Political grandstanding at the Oscars

By Tom Quiner

Hollywood elites took to the stage at the Academy Awards to promote the false meme that women earn less than men for the same work.

In fairness, it appears to be true in the Obama White House where our hypocrite-in-chief pays his female employees 13% less than their male counterparts.

When we distance ourselves from the phony rhetoric of the relentlessly insincere and ill-informed, we discover the argument is bunk.

A wage gap doesn’t exist, at least, not according to the Department of Labor. They studied it in real detail in 2009 and concluded:

“This study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.”

So what are some of these individual choices? Men choose different career paths. For example, men are more likely to pursue riskier jobs that pay more because of the danger inherit in the work, jobs such as construction work and iron and steel work.

Even more, men are more likely to go into high paying fields (by choice), such as computer and engineering fields, while women tend to go in more modest paying fields (by choice) such as health care.

Men are more likely to pursue jobs that pay more because the jobs demand evening and weekend work.

Men tend to stay in jobs longer, increasing their income over women who are more likely to interrupt their career to raise children.

Men work longer hours, on average 15 percent more than women.  How could they NOT get paid more?

But here’s what is really interesting: the Census Bureau tells us that unmarried women who have never had a child actually earn more than unmarried men.

Is that a reflection of anti-male discrimination? Not really, because more women are going to college than men these days.

So, the implication that there is some sort of anti-women discrimination at work in society is simply false. So there is good news for America: the wage gap is a myth!

Even more, pay equity legislation has been on the books for half a century. The Equal Pay Act was signed into law by President Kennedy in 1963 after the House overwhelmingly voted in favor of the bill, 362-9. For the record, all 9 dissenters were Democrats. Don’t fall for this type ignorant rants of Hollywood celebs who never want to miss an opportunity. It’s really bad for the country, and for women.