Everyone knows women make less money than men. But you know whose fault that is, right? Women and the choices they make, of course.
At TheChamberPost, the blog for the Chamber of Commerce, Brad Peck explains that the "pay gap" -- and yes, he puts it in quotes, like it's not real -- is practically non-existent, and to the extent it exists, well, that's just because dumb broads don't know how to make smart choices.
It is true that culturally speaking women are more likely to have to make the tough choices about work-life balance. But as we all seek to fit our values into a dynamic 24/7 economy, let’s not overlook the obvious, immediate, power-of-the-individual solution: choosing the right place to work and choosing the right partner at home.
See? If women would just choose better jobs, they'd make more money. And if women would just choose better partners, they wouldn't have to worry about how to balance their responsibilities at home with their responsibilities at work. After all, that's the "obvious, immediate, power-of-the-individual solution."
It should come as no surprise that the Chamber of Commerce opposes any efforts to actually address the problem of the pay gap.
Suffragettes were fighting to give women equality of choice; those fighting for "full equality" are trying to actually legislate away choice.
Yup, those who are fighting to fix the pay gap are obviously just trying to strip people of their choice to, um, earn less. Or at least they're trying to strip employers of their right to choose to pay women less, promote men more often than women, and even fire women who take maternity leave. Because that's what the suffragettes were really fighting for -- the right of women to earn less than men. That's how choice works, after all.
Peck, of course, ignores the fact that the pay gap is not just a few, insignificant percentage points. In some parts of the country, the disparity is quite significant. In Louisiana, for example, women make 65 percent of what men make. That's more than just a few points. Guess Louisiana women just make really poor choices.
And the pay gap exists in nearly every single type of occupation -- from supervisors who work in retail (women make 27 percent less than men) to physicians and surgeons (women make 40 percent less than men) to computer programmers (women make 15 percent less than men).
But obviously, that's all attributable to the choices women make. They clearly want to earn less or else they wouldn't choose the wrong medical specialties, the wrong retail stores, the wrong corporations. They're just using their individual power to choose lower-paying jobs.
Isn't choice grand?