These are simplified examples based on traits most likely associated with a given gender. While they cannot predict which gender would perform better in a given situation, the same can be said for those who assert that women are better. What’s worse than skewing studies or making blanket statements about men to promote women is the disregard for its effect on boys. Feminists have sons too. It is remarkable that as a group their desire to see women excel trumps their desire to see their sons treated fairly.
THE MYTH OF THE PAY GAP
For nearly a decade, we’ve been told that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes, that it’s a problem, and that it proves there is systematic discrimination against women. This is not true, but it doesn’t stop politicians from citing it to make political points. Former President Barack Obama made this claim not once (2013 State of the Union Address), not twice (2014 State of the Union Address), but three times in speeches.154 In a 2015 speech at the National Press Club, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said, “We have to pass pay equity for women workers. It is not acceptable that women are making 78 cents an hour compared to men.”155 At least he gave them a raise.
The problem is that the claim is not true. Whether you use the census data or Bureau of Labor and Statistics data, taking all female wages and comparing them to all male wages is not a sound comparison. Doctors are not being compared to doctors, for instance. Since men have been historically more apt to pursue high paying jobs, there will be more men in that pool than women. This creates an artificially high discrepancy in pay.
Even if they measured all male doctors vs all female doctors, that alone would not prove discrimination. Women are more likely to choose specialties with more flexibility like obstetrics, pediatrics, and family medicine, while men dominate cardiology, surgery, anesthesiology, and emergency medicine, disciplines that pay more. This also holds for dangerous jobs like truck drivers and drillers, and technical jobs like engineers, mathematicians, and pilots. This is more a case of self-selection than of discrimination.
This is enough to erase most but not all of the wage gap.156 Time on the job plays a part in wage determination. Men are more likely to work long hours and take less time off. This makes it easier to move up. There are also interpersonal factors that play a part in wage discrepancies. In most cases, your salary is a negotiation, and often women are not as comfortable asking for money as men.
In 2015, actress Jennifer Lawrence penned an essay asking, “Why do I make less than my male co-stars?”157 This after salaries were leaked in a Sony hack. She didn’t blame Sony or the actors, but the implication was that it was a gender issue. When Bradley Cooper, one of her co-stars in American Hustle, offered to help his co-stars negotiate their contracts in the future, the other stars were asked if they would do the same to which Jeremy Renner famously said, “That’s not my job.”
Blaming sexism for not asking is wrong. In doing so, you assume that employers regularly go around offering more money than they think a particular job is worth. Another Hollywood example involves Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams. They were in the movie, All of the Money in the World, and after Kevin Spacey was removed because of his sex scandal, the starring role was recast with Christopher Plummer and some scenes needed to be reshot. Ridley Scott brought Mark and Michelle back to Europe to reshoot the scene.158
It was leaked that Wahlberg was paid $1.5 million while Williams received a per diem which amounted to less than $1,000. People were outraged. This was obviously an example of the gender pay gap on steroids. There’s one problem with this narrative: she never negotiated. Williams told the USA Today, “I said I’d be wherever they needed me, whenever they needed me and they could have my salary, they could have my holiday, whatever they wanted. Because I appreciated so much that they were making this massive effort.” It sounds like she was taking the hit on behalf of the #MeToo movement. Wahlberg’s team negotiated.
More evidence that gender bias is not the reason for the wage gap is the fact that there aren’t any women-only companies. Employers would jump at a chance to instantly lower their payroll costs by more than 20%. SJWs, having no historical perspective, say it would never happen, but it was done for years to blacks and Chinese immigrants. Today’s corporate executives are no less profit-focused than they were 100 years ago.
Women are paid less, on average, than men to do the same job; however, it is nowhere near 23% (adjusted estimates are closer to 8%), and much of that difference is based on factors other than gender.159 Factors like interview skills, college pedigree, previous salary, nepotism, references, and many others are considered for every candidate, male and female, and they skew the comparison as they are never completely identical.
There is no doubt that there is gender bias and that bias can, and often does, lead to discrimination. There is simply no evidence that the wage gap is the result of any bias. Even when it’s plausible, there are simply too many variables. It is better to focus on the areas where discrimination is more likely to take place: promotions, hiring, and hostile work environment.
If a person in charge has a negative bias towards women, he is more likely to pass them over for promotion or hire less qualified men than he is to hire or promote women but pay them less. The problem for women’s advocates is how to combat the problem. Government is not the answer. There is no law that can regulate the ‘old boys’ club.
The goal should be to minimize the negative bias. Like blacks entering a discriminatory workplace, you have to be better and overcome stereotypes. It is also important to be able to properly assess discrimination. Many SJWs see biased treatment in everything and this is simply not the case. Sometimes they find the opposite is at play.
Iris Bohnet is a behavioral economist and the director of the Women and Public Policy program at Harvard University. She wrote the book, What Works: Gender Equality by Design, to look at gender bias and suggest methods to combat it. In it, Bohnet crafts a detailed account of the types of bias women face as well as policies and practices that unintentionally skew against women. She then offers possible ways to get beyond these obstacles and achieve gender equality.
She referenced an experiment done to see the effects of eliminating bias in applicant selections. The results were surprising. “In 2009, the French government launched an interesting experiment that would affect all firms that made use of the services of the public employment agency, Pole Emploi. Pole Emploi invited firms to voluntarily participate in a blind recruitment process where the applicant’s name, address, nationality, and picture were removed. Three economists, Luc Behaghel, Bruno Crepon, and Thomas Le Barbanchon, analyzed the impact of blind evaluations on the likelihood that members of traditionally disadvantaged groups—immigrants, children of immigrants, or residents of deprived neighborhoods—would be invited to an interview and ultimately hired. Based on a sample of 600 firms, they found a surprising result: anonymization reduced the chance that a member of a disadvantaged group received an interview and eventually was hired.”160
The results showed that while blind evaluations remove any chance of discriminating against a candidate based on a disadvantaged group, it also prevented employers from giving candidates from disadvantaged groups’ preference. In this case, that was more likely, consequently reducing employment of those in disadvantaged groups.
I applaud Mrs. Bohnet’s book. It is good to make attempts to minimize gender bias. Creating programs and plans to give women the skills they may lack in relation to men is a good way to achieve this. It is also a good idea to show people their unconscious biases and teach them ways to mitigate them. My contention is that three points be maintained: the government is not used to achieve these goals, steps to aide women are not done to the detriment of men, and no unfair advantages are given to women to artificially balance the outcomes.
One area where women face clear discrimination is hostile work environment or sexual harassment in the workplace. This is unacceptable; however, there are varying deg
rees of harassment and the appropriate punishment needs to be meted out. In today’s #MeToo environment, everyone is Harvey Weinstein. It is a good thing that this behavior is being called out, but do we want the guy who had a consensual sexual relationship with an employee treated like the guy who raped someone? Every act is not the same, and every man should not be lumped in together. This is the type of blanket judgement that leads to the constant refrain of a rape culture.
THE MYTH OF RAPE CULTURE
Like the 77-cent myth, we are constantly told that there is a rape culture on college campuses. Those making this argument cite either the Campus Sexual Assault Study, commissioned by the Department of Justice, or the AAU Climate Study on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct. A quick note about surveys. Surveys can be good. You think something is a problem, so you do impartial research to confirm or refute your hypothesis. This also means that those studying an issue have a preconceived idea about it.
This is normal, even good in some cases. When researchers publish their findings objectively, that is good. If they do this even when the findings conflict with their initial beliefs, it strengthens the validity of the study (like professor Fryer’s police study). It becomes a problem when they ignore data that doesn’t support their claim or selectively manipulate the data to support their views. This is the case with the Campus Sexual Assault Study.161
There were several unmistakable problems with the way this study was done. Right in the executive summary, it states that only two universities were surveyed. Let’s put that into perspective. There are over 5,000 colleges and universities in the United States. They vary in size, diversity, geography, funding type, and more. Analyzing two colleges isn’t a large enough sample size to get a diverse mix. It also goes on to say that they received a large non-response rate. This is important because victims are more likely to respond. Without a sizable number of non-victim responses, you end up with a victim survey rather than a survey of the school at large. To analyze this myth, we will use the AAU study because it has a higher rate of assaults and they surveyed more schools.
The study asked the questions in a way that would illicit higher ‘yes’ responses. The key question that leads to the 1 in 4 claim, has to do with non-voluntary sexual contact. The goal should have been to isolate the problem and determine the cause. In the study, sexual contact was split into four categories: penetration, touching, physical force, and incapacitation. They asked questions that separated the first two from the last two. This is a problem. Penetration, which is obviously rape, is much different than touching. Also, the touching included touching a body part (wrong, but shouldn’t be in a question including rape) and rubbing against you (which cannot always be contributed to sexual contact).162
What’s worse is the latter two; the question about physical force and incapacitation. It includes, “… unable to consent or stop what was happening because you were passed out, asleep, or incapacitated due to drugs or alcohol.” This connotes a person who is passed out drunk, but read the quote again. Passed out is a given, but incapacitated simply means ‘impaired.’ This means the respondents who weren’t coerced or forced, who just used bad judgment, were lumped in with those who were raped.
Another interesting take away is that the numbers are higher for TGQN (Transgender, Genderqueer or non-conforming, Questioning or Not), and twice as high for undergraduate students as it is for graduate students. Logic suggests that the numbers are drastically lower for graduate students because they are more mature, party less, and are better capable of holding their liquor. A more accurate summary of the report should be, “There’s an 18–22-year-old, drinking, immaturity, and sexual experimentation culture on college campuses,” something we already knew.
If the researchers were not trying to create a desired result, they would have at least measured the responses for each offense separately. Also buried in the study is the fact that only 5% of respondents said it is very likely or extremely likely that they will experience sexual assault. This is particularly low considering the amount of conversation around the topic and the much higher percentage of people reporting ‘yes.’ This means many of the respondents who said they were assaulted also said they were unlikely to be assaulted. Lastly, if the problem were as pervasive as many believe, there would be no co-ed colleges. No parent would knowingly put their daughter in that kind of danger.
Much of the college gender problem is a product of what the Left teaches. If a couple of 18-year-olds attend a college party, have too much to drink, and have consensual sex, should the boy be accused of rape? On most college campuses there will be an assumption of guilt even if she didn’t say ‘no.’ Apparently, she can be too drunk to consent, but he cannot.
This dynamic cannot be good for either of them. In his case, he has spent the last 15 years of his life being told that girls are his equal. Now, with his future on the line, he’s trying to understand how, if they were both drunk, he’s being treated differently. For her part, it sends a bad message to create a situation where a woman has the power to flip a switch and instantly go from master, or mistress, of the universe to a shrinking violet.
The next phase of the gender inequality fight is the focus on LGBTQ rights. They claim they are discriminated against, even though this is mostly untrue. They represent less than five percent of the population, with gays and lesbians representing its most prevalent members, yet they command tremendous economic power and social influence. They dominate Hollywood as well as the fashion and art industries. They are business moguls (Tim Cook and Peter Thiel), news anchors (Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow, and Shepard Smith) and political pundits (Sally Kohn, Charles Blow, Richard Grenell, and Guy Benson). In fact, in contrast of being an oppressed group, they are a powerhouse.
B (bi-sexual) and Q (questioning) are also not discriminated against. How can someone discriminate against a sexual preference they don’t know exists? You can’t look at a person and see that they are questioning. There is, however, no doubt that transgender people suffer unnecessary ridicule and disrespect. This is unfortunate but not indicative of the way most people treat them. Most people just want to mind their own business. But having someone call you names on the street shouldn’t give you protected status and if they attack you physically or deny you a job because of it, there are already laws protecting you.
Everyone should have equal rights and there are no groups that are excluded from that. But for the SJWs demanding gender equality, they are not seeking equality that can be granted by law. What they want is deference. They want more female and LGBTQ representation in entertainment, business, and other mainstream areas. More than this, they want acceptance. Being allowed to live the way they want used to be enough. Now they want you to accept it, watch them openly display it, and celebrate it.
June is gay pride month. At Navy Pier, the most popular tourist attraction in the Midwest, I noticed several American flags had been replaced with gay pride flags. I posted on Facebook, “Navy Pier replaced their American flags with gay pride flags.” There were several comments, most of dismay, some of support. One striking post was from a high school friend who’s gay. He commented, “So much hate, wow.” To give you a visual, there is a row at the end of the pier with 11 flag poles each donning the American flag. They left the American flag in the center, slightly higher than the others, and replaced the other ten with gay pride flags. So, my suggestion that maybe a 10:1 ratio is a bit much is ‘hate.’ This is the problem with what they disguise as equality.
And speaking of pride, I know I will lose a lot of people here, but I don't understand what people are so proud of. I take pride to mean satisfaction from one's own achievements or accomplishments. I can even see extending this to family and close friends, but outside of this small group, I just don't get it. There is no shortage of non-accomplishments of which people are willing to express their pride: black pride, gay pride, Italian pride, even American pride.
If you are born into a grou
p, then you did not accomplish anything, therefore you have no reason to be proud. American pride is really patriotism. I love being American. I believe we have the best system of government in the world and I am impressed that our founding fathers were able to anticipate potential problems and create a process to deal with them. I know that being an American gives me a privilege few in the world can experience. But this is a vigorous support of the country, not pride.
Because of the Left’s extreme definition of hate, a person who doesn’t discriminate against anyone, has gay friends he dines and vacations with, works at a company where he hires and promotes gays, and defends their right to equal protection under law, is a homophobe if he also believes marriage should only be between one man and one woman.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel famously tried to block Chick Fil-A from opening a restaurant in Chicago because, “their values are not Chicago values.”163 This because the owner supports traditional marriage. Even though the company was not being charged with discrimination, created over one hundred jobs, and was poised to bring the city much needed tax revenue; Rahm wanted to police the owner’s beliefs.
So far, we’ve dealt with gender roles, the unfair preference given to girls, several gender equality myths, and the fight for LGBT rights, the Left’s latest attempt to correct gender inequality is their push for gender fluidity. This is the charge that there is no difference between boys and girls. In fact, you can be both, neither, or 54 other genders according to Facebook. Why argue for equality of the genders when you can simply insist that gender doesn’t exist. They, who charge their opponents with being anti-science, argue that gender has no innate connection, and is simply a social construct. This is a problem on many levels.
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