A Fox News article dated May 7, 2012, deliberately suggests that President Obama's focus on equal pay for women is a campaign ploy with no merit. Fox News reporter Angle leads you to think that the reason women make less than men is because of lifestyle choices. While that's true to some degree, Angle somehow left out the news that even in fields where women work in men's jobs or vice versa, men still make more. (H/T John P.)
Angle began his story with a swipe at President Obama - by suggesting the issue of equal pay for women is more political than substantive.
President Obama and his Democratic allies are hoping to win women voters by a large margin -- and part of that strategy involves making equal pay a big issue.
Angle acknowledged that research "indeed suggests (my emphasis) women on average make only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men."
But he goes on to say that the statistics "could" be "an apples-to-oranges comparison." Angle notes that men are often in careers that pay more and that women work fewer hours - because of their own decisions.
"Women are deciding not just what's great for their career, they're deciding what's great for their kids," said Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute. ..."There's no question that there is what some scholars call a 'motherhood penalty.'"
Angle even takes it one step further by highlighting that some women make more:
Beyond all that, there is one stat that could cast doubt on claims that working women are being discriminated against in the workforce.
"Young women in their 20s who don't have children, who are not married, are actually earning more than comparable young men," Hymowitz said.
(Author Warren) Farrell said they're actually earning 117 percent more -- meaning women in that group earn 17 cents more on every dollar a man of the same age makes.
But industry doesn't tell the whole story. Women earned less than men in all 20 industries and 25 occupation groups surveyed by the Census Bureau in 2007 — even in fields in which their numbers are overwhelming. Female secretaries, for instance, earn just 83.4% as much as male ones. And those who pick male-dominated fields earn less than men too: female truck drivers, for instance, earn just 76.5% of the weekly pay of their male counterparts. Perhaps the most compelling — and potentially damning — data of all to suggest that gender has an influence comes from a 2008 study in which University of Chicago sociologist Kristen Schilt and NYU economist Matthew Wiswall examined the wage trajectories of people who underwent a sex change. Their results: even when controlling for factors like education, men who transitioned to women earned, on average, 32% less after the surgery. Women who became men, on the other hand, earned 1.5% more.
Women and minorities have problems of their own making.
And they wonder why Romney won’t get the women’s vote.
