What War On Women?
Data: ‘Wage Gap’ Nonexistent
Posted: April 30, 2012
Apropos of the ballyhooed “war on women” supposedly launched by the black hearts in the Republican Party, liberals would have us believe that one tactic in that “war” is to pay women less than men for the same kind of work. Women, we are told, earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That may well be true, as the Manhattan Institute’s Kay Hymowitz wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week, but the figure alone hides a salient fact: Women, on average, work fewer hours than men.
The reason, Ms. Hymowitz noted, is that women drop out of the work force to raise children. Those who don’t, meaning younger women who have not had children, generally earn more than their male peers.
Ms. Hymowitz wrote thusly: “One stubborn fact of the labor market argues against the idea” that women earn less than men because they are maltreated.
“That is the gender-hours gap, close cousin of the gender-wage gap. Most people have heard that full-time working American women earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Yet these numbers don't take into account the actual number of hours worked. And it turns out that women work fewer hours than men.
“The Labor Department defines full-time as 35 hours a week or more, and the ‘or more’ is far more likely to refer to male workers than to female ones. According to the department, almost 55% of workers logging more than 35 hours a week are men. In 2007, 25% of men working full-time jobs had workweeks of 41 or more hours, compared with 14% of female full-time workers. In other words, the famous gender-wage gap is to a considerable degree a gender-hours gap.
“The main reason that women spend less time at work than men — and that women are unlikely to be the richer sex — is obvious: children. Today, childless 20-something women do earn more than their male peers. But most are likely to cut back their hours after they have kids, giving men the hours, and income, advantage.”
This means, the war-on-women alarmists might say, that men need to take on more child-rearing duties to even things out, which in turn might require laws that require more generous family leave policies. Even in countries that have adopted such measures, Ms. Hymowitz wrote, the dreaded “wage gap” persists because the “hours gap” does too:
In Sweden and Iceland, she reported, “mothers still take more time off than fathers after the baby arrives. When they do go back to work, they’re on the job for fewer hours. Iceland’s income gap is a yawning 38% — that is, the average women earns only 62 cents to a man’s dollar. Even Sweden’s 15% gap — though lower than our 23% one — is far from full parity.
“All over the developed world women make up the large majority of the part-time workforce, and surveys suggest they want it that way.”
Another problem for proponents of the “war-on-women” myth is what the data show about younger woman who don’t have children. They earn more than men in their peer group, Time magazine reported in 2010. As Ms. Hymowitz wrote: “[C]hildless 20-something women do earn more than their male peers.”
As well, the “wage gap” isn’t likely to go away, she suggested, quoting a Pew survey that asked how many hours men and women want to work: “Among working mothers with minor children, 60% said they would prefer to work part-time, while only 21% wanted to be in the office full-time (and 19% said they’d like to give up their job altogether). How about working fathers? Only 12% would choose part-time and 70% wanted to be full-time.”
So the “wage gap” is not a weapon in the “war on women” but a result of a simple truth: Most women want to spend less time at work and more time with their children.
Those who would like to erase that natural instinct would do better to stop denouncing evil businessmen and Republicans and instead complain to Mother Nature, or better yet, the Almighty.
The reason, Ms. Hymowitz noted, is that women drop out of the work force to raise children. Those who don’t, meaning younger women who have not had children, generally earn more than their male peers.
Ms. Hymowitz wrote thusly: “One stubborn fact of the labor market argues against the idea” that women earn less than men because they are maltreated.
“That is the gender-hours gap, close cousin of the gender-wage gap. Most people have heard that full-time working American women earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Yet these numbers don't take into account the actual number of hours worked. And it turns out that women work fewer hours than men.
“The Labor Department defines full-time as 35 hours a week or more, and the ‘or more’ is far more likely to refer to male workers than to female ones. According to the department, almost 55% of workers logging more than 35 hours a week are men. In 2007, 25% of men working full-time jobs had workweeks of 41 or more hours, compared with 14% of female full-time workers. In other words, the famous gender-wage gap is to a considerable degree a gender-hours gap.
“The main reason that women spend less time at work than men — and that women are unlikely to be the richer sex — is obvious: children. Today, childless 20-something women do earn more than their male peers. But most are likely to cut back their hours after they have kids, giving men the hours, and income, advantage.”
This means, the war-on-women alarmists might say, that men need to take on more child-rearing duties to even things out, which in turn might require laws that require more generous family leave policies. Even in countries that have adopted such measures, Ms. Hymowitz wrote, the dreaded “wage gap” persists because the “hours gap” does too:
In Sweden and Iceland, she reported, “mothers still take more time off than fathers after the baby arrives. When they do go back to work, they’re on the job for fewer hours. Iceland’s income gap is a yawning 38% — that is, the average women earns only 62 cents to a man’s dollar. Even Sweden’s 15% gap — though lower than our 23% one — is far from full parity.
“All over the developed world women make up the large majority of the part-time workforce, and surveys suggest they want it that way.”
Another problem for proponents of the “war-on-women” myth is what the data show about younger woman who don’t have children. They earn more than men in their peer group, Time magazine reported in 2010. As Ms. Hymowitz wrote: “[C]hildless 20-something women do earn more than their male peers.”
As well, the “wage gap” isn’t likely to go away, she suggested, quoting a Pew survey that asked how many hours men and women want to work: “Among working mothers with minor children, 60% said they would prefer to work part-time, while only 21% wanted to be in the office full-time (and 19% said they’d like to give up their job altogether). How about working fathers? Only 12% would choose part-time and 70% wanted to be full-time.”
So the “wage gap” is not a weapon in the “war on women” but a result of a simple truth: Most women want to spend less time at work and more time with their children.
Those who would like to erase that natural instinct would do better to stop denouncing evil businessmen and Republicans and instead complain to Mother Nature, or better yet, the Almighty.