According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, today is for raising awareness of the “gender pay gap” through Equal Pay Day. WUNC published a piece stating that “North Carolina women earn about 82 cents on the dollar compared with men.”
In 2016, a Business Insider animated map proclaimed North Carolina to be amongst the top five states when it comes to having the smallest wage gap between men and women.
There is no mention in the article that wages nationally continue to fall for men and trend upward for women. Of course, there are a host of issues and explanations for the current wage gap. Many of these issues have to deal with women being more active in rearing children and pursuing less financially lucrative career professions. Men, of course, are vastly over-represented in more dangerous jobs like logging or coal mining.
Everybody competent should know this, the whole exercise is futile since statistics are not comparing the pay difference between men and women in identical positions. A simple Google search will turn up scores of articles thoroughly debunking the methods used to promote the “gender pay gap” narrative. Obviously, an aerospace engineer is going to make much more than most every librarian or social worker, regardless of sex.
One thing that might be surprising to some is that women are far less likely to negotiate their salary upon receiving a job offer. I think this may be an important component where there might be some disparity between men and women in comparable positions. If you are interested in a great book that offers tips on salary negotiations, I can’t think of one better than “What Color is Your Parachute.”
All of the calls for government intervention to address the gender pay gap is ludicrous and would only create a number of unintended consequences, mainly hurting the hiring potential of females.
Below is a helpful video from Prager U narrated by AEI scholar Christian Hoff Sommers on what she calls the “wage gap myth.” By the way, Dennis Prager will be speaking at the Conservative Leadership Conference this weekend. You still have a short amount of time to purchase tickets.
