The editorial “Demagoguery and pay gap” starts off with a billious tone but eventually addresses real issues concerning the differential between what men and women are paid.
“The median pay ignores hours worked, education and experience — at the White House, in Lancaster County and everywhere else in the U.S. Add in danger — you have to pay a bit more to get a person to risk life and limb in certain male-dominated fields — and the gap shrinks some more. (When danger is defined by on-the-job fatalities per 100,000 employees, logging and commercial fishing top the list.)..
“Studies indicate that women are paid less than men for a whole host of reasons. They include choices women make to limit their hours and travel, time taken to have children, choosing lower-paid, more family friendly lines of work and a reluctance to ask for higher pay.”
For lower level factory and retail work along with other positions where longevity of employment is not a factor in determining the value of an employee, there is no excuse for paying females less than males for doing the exact same job.
But employers do have legitimate reasons to pay a premium to those who they expect will remain with the company and rise to a senior management level. Also, being out of the work force for a number of years causes mothers to be less experienced and thus less valuable. (Of course this is less true for those who only take relatively brief maternity leaves of absence.)
In the “Brave New World” where babies are conceived and nurtured by the state, the gap would likely disappear and, given modern technology which tilts towards female talents, reverse itself. It may well happen anyway in our world within two or three decades.
