Options for Women

According to the Boston Globe, women are dropping off the partnership track. Why is this news? The main reason cited is that they are having children and find it difficult to work such long hours, while arranging to care properly for their children.

This should not be a surprise to anyone. And women are choosing to opt out:

THE United States Bureau of Labor Statistics recently published its long-awaited study, ''Trends in Labor Force Participation of Married Mothers of Infants.'' ''In recent years,'' the number crunchers reported, ''the labor force participation of married mothers, especially those with young children, has stopped its advance.''

Sixty percent of married mothers of preschool children are now in the work force, four percentage points fewer than in 1997. The rate for married mothers of infants fell by about six percentage points, to 53.5 percent. The bureau further reports that the declines ''have occurred across all educational levels and, for most groups, by about the same magnitude.''

In sum, sometime well before the 2000 recession, wives with infants and toddlers began leaving the work force. And they stayed out even after the economy began to revive.

What's going on? We have to explain this to feminists, as even faced with the facts and human nature they refuse to take it in.

Feminists have been beating this pay-gap dead horse with a blunt instrument for over 20 years, using the same crude numbers, pushing the same tired old myth on "equal pay day". For an example, here's a piece by one of these aging feminists.

When I was in business school in the early '80's I remember we discussed the supposed pay gap in class. Much of it disappeared after adjusting for differences in experience and career interruptions due to childbearing and choice of jobs. Women often chose jobs that were less risky and provided more prestige in the community and as a result paid less. Non-profits and teachers come to mind. Men took jobs that were often dirty and dangerous, and more got killed on the job.

Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women's Forum explores further:

Another group should join in the fun: men who work part-time. The same Department of Labor statistics that show the wage gap among full-time workers reveals a gap among those who work part-time. But this time it’s the men who are the victims. The median male part-time worker makes about 90 percent of the earnings of the median part-time woman. Their “Equal Pay Day” would fall in mid-February, not April, but the concept is the same.

Of course this points out that there's more to supposed wage gaps than meets the eye. (Read her piece for the explanation of the part-time disparity.)

Steve Chapman, Tribune, on the subject:

June O'Neill, an economist at Baruch College and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, has uncovered something that debunks the discrimination thesis. Take out the effects of marriage and child-rearing, and the difference between the genders suddenly vanishes. "For men and women who never marry and never have children, there is no earnings gap," she said in an interview.

Lukas in the Washington Post:

Surveys have shown for years that women tend to place a higher priority on flexibility and personal fulfillment than do men, who focus more on pay. Women tend to avoid jobs that require travel or relocation, and they take more time off and spend fewer hours in the office than men do. Men disproportionately take on the dirtiest, most dangerous and depressing jobs.

When these kinds of differences are taken into account and the comparison is truly between men and women in equivalent roles, the wage gap shrinks. In his book "Why Men Earn More," Warren Farrell -- a former board member of the National Organization for Women in New York -- identifies more than three dozen professions in which women out-earn men (including engineering management, aerospace engineering, radiation therapy and speech-language pathology). Farrell seeks to empower women with this information. Discrimination certainly plays a role in some workplaces, but individual preferences are the real root of the wage gap.

When women realize that it isn't systemic bias but the choices they make that determine their earnings, they can make better-informed decisions.

(Link to the book.) And that means voting in a more-informed manner as well. So let's stop the mythology, stop the victimology, keep the flexibility. Part of being an adult is making responsible choices and being responsible for your actions. Children are a responsibility and a priceless blessing.