“Today marks another day that Native American women are paid just $0.60 for every dollar earned by a White, non-Hispanic man,” writes the Democratic National Committee in a statement today. Interestingly, the DNC could have made the disparity even more striking by comparing American Indian women to what actually is the highest-earning race/sex-defined group: Asian men. They make 117 percent as much as white men. Any thoughts as to why they didn’t do this?
The DNC issued its statement because Sept. 8 is “Native American Women’s Equal Pay Day,” which is probably about as well known as National Mother Goose Day (May 1).
But the DNC was sure to remember (it might have created it, in fact, circuitously) and expressed in its statement that today “marks another day that Native American women are paid just $0.60 for every dollar earned by a White, non-Hispanic man. While $0.40 today doesn’t buy a bus ticket, over a 40-year career it amounts to nearly $1 million in lost wages — but it also amounts to the devaluation of Native American women’s contributions to our country that no American should find acceptable.”
“President Biden and Democrats believe in equal work for equal pay and have prioritized ending the gender pay gap and equalizing fair employment practices for people of all genders and backgrounds,” the DNC continues.
The proper term for the quality of being male or female is “sex,” which quite a while back was switched out for “gender” partially because saying “all sexes” wouldn’t work. But that aside, the above line is an untruth, probably a lie, and surely contradictory. “Ending the gender pay gap” ensures that there won’t be equal pay for equal work.
Saying that women or _____ women make __ cents on a white man’s dollar is a rhetorically effective political slogan; it fits nicely on a placard. This is why it’s still parroted even though its implication of unjust discrimination has been refuted frequently.
For example, reporting last year on how the Department of Labor sued several tech companies for sex-based wage discrimination, American Thinker wrote (the following also applies to the American Indian women/white men pay gap) that when “accounting for measurable, relevant factors, the statistical pay gap between men and women all but disappears.[1] Differences in education, experience, choice of industry and occupation, career interruptions, and hours worked are not included in the Department of Labor’s statistical studies that explore the reasons for the gender wage gap. These excluded factors explain all but 5 cents of the so-called wage gap.”
“Immeasurable components of compensation, such as flexible work schedules and in-kind benefits over wages, likely account for the remaining gap,” the site continues. (Add to this that women are more likely to refuse promotions, citing familial responsibilities.)
No one has to tell this to journalist Carrie Lukas. “In truth, I’m the cause of the wage gap — I and hundreds of thousands of women like me,” she admitted in 2007. She explained:
I have a good education and have worked full time for 10 years. Yet throughout my career, I’ve made things other than money a priority. I chose to work in the nonprofit world because I find it fulfilling. I sought out a specialty and employer that seemed best suited to balancing my work and family life. When I had my daughter, I took time off and then opted to stay home full time and telecommute. I’m not making as much money as I could, but I’m compensated by having the best working arrangement I could hope for.
This brings us to why equal-pay propaganda is not a victimless “crime.” American Thinker astutely points out that pressuring employers to adopt one-size-fits-all pay scales (as the DOL desires) “serves to reduce the availability of flexible work arrangements, which are especially important to working parents. It also leads to the elimination of performance-based pay, e.g., bonuses, that encourages and rewards individual excellence.”
“Can anyone reasonably argue that excellence should be discouraged?” the site then asks.
In reality, this “pro-woman” social engineering also hurts women, and not just because some may not have flexible work schedules available to them.
Consider: While there are exceptions, men don’t work longer hours and accept more dangerous jobs because they’re all Gordon Geckos consumed by greed. Rather, they’re more likely to be their families’ sole or primary breadwinners.
Now, since employers only have so many resources, compensating women above and beyond their productivity level ultimately means lowering men’s salaries proportionately. Just imagine the effect of government occupational wage scales. In general, such factors would make it more difficult for men to support wives who would prefer to tend to hearth and home and can force these women into the workplace. Of course, this would likely suit the social engineers just fine.
As for race-related wage gaps, if they’re so unjust, why doesn’t the DNC showcase the Asian-descent/white disparity or the American Indian woman/Asian-descent man gap? Because the DNC knows they’re not unjust (which is why Barack Obama’s White House paid its women staffers only 88 cents on its men staffers’ dollar). It knows about the wage gap myth.
But it also knows that unless people could be convinced the “white supremacist power structure” is scheming to advantage Asians, revealing the wage gap truth would destroy its wage gap narrative. It would mean admitting that market forces alone are ensuring fairness. And admitting that means admitting that big government intervention — and Big Brother puppeteers — are not necessary.
