Sarah Silverman is making headlines for taking part in an Equal Payback Project video that demands equal pay among genders. In the video, Silverman claims that women are owed $29,811,746,430,000 because of the wage gap.
The number was calculated by multiplying the 69 million working American women by the nearly $500,000 supposedly lost on average over the course of a woman’s career because of the wage gap. The comedian calls that half a million the “vagina tax.”
If any funds are raised then it will be donated to the National Women’s Law Center, an organization that promotes gender equality through legislation and education. Organizations like this one continue to purport the myth that women earn 77 or 78 cents for every dollar a man makes because of discrimination and sexism.
Here is what the Washington Post wrote about the statistic in 2012:
“The 77 cent figure comes from a Census Bureau report, which is based on annual wages … Annual wages is a broader measure — it can include bonuses, retirement pensions, investment income and the like — but it also means that school teachers, who may not work over the summer, would end up with a lower annual wage. In other words, since women in general work fewer hours than men in a year, the statistics may be less reliable for examining the key focus of the legislation — wage discrimination.”
The important question to ask is: do these women, organizations and legislators even peruse the various studies and reports that dispel this gross falsehood? For those that have not read the large abundance of material on the matter, here are just some of the facts.
Parenthood/Marriage
Although supporters of gender wage gap legislation tend to scoff at this data, studies have discovered that women will earn less than men because they aren’t earning an income for certain periods of time when they take maternity leave or they leave the labor force for a while to take care of a child. In addition, if a woman is out of the workforce for several years, their skills have diminished or out of date.
In fact, economist Thomas Sowell has found that much of the pay gap is primarily based on marital status: when the data is compared amongst the genders based on the same education, career, hours and marital status then the wage disparity vanishes.
One study of individuals between the ages of 27 to 33, who had never been married and had no children, showed the pay gap was only two cents.
Hours
Several studies have concluded that women will work fewer hours in the course of a lifetime compared to men. Women prefer flexible hours, telecommuting options and a sufficient amount of sick days than higher wages because they want to care for their children or spend time with their family.
According to a Harvard report entitled “A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter,” companies that offer its employees a flexible schedule and the same pay per hour worked, despite when it was completed, have the lowest gaps in pay between both genders.
Occupations
The term “danger wage premium” is described as higher wages for those jobs that are physically demanding, longer hours and have dangerous surroundings. It isn’t discriminatory to conclude that men are likelier to enter these fields. For instance, we will see men as construction workers, commercial movers or sewage operators, while women will tend to work in less demanding fields, such as childcare, administrative assistance and secretarial work.
This is only a snapshot of the data suggesting that there are other reasons why women may earn less than men. It isn’t based on discrimination, it isn’t based on hatred of women, it isn’t based on the fact that men have penises and women have vaginas. It’s ludicrous to suggest otherwise, and a tad disingenuous considering the large amount of data on the subject. Heck, even a paucity of negotiating skills are key factors to this debate.
What seems apparent is that those who don’t earn enough don’t want to blame it on insufficient skills but rather on dishonest external factors.
Sorry, Ms. Silverman, you’re off the mark.
U R quite right Ladies.
Shortchanged absolutely