When President Obama took office, one of his early official acts as president was to sign into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. The bill, an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was seen as a triumph for equal pay proponents and by many others as a crippling blow to companies who are now forced to assemble a defense to law suits long after previous statute of limitations have expired.
Whether the act was good legislation or just good politics might be a matter of debate. What is not at debate, however, is that activism toward equal pay legislation is on the rise.
The AFL-CIO is one of many organizations pushing for such a law, even postulating that an equal pay act for women would have the net result of raising pay for men. In what might be described at best as dangling a carrot, at worst as a bribe to gain men’s support, the union has taken on one of the contemporary causes of feminism and is giving it the hard sell on their website. In fact they have other articles as well, and have even proclaimed April 28th of this year as Equal Pay Day. All their work on this is saturated with the same disinformation and and misleading statistics that have emanated from feminist organizations for decades. How the AFL-CIO became a gender feminist mouthpiece might be quite a story in and of itself.
More to the point though, the movement is getting traction, and it does so by posing a simple question to people across western culture.
Should we enact a law to ensure that women are paid the same as men? And as long as the question is allowed to be framed in that way, the outcome is all but certain. I wouldn’t make bets on enough politicians to answer that one in the negative.
Perhaps it will help to state the question more accurately and honestly. The real question is this:
Should we force companies to pay based on sex rather than performance?
Of course the correct answer is “no,” at least for people who want to live in a culture free of sexism, especially when that sexism is mandated by the state. Governmentally enforced sexual discrimination is exactly what this type of legislation offers. It is not the proverbial slippery slope, it is the hard landing at the end of a great fall.
We live in a culture that is quick to rush into things that appear egalitarian, especially if they are perceived as ameliorating a problem suffered by groups already associated, factually or not, with some historical wrongs. This is a prime example of something that might appear promote progress while it actually serves to undermine it. The trick is to place reason over reactionism, which is quite a trick these days indeed.
To make a point, let’s examine a hypothetical.
John and Mary work at the XYZ Corporation doing the same job. John is to work early, completes his assignments on time and turns in work that is at or above the expectations of his job description. Mary is also at work early, completes most of her assignments on time, but for whatever reason only completes about 85% of the work that John does.
Under the guidelines proposed by an Equal Pay Act, XYZ will have a hard time giving John a raise or promoting him unless they do the same for Mary. They will also be subject to litigation and bad publicity if they do the right thing by rewarding John. Companies usually make very quick decisions when choosing between fairness and cold cash. The latter wins every time.
Under the threat of such an invasive law, the company will be hamstrung in any efforts to recognize and reward top producers. Unless, of course, those producers happen to be women.
Sexist to the very core. And illegal by our current laws.
They tried this in Ontario, Canada, where every employer must rate every job to make sure women are getting paid as much as men. The law resulted in cumbersome and complicated sets of rules from the Canadian Pay Equity Commission.
Sheldon Kaplan, of a large Canadian company that sows and sells sofa cushions lamented in an ABC News 20/20 interview, “We spent months and tens of thousands of dollars to do a 3-cent adjustment that may not have even been necessary.”
A follow-up study by the Canadian Bureau of Economics concluded the law “had no effect on aggregate wages in female jobs or the gender wage gap,”
It shouldn’t be surprising. It’s hard to have an impact on something that doesn’t exist. That supposed gender wage gap, like the one reported in America by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), is predicated on faulty methodology resulting in very misleading conclusions.
The statistics are based on a raw average of men’s and women’s income. Thus a female file clerk who works forty hours a week is averaged in with a male chemical engineer who works fifty-five hours a week.
Pay difference, yes. Gender based discrimination, no. And it is convincing of why the legislation failed to impact the alleged gap in pay.
Until we make laws that force women to pursue different career choices, they will never earn what men do. And calling the results of women’s choices discrimination is a duck and fade on the real issue, and an attempt to further marginalize men by creating an environment where they won’t be able to compete for advancement based on performance. We should not forget that even as the main stream media and activist unions continue to spread gross inaccuracies regarding pay equity, it is men that have suffered the lions share of job losses in the current recession.
Not that it would pay any company to practice such discrimination in the first place. If women were really paid only .69-cents for every dollar paid to men for the same work, as the AAUW have been claiming since 2007, the wise entrepreneur would only hire women.
“I hope my competitors discriminate,” says Kaplan. “I want my competitors to discriminate because they will go out of business.”
For companies fighting for the competitive edge, the only bottom line is the bottom line. The reality is that pay discrimination adds to the cost of doing business. Whether that happens as a result of gender bias or federal coercion doesn’t make any difference.
If some companies are still foolish enough to pay women less for the same work, their increased costs and legal vulnerabilities already in place will hinder their ability to compete. Mimicking that same foolishness at the level of government is not an answer.
And speaking of answers, they tend to make a lot more sense when we are asking the right questions.
Paul Elam is the Editor-in-Chief for Men’s News Daily and the publisher of A Voice for Men
