THE SENATE this week rejected the second effort by Democrats to pass the draconian Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have multiplied the number of sex discrimination suits and further eroded the autonomy of the private sector under feminist tyranny. This is one small victory. Phyllis Schlafly writes of the bill:

This bill is another costly item on the feminists’ wish lists that would allow the federal government to artificially inflate salaries for jobs traditionally held by women, while freezing wages for jobs traditionally performed by men and empowering women to sue their employers to enforce these controlled wages.

Liberals claim this bill will address the “gender wage gap,” and cite the misleading figure that women make 77 cents for every dollar men earn. What those complaining about this so-called wage gap fail to mention is that this figure does not take into account the reality that women have and make choices, and often choose to work fewer hours and to come in and out of the workforce as they have children or attend to other family responsibilities. Additionally, men, more often than women take high-risk and unpleasant jobs, suffering 90 percent of occupational fatalities, so they should earn more in these positions.

If the liberals are so concerned with a gender wage gap, they should start with their own Congressional office staff. According to publicly available reports, Nancy Pelosi’s female employees earned an average annual salary of $96,394 in fiscal year 2011. Male employees earned $123,000 on average, a difference of 27.6 percent.

Feminist contentions that women suffer from unfounded bias in the workplace remain undiminished  though single women in urban areas such as New York City now out-earn men. Feminists has never been able to answer the most important question regarding this supposed discrimination, and that is, Why? Why would businesses deliberately shoot themselves in the foot and not compensate women fairly if they wish to retain and promote valuable workers? After all, businesses want profit. If women themselves do not demand adeqaute wages, then the answer is for them to ask for them, not for government to penalize business, which will only adversely affect women workers in the long run. The Paycheck Fairness Act is as confused and self-defeating as all Marxist control of the economy. It leads to business failure which in turn hurts workers.

At The Economist, the blogger  M.S. writes:

The Paycheck Fairness Act, like the Lily Ledbetter Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, is not an instance of government price setting. It is an instance of government prohibition of certain forms of exploitative price discrimination. It is illegal for an employer to pay a woman less than a man for the same work just as it is illegal for a shop owner to charge a Jew more than a Christian for the same loaf of bread.

Well, it shouldn’t be illegal for a shopowner to charge a Jew more than a Christian. If a shopowner is stupid enough to turn down Jewish business, let him do so. (Of course, this has never been a problem in American history. And equating discrimination against more than half the population with discrimination against a tiny minority is absurd. But such is the fevered imagination of feminists such as M.S.) And it shouldn’t be illegal for a business to pay any woman whatever it chooses. After all, no one forces a person to take a job. If women are valuable workers, they can go elsewhere.

— Comments —-

Ibitsaam writes:

How many male newsreaders do you suppose fall asleep on live TV owing to first trimester pregnancy fatigue?

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