Today is Equal Pay Day.
In the American political tradition, it’s an occasion for spreading dubious statistics that downplay the achievements of women. President Obama and his White House will be doing their part, by once again spreading a much-discredited factoid designed to suggest the need for more government intervention: that women make 77 cents of every dollar men make.
In reality, the 77 cents figure obscures more than it tells us. Over at IWF.org, our good friends at the Independent Women’s Forum offer their own, more sophisticated guide to the wage gap. They point out that when apples are compared to apples — i.e., when women are compared to men with the same education levels, experience and work hours put in — it turns out the pay gap reduces dramatically: Women earn roughly 97 cents on the male dollar.
Even more striking, when single, childless women living in cities are compared with single, childless men in cities, turns out the former earn $1.08 for every dollar earned. As for getting ahead, the IWF also cites a Federal Reserve Bank of New York study noting that men favor majors that lead to more high-paying jobs.
That’s important, because new numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics point to another area where women are ahead: college degrees. According to the BLS, American women born after 1980 are now 33 percent more likely to have college degrees than their male counterparts.
So here’s a question: When can we start celebrating the victories women have achieved in the American market instead of always presenting them as victims?