59 Cents, and other rot: a look at some feminist myths.

Feminists have made the workplace worse by waging an ideological campaign to portray working women as a victimized class, discriminated against in pay and persistently preyed on by male oppressors. Not content with the equal opportunity women presently enjoy, the feminists reject other women's free choices and demand a strict regime to dictate wages.

The persistent fable that women are denied equal pay for equal work has been a never-empty tank of gas that fuels feminism. Since the 1960s, when feminists sported "59 cents" buttons, they have loudly claimed that the disparity between the average wages of men and women is the result of rampant sex discrimination. The demand that people be paid the same salary for doing the same job, regardless of their sex, naturally enjoys broad support. But a sympathetic public is largely unaware that the claim that women face widespread wage discrimination is a myth.

Disparities in wages do exist--but they are largely between women with children, on one hand, and men and single women, on the other. This is not sex discrimination, but rather the result of choices mothers freely make in their desire to balance work and family responsibilities.

Since the Equal Pay Act of 1963, sex discrimination in hiring, promotion, or pay has been illegal. While there might be isolated examples of sex discrimination in the workplace, our competitive economy demonstrably provides equal opportunity for women. But the wage warriors peddle victimhood and demand equal outcomes, regardless of individual priorities and choices. To make the case that women remain victimized, feminists point to average overall male and female wage numbers, rail against a "glass ceiling" that blocks women's ascent to the top ranks of American businesses, and decry "undervalued" women's work that condemns women in predominantly female fields to toiling in a "pink ghetto."

Like so many other female scribes, reporter Rachel Smolkin of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cited job segregation as strong evidence of sex discrimination in 2001, writing, "Women make up only 1.3 percent of plumbers, pipe fitters and steamfitters and only 1.2 percent of heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics. ... These occupations offer men with high school educations well-paying opportunities that remain largely closed to women."

Feminist dogma demands that all discrepancies be seen as evidence of sex discrimination that will be eliminated only when women have achieved parity with men in all occupations. So American women, the most accomplished and liberated women in the history of the world, need gender preferences in the 21st century in order to compete. Only preferential treatment will achieve the longed-for goal of having women make up 50 percent of plumbers or pipe fitters.

If it is true that women work for salaries that are 25 percent less than what men with similar educations, skills, and job experiences would earn, American employers are guilty--of violating the law of supply and demand. With a cheap female-only workforce, an employer could bury his competition. (For a time: The resulting competition would bid up the price of female labor until we reached equal pay for equal work--which is what we have now.) Recent Census Bureau data reveal that, in 2003, college-educated black women, on average, earned more than college-educated white women ($41,100 a year versus $37,800). The report didn't raise outraged cries of discrimination against white women. Instead, it offered the uncontroversial explanation that minority women tended to work longer hours, hold more than one job, and take less time off after having a child. But such differences are dismissed out of hand when they apply to the wage gap between men and women.

In a classic example of how feminists ignore evidence against the existence of discrimination in order to make the case that women lace bias in the boardroom, authors Suzanne Nossel and Elizabeth Westfall devoted a book to the desperate plight of female lawyers. Presumed Equal: What America's Top Women Lawyers Really Think About Their Firms concluded that "systemic forces hold back women's progress and will continue to do so until institutional and societal changes are made," despite women's parity in law-school admissions and success in landing top legal jobs. Yet in Nossel and Westfall's own survey, women associates said that their prospects for promotion were equal to those of their male colleagues, "provided they [were] willing and able to put in the long hours and enormous energy." The attrition rate for women lawyers was admittedly higher than for men, largely owing to "the difficulty of sustaining a law firm career once one has children." The women surveyed by the authors showed "a keen awareness that the women who had achieved the greatest success in their firms did so at considerable cost."

A MATTER OF TRADEOFFS

Many of the women lawyers whose frustrated career aspirations were chronicled by Nossel and Westfall had clearly made personal decisions that affected their lives at the office. These tradeoffs between work and family explain some of the gap between the average wages of men and women, and are responsible for the figures that supposedly show a glass ceiling.

These differences reflect, in part, the different priority men and women place on the demands of their families. In 1991, women without children earned 95 percent of men's salaries when other factors like education levels and experience were taken into account, but mothers, on average, made 75 percent of men's wages. Numerous other studies also find that although marriage doesn't lower earnings, having children does. Being a woman is not in conflict with having a demanding career, but being the kind of devoted wife and mother many women choose to be is. As law professor and author Kingsley Browne notes, "Those individuals, whether male or female, who are inclined toward competition, risk taking, and status seeking are more likely to reach the pinnacle of organizational hierarchies than those who are not."

