A recent study finds that in America’s largest cities, women under 30 are paid more than men.
How many times have leftist social justice warriors (SJWs) railed about “the patriarchy” and its supposedly inherent oppressive agenda? One of the primary examples trotted out by these advocates of wokeness to assert the “truthfulness” and “moral” superiority of their demands that society go socialist is the dubious “gender pay gap.” The claim essentially goes like this: Western society is a chauvinist boys club propped up by oppressing others, especially women, and men do this because if they don’t suppress women, then women would rule the world … or something. In short, the “gender pay gap” trope is used to justify demands for greater government controls over the lives of everyone, especially businesses. This is because most businesses are run by men. And men, feminists claim, don’t pay women a fair wage because they are mostly a bunch of sexists, which feminists can supposedly prove via the gender pay gap.
However, when the “gender pay gap” claim is actually researched, it becomes clear that the gender discrepancy within the average pay rate between men and women overall has very little to do with sexism and much more to do with individual choice. In general, men and women value different things when it comes to career goals. And as clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson points out, in the West — which has greater support for individual liberty — the discrepancy between men’s and women’s career choices actually expands rather than contracts.
But are the loudly voiced complaints about a lack of fairness, allegedly exposed by the existence of a gender pay gap, really all about equality? Such were the claims of players for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team, who lamented unfair treatment and sexism because their contracts allegedly didn’t pay them as much as the men’s team, when in fact they were paid more than the men’s team. A false narrative that successfully moves a political football is really the goal.