Alex Castellanos has an op-ed at Daily Caller responding to the blowback from his exchange with Rachel Maddow on Meet the Press.
CNN’s Lisa Sylvester fact-checks the exchange and determines that the actual gender gap is about 5 cents. But as Mediate’s headline suggests, Sylvester determines that Rachel Maddow was “right” in the debate. This ruling is meant to satisfy the half-sophisticates following the discussion.
How does CNN determine rightness or wrongness here? By attributing an argument to Maddow which she didn’t make while holding Castellanos to something he didn’t actually say. Looking into the gearworks of the liberal media machine – at the piled up fibs and distortions – is an instructive exercise.
CNN first cites a female professor who is the president of the American Association for University Women who asserts that the 77 cent pay gap exists. She says that she sees the pay gap at the university level as well.
The AAUW president points out that the Census data from which the 77 cent trope is drawn does factor in work hours, contra Castellanos’s claims. But this is a distorted interpretation of the Census Bureau’s statistics. The Census Bureau controls for “full time employment” which they set at 35 hours per week, but not for actual work hour inputs. Maddow and the professor would have us ignore what we know is true: some people, and more men than women, work many hours over the full-time threshold. As Kay Hymnowitz pointed out in the Wall Street Journal:
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.
Here were Maddow’s assertions which do not all mean the same thing:
“Women in this country make 77 cents on the dollar for what men make.”
“Women don’t make less than men?”
“Do women make less than men for the same work?”
So Maddow is clearly saying that women make 77 cents on the dollar for the same work even though CNN determines that the gap is closer to 95 cents on the dollar. Yet Castellanos, who never did say that a gender gap doesn’t exist just that the 77 cent myth is “not exactly” true, is determined to be wrong. But if you just do the quick math, Castellanos would have only been off by that 5 cents while Maddow was off by 18 cents. If this is a question about who is less wrong, Castellanos wins.
These are the half-truths and obfuscations on which many progressive liberal policies are based.
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> She says that she sees the pay gap at the university level as well.
Which means what, exactly? From the linked Mediaite article:
Emphasis