In Why Men Earn More, Warren Farrell shatters the myth of sex discrimination in salary disparities. He pays women the enormous compliment of assuming them capable of understanding the choices that affect salary rates and of taking lessons from the comprehensive jobs data he presents. Farrell provides far more help for working women than the wage warriors' agenda does.

Farrell explains that in the old days, when he served on the board of the National Organization for Women in New York City, he proudly wore a "59 cents" button, not yet wondering why anyone ever hired a man when women allegedly did the same jobs for far less. While working on his doctorate at New York University, Farrell studied government data that refuted the feminist line. He learned that, as far back as the 1950s, the gap between the average wages of never-married women and never-married men was less than 2 percent. Never-married white women between the ages of 45 and 54 actually earned 106 percent of their never-married white male counterparts in Lucille Ball's day. And well over 20 years ago, men and women were paid equally when they had the same title and the same responsibilities.

One can imagine how lonely Farrell must have felt when, like a good feminist, he was claiming discrimination against women professors but simultaneously discovering that women professors nationwide who had never married and never published earned 145 percent of their male counterparts' average salary.

He figured that the data showing never-married, educated women earning 117 percent of never-married, educated men's salaries reflected the superior ambition and work ethic of these women. But it wasn't just these educated women who made more than similarly situated men. Census data also told him that women who work part-time make $1.10 for every dollar earned by male part-timers who work the same number of hours.

While Farrell cites the most current data, he notes that, when it comes to examining gender discrimination in the workplace, the books are cooked. "At this moment in history, gender-specific research is funded with a consciousness toward making women in the workplace look equally engaged but unequally paid." He explains that if studies focused on the employment decisions many women make, such as choosing flexible, fulfilling jobs, working fewer hours, declining to move to undesirable locations, or taking more family leave, it would be clear that these preferences explain disparities in average wages.

When Farrell helpfully turns his attention to giving women advice on boosting their earnings, he examines about two dozen causes of the disparity between the average wages of men and women and highlights all the fields where women earn significantly more than men. The 39 occupations where women earn at least 5 percent more than men range from aerospace engineering (111 percent of male wages) to financial analysis (118 percent) to speech pathology (129 percent) to auto repair (129 percent). Over two dozen college majors, including computer engineering, civil engineering, and history, lead to higher pay for women than for their male colleagues. He cites a United Kingdom study that found the choice of college major explained 80 percent of the discrepancy between men's and women's average wages. Farrell notes that "the subjects most popular with women, Such as literature and art, are also more likely to leave women unemployed and overeducated." Women are 53 times more likely than men to get master's degrees in education rather than the physical sciences, and this number has increased over the past ten years.

PRETTY IN PINK

One woman has done more to advance the financial independence of American women than all the theorists, academics, columnists, and counselors who push the agenda of feminist liberation. When Mary Kay Ash died at age 83 in 2001, she left 850,000 sales consultants in 37 countries with both the independence that comes from running their own small businesses and a philosophy of personal achievement that transforms lives. In 1963, after working for 25 years in the man's world of direct sales, Mary Kay, whose father was an invalid, rejected the idea that "God wanted a world in which a woman would have to work fourteen hours a day to support her family, as my mother had done." But she didn't take to the streets, convene a seminar, lobby for legislation, or whine about the male patriarchy. With a $5,000 investment, Mary Kay Ash founded the cosmetics empire that now has over $2 billion in yearly sales. She launched her fleet of pink Cadillacs as the showy status symbols of her vision to provide women with unlimited opportunity for personal and financial success.

Mary Kay Ash counseled that women could "have it all" if they prioritized their lives with God first, family second, and career third. I have witnessed her legacy firsthand. My sister Virginia Rowell is one of the company's most successful consultants. Hundreds of thousands of women have realized Mary Kay's dream. The charitable foundation she created raises money to combat domestic violence and cancers affecting women.

Fortune named Mary Kay Cosmetics one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For in America." Mary Kay told an interviewer in 1996, "As far as I am concerned, our legacy will be that we have helped hundreds of thousands of women find out how great they really are. And that they can do anything in this world they want to do if they want to do it bad enough--and are willing to pay the price."

Mary Kay Ash had the confidence in American women that their supposed feminist champions lack. Unlike the wage warriors who sell victimhood rather than empowerment, this entrepreneurial woman understood and respected the choices women make in balancing work and family--and the sacrifices they make on behalf of their children and the men they love.

Reprinted from Women Who Make the World Worse by arrangement with Sentinel, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright (c) 2005 by Kate O'Beirne.