If, for the same work, women make only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes, why don’t businesses hire only women? Wages are the biggest expense for most businesses. So, hiring only women would reduce costs by nearly a quarter

– and that would go right to the bottom line. Don’t businesses want to be profitable? Or, are they just really bad at math? Well, actually, it’s the feminists, celebrities and politicians spreading this wage gap myth who have the math problem.

Here’s why: The 77-cents-on-the-dollar statistic is calculated by dividing the median earnings of all women working full-time by the median earnings of all men working full-time. In other words, if the average income of all men is, say, 40,000 dollars a year,

and the average annual income of all women is, say, 30,800 dollars, that would mean that women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. 30,800 divided by 40,000 equals .77. But these calculations don’t reveal a gender wage injustice because it doesn’t take into

account occupation, position, education or hours worked per week. Even a study by the American Association of University Women, a feminist organization, shows that the actual wage gap shrinks to only 6.6 cents when you factor in different choices men and women make.

And the key word here is “choice.” The small wage gap that does exist has nothing to do with paying women less, let alone with sexism; it has to do with differences in individual career choices that men and women make. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Labor released a paper that examined more than 50 peer-reviewed

studies and concluded that the oft-cited 23
percent wage gap “may be almost entirely the result of individual choices being made
by both male and female workers.” Well, let’s look at some of those choices. Georgetown University compiled a list of the
five best-paying college majors, 

and the percentage of men or women majoring in those fields: Number 1 best-paying major: Petroleum Engineering:
87% male Number 2: Pharmaceutical Sciences: 48% male
3: Mathematics and Computer Science: 67% male 4: Aerospace Engineering: 88% male
5: Chemical Engineering: 72% male

Notice that women out-represent men in only
one of the five top-paying majors – by only a few percentage points. Now consider the same study’s list of the
five worst-paying college majors: Number 1: Counseling and Psychology: 74% female
Number 2: Early Childhood Education: 97% female

3: Theology and Religious Vocations: 66% male
4: Human Services and Community Organization: 81% female
5: Social Work: 88% female Here, it’s the women who lead in all but
one category.

Even within the same profession, men and women
make different career choices that impact how much money they make. Take nursing, where male nurses on the whole
earn 18% more than female nurses. The reason? Male nurses gravitate to the best-paying nursing
specialties, they work longer hours,

and disproportionately find jobs in cities with the highest compensation. Now, here’s how one expert on nursing compensation,
Professor Linda Aiken of the University of Pennsylvania, sums up the data: “Career
choices and educational differences explain most, if not all, the gender gap in nursing.”

The Department of Labor paper concluded that
once these differences are accounted for across all professions, the unexplained wage gap
is somewhere between 4.8 and 7 percent – almost identical to the 6.6 percentage gap found
by the AAUW.

But why is there any gap at all? No one knows for sure, as both the AAUW and
the Labor Department concede. There are so many variables that drive wages
that no single study can cover them all. Few wage gap studies control for variables
such as dangerous work environment; 

men are vastly overrepresented, for example, on oil
rigs. And here’s another variable: men are more
willing and able to work long hours without advance notice. According to Harvard economist Claudia Goldin,
even if two lawyers have the same education, 

same specialty, and work the same number
of hours — firms pay more to someone who is willing to always be “on call” and ready
to be in the office when the firm needs them, as opposed to wanting a more regular schedule.

This isn’t sexism, it’s just common sense. With more realistic categories and definitions,
whatever wage gap remains would certainly narrow to the point of vanishing. So it seems that business leaders aren’t
bad at math simply because they don’t only hire women.

Those who claim that for the same work women
earn 77 cents on the dollar compared to men, on the other hand, are not merely bad at math
--but at telling the truth. I’m Christina Hoff Sommers of the American
Enterprise Institute for Prager University.

There Is No Gender Wage Gap | 5 Minute Video

PragerU creates free educational content promoting American values. Think better. Live better.


PragerU

임금이 낮기 때문에 기업에서 여성만 고용해야 한다는 주장에 이의를 제기합니다.

1달러당 77센트라는 통계는 페미니스트, 유명인, 정치인들이 만들어낸 신화로 제시되고 있습니다.

이 통계는 다른 요인을 무시하고 풀타임으로 일하는 모든 여성과 남성의 평균 소득을 비교하여 계산한 것입니다.

연구에 따르면 직업, 직위, 교육, 근무 시간 등의 요소를 고려하면 임금 격차가 크게 줄어드는 것으로 나타났습니다.

직업 선택이 임금 격차에 미치는 영향

기존의 임금 격차는 남성과 여성의 직업 선택에 따른 차이에서 기인합니다.

대학에서 가장 높은 연봉을 받는 5개 전공에 대한 데이터는 남성과 여성의 대표성에 상당한 격차가 있음을 보여줍니다.

반대로 급여가 가장 낮은 5개 전공은 여성 비율이 높은 것으로 나타났습니다.

같은 직업(간호사) 내에서도 전문성, 더 긴 근무 시간, 근무지 선택 등으로 인해 남성 간호사의 수입이 더 높습니다.

전문가 의견에 따르면 간호사의 성별 격차는 대부분 직업 및 교육 선택에 기인합니다.

다양한 요인을 고려한 후 설명할 수 없는 임금 격차는 4.8%에서 7%로 미미합니다.

위험한 작업 환경이나 장시간 근무 의지와 같은 설명되지 않은 변수에 대해 논의합니다.

교육과 근무 시간이 비슷하더라도 '대기 상태'에 대한 의지는 보상에 영향을 미칩니다.

결론은 성별 임금 격차가 심각하다는 주장은 잘못된 데이터와 허위 진술에 근거하고 있다는 것입니다.