A Letter to Post Contributor Josie Cox About Recent Article on the Gender Pay Gap
A Letter to Post Contributor Josie Cox About Recent Article on the Gender Pay Gap
Dear Ms. Cox,
I respectfully ask that you take the time to read this letter about your recent Opinion piece in The Washington Post, Here is a key way the U.S. lags behind its peers on gender equality, and to thoughtfully consider what I say here.
As a proud lifelong reader of the Post I have long noticed the paper’s gender bias, most notably its imbalanced coverage of domestic violence.
But my pride in the Post turned to quiet outrage in 2018 after the paper published two horrible, undeniably gender-biased articles: Why can't we hate men? and Amber Heard’s shameful op-ed that defamed Johnny Depp. In response, I’ve been sending letters to Post columnists who have written articles that perpetuate this gender bias.
Your article about “fixing the gender pay gap” is, unfortunately, another example of this bias.
Your article – and thousands of others like it that mindlessly echo the myth of a gender pay gap – reminds me of the answer Ernest Hemingway gave when once asked what quality was most needed to be a great writer: “a built-in, shockproof, crap detector”.
Ms. Cox, with all due respect, you need to turn your crap detector back on.
If you would only do some basic research, you’ll find that, at best, this pay gap is provably a calculated misrepresentation of basic facts; at worst, it is a bald-faced lie, a feminist-generated fiction that proves the adage that “figures don’t lie, but liars figure”.
For proof, let me begin by examining a gender pay gap in the U.S. Congress.
According to this website1, almost all female members are paid a standard annual salary of $174,000, while several male representatives are paid $193,400. That’s a gender pay gap of just over 11%! Why isn’t the federal government doing something about this injustice?
It’s because the math used, while computationally correct, is an oversimplified misrepresentation that excludes important information about the actual roles filled by members:
In this case, the missing information is the differences in roles, responsibilities, and, presumably, the additional years of experience of the higher-ranking members.
This kind of oversimplified calculation is at the heart of the pay gap dishonesty that feminists have managed to successfully foist on the western world for more than fifty years. As one article about a Harvard study, "Gender Wage Gap" Explained Entirely by Work Choices of Men and Women, aptly put it,
The “gender wage gap” is as real as unicorns and has been killed more times than Michael Myers.
A head-turning example that illuminates this pay gap misrepresentation can be found on State of the Gender Pay Gap in 2023 by the compensation company, PayScale. This page presents information about two pay gaps!
· An “uncontrolled gender pay gap that takes the ratio of the median earnings of women to men without controlling for various compensable factors … In 2023, women make only $0.83 for every dollar a man makes…”.
This is the misleading pay gap that we’ve all been led to believe is true.
· A “controlled gender pay gap that controls for job title, years of experience, education, industry, location, and other compensable factors, measures equal pay for equal work. … Women in the controlled group make $0.99 for every $1.00 a man makes.”
This is the pay gap that gender partisans want to pretend doesn’t exist.
The following graphic appeared on the PayScale page:
As part of my investigation of the pay gap myth, I’ve noticed something in the past few years: organizations that report on the gap continue to use the “uncontrolled” statistics but have increasingly been adding information about the more accurate “controlled” statistics. I believe that this is a sign that the truth of the pay gap is being gradually – albeit grudgingly – acknowledged.
An example of this acknowledgement is the analysis from Pew Research mentioned in your article. While the Pew article’s title and first few paragraphs parrot the feminist pay gap myth, the rest of the article goes into substantial detail about the many reasons for the differences in pay between men and women! Pew finally concludes:
“Changes in the gender pay gap are also shaped by economic factors that sometimes drive men’s and women’s earnings in distinctive ways. Because men and women tend to work in different types of jobs and industries, their earnings may respond differently to external pressures.”
Pew’s conclusion is echoed by the federal government! In 2009 the U.S. Department of Labor produced a report, An Analysis of the Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women — Final Report which said,
“… the raw wage gap [between men and women] continues to be used in misleading ways to advance public policy agendas without fully explaining the reasons behind the gap.”
As part of your research after you turn your crap detector back on, please read a well-researched book by Warren Farrell, a former board member of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women. His book, “Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap — and What Women Can Do About It” provides a detailed analysis and thorough explanation about the real reasons for the pay gap. A huge part of it is the choices that women make! Farrell argues that:
“…bias-based unequal pay for women is largely a myth, and that women are most often paid less than men not because they are discriminated against, but because they have made lifestyle choices that affect their ability to earn. … [and] while discrimination sometimes plays a part, both men and women unconsciously make trade-offs that affect how much they earn. [He] defines 25 different workplace choices that affect women’s and men’s incomes — including putting in more hours at work, taking riskier jobs or more hazardous assignments, being willing to change location, and training for technical jobs that involve less people contact.”
Next, do some real research into Megan Rapinoe and U.S. women’s soccer team’s claim of “pay discrimination”.
Although they wish to ignore it, the women’s soccer team was potentially paid less because the team deliberately chose a different pay structure, one that waived bonuses for benefits! U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner dismissed the women players’ pay discrimination lawsuit because they had rejected being paid using the same structure as the men’s team:
“The WNT [Women’s National Team] was willing to forgo higher bonuses for benefits, such as greater base compensation and the guarantee of a higher number of contracted players,” Klausner wrote in his ruling. “Accordingly, plaintiffs cannot now retroactively deem their CBA (collective bargaining agreement) worse than the MNT (men’s national team) CBA by reference to what they would have made had they been paid under the MNT’s pay-to-play terms structure when they themselves rejected such a structure.”
But even more galling about the WNT suing over pay discrimination is the fact that the women’s team actually earned more than the men’s team! According to this article,
“…the Women’s National Team earned approximately $24 million overall; the Men’s National Team earned only $18 million. The average take per game was $220,747 for the women’s team, compared to $212,639 for the men’s team. And while the individual female plaintiffs made an average of $11,356 to $17,416 per game, the four highest-paid male players made an average of $10,360 to $13,964 per game.”
The article concludes:
“But don’t let Megan Rapinoe fool you: A victim of sex discrimination, she is not.”
If the WNT truly wanted full pay equity, why didn’t they instead sue for the end all sex discrimination in the sport by establishing a single national team comprised of the best male and female players? Although they’d be loath to admit it, they know it’s because the mixed-sex team would most assuredly be almost 100% male.
And this recognition is ultimately why men are usually paid more: they’re bigger, stronger, and faster than the women players. They’re far better at the sport, and this in turn is why many more people watch men’s soccer than women’s. Also, many more men than women like to watch sports of all types.
Finally, you should research another gender pay gap: the huge pay disparity between male and female models in the fashion industry. According to this article on the Time website,
“The [modeling] industry’s pay gap has been documented before, with Fortune reporting that the top female models bring home millions more dollars than men. For instance, Gisele Bündchen, the highest earning female model, brought home $42 million in 2013, per Forbes, while the top earning male model, Sean O’Pry, only took home $1.5 million that year.”
So, the top female model takes home a whopping $40.5 MILLION more than the top male model. This is 28 times as much! Why aren’t women complaining about this pay gap?
Kind of makes Megan Rapinoe and her teammates’ “pay discrimination” pale in comparison, doesn’t it?
This, then, is the power of the pay gap myth: even when the women’s soccer team actually earned more than men, even when female models earn many times more than their male peers, even when intelligent women such as yourself who should know better, yet help perpetuate the myth, women have been so completely convinced that they’re victims of pay discrimination, they completely blind themselves to the inconvenient facts that prove otherwise.
In closing, let me repeat the prior quote from the federal government’s 2009 analysis of the gender pay gap:
“… the raw wage gap [between men and women] continues to be used in misleading ways [emphasis added] to advance public policy agendas without fully explaining the reasons behind the gap.”
I must ask: Isn’t the phrase “used in misleading ways” just a polite way of saying “feminists are lying”?
Ms. Cox, with all due respect, please turn your crap detector back on and write articles based not on myth, but on verifiable facts.
Sincerely,
Stephen Bond
The linked government website only provided the salary data. A separate Google search showed that 6 of 8 House leaders are male. I didn’t incorporate this information into the example for simplicity.