/3aznwm

Consequently, I’ve lost all confidence in our American educational institution’s ability to do an unbiased peer review, let alone an objective, scholarly study on a perceived “wage gap” (or any other topic for that matter), devoid of gender feminist prejudices and propaganda.

No wonder some people feel compelled to protest the activities of university pedagogy.