Xequecal wrote:
You guys are really missing the point here. It's not about whether or not women currently get equal pay for equal work or whether the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act actually is fair. It's not about any specific law. Schlaefly is flat out saying that because, in her opinion, relationships where the woman makes more money than the man are doomed to failure, women would actually be better off if we reinstituted the highly discriminatory policies of say the 19th century.
No, that is not what she's saying. That's what MSNBC is claiming she's saying.
Her ACTUAL commentsQuote:
She's saying that, instead of choosing the sane option and trying to get over the hangup about not getting into relationships with men that make less money than they do, women should just accept that the man must make more as a fact of life and therefore actively seek to deny themselves financial opportunities by opposing attempts to close the pay gap and actually support attempts to increase it, because the poorer they are, the larger the pool of available men for them to have a relationship with becomes. According to her, a woman's best strategy for financial success in life is to focus her efforts on maximizing the amount of money her husband can make, even if it's at her own expense. Any attempt to advance her own station in life is counterproductive, because it comes at the cost of having a husband and a family, which is what's really important.
Aside from your incredibly biased characterization of one option as "sane", you just contradicted yourself. The pay gap is not the same thing as "equal pay for equal work", the pay gap is about "equal pay across women in general" which was not the issue in the 19th century or even in the 1960s. Furthermore, she isn't tlak8ing about a woman's
best strategy, just what a lot of women
naturally doQuote:
From this argument, you can also infer that she considers a woman that chooses to have a family to have made a better choice than a woman that chooses to have a career. "Barefoot and pregnant" is exactly what she's advocating here.
Except that it isn't, because that isn't what she's saying. She's talking about the "Gender Pay Gap", and why it's not a result of pay discrimination. But then again, it's pretty obvious no one here could be assed to read her actual comments. She did not actually say that women should earn less in order to find a husband; she said that it's not terribly important in a marriage because what matters is the combined income rather than the amount of either individually:
Quote:
President Barack Obama and his feminist friends have been trotting out their tiresome slogan that women are paid only 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. Every reputable scholar who has commented has proved that this is a notorious falsehood that anyone should be embarrassed to use.
U.S. law calls for equal pay for equal work, but the feminist slogan is not based on equal work. Women work fewer hours per day, per week, per year. They spend fewer years as full-time workers outside the home, avoid jobs that require overtime, and choose jobs with flexibility to take time off for personal reasons. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, men are twice as likely as women to work more than 40 hours a week.
Women place a much higher value on pleasant working conditions: a clean, comfortable, air-conditioned office with congenial co-workers. Men, on the other hand, are more willing to endure unpleasant working conditions to earn higher pay, doing dirty, dangerous outside work. In 2012, men suffered 92 percent of work-related deaths.
If a man is supporting his family, at the peak of his career, he often works longer hours to maximize his earnings. By contrast, a successful woman who reaches a high rank in her career is more likely to reduce her working hours.
All these reasons for women voluntarily choosing lower pay are now beyond dispute among those who have looked at the facts. But even those explanations for the alleged pay "gap" are still only part of the story.
Perhaps an even more important reason for women's lower pay is the choices women make in their personal lives, such as having children. Women with children earn less, but childless women earn about the same as men.
Another fact is the influence of hypergamy, which means that women typically choose a mate (husband or boyfriend) who earns more than she does. Men don't have the same preference for a higher-earning mate.
While women prefer to HAVE a higher-earning partner, men generally prefer to BE the higher-earning partner in a relationship. This simple but profound difference between the sexes has powerful consequences for the so-called pay gap.
Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate.
Obviously, I'm not saying women won't date or marry a lower-earning men, only that they probably prefer not to. If a higher-earning man is not available, many women are more likely not to marry at all.
In colleges, there are no gender separations in courses of study, and students can freely choose their majors. There are no male and female math classes. But women generally choose college courses that pay less in the labor market.
Those are the choices that women themselves make. Those choices contribute to the pay gap, just as much as the choice of a job with flexible hours and pleasant working conditions.
The pay gap between men and women is not all bad because it helps to promote and sustain marriages. Since husband and wife generally pool their incomes into a single economic unit, what really matters is the combined family income, not the pay gap between them.
In two segments of our population, the pay gap has virtually ceased to exist. In the African-American community and in the millennial generation (ages 18 to 32), women earn about the same as men, if not more.
It just so happens that those are the two segments of our population in which the rate of marriage has fallen the most. Fifty years ago, about 80 percent of Americans were married by age 30; today, less than 50 percent are.
Just a coincidence? I think not. The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.
The real economic story of the past 30 years is that women's pay has effectively risen to virtual parity, but men's pay has stagnated and thousands of well-paid blue-collar jobs have been shipped to low-wage countries. Nobody should be surprised that the marriage rate has fallen, the age of first marriage has risen, and marriage, in general, has become unstable.
If you read carefully, (by carefully, I mean AT ALL) she does not say the pay gap is good; she says it isn't "all bad" because it helps sustain marriages. I'm not sure that conclusion is actually valid, but that does not make it ok to misrepresent it. Furthermore, her entire discussion is about WHY there's a gender pay gap - largely because men and women
make different choices. Contrary to what feminists will tell you, this isn't because of mysterious "patriarchy" it's because women and men ARE NOT THE SAME.
The entire issue is the "gender pay gap" which is "equal pay, with or without equal work". No one cares about the gender DEATH gap; apparently high risk jobs shouldn't pay more if it contributes to group-wide pay differences. But Schalfely is a woman who hasn't followed the feminist party line and therefore has to be attacked, accurately or not, by liberals at every turn.. even if she's old, outdated, and largely irrelevant at this point. All it takes to get the Glade bandwagon on board is for MSNBC to refer to her as a conservative Christian advocate, and bam, she must be. I mean, **** reading what she actually said. She doesn't say that women should intentionally make less; she says because of the behaviors women ALREADY ENGAGE IN, that improving economic prospects (i.e. the job market) for men has more of an effect than trying to legislate away a fake "pay gap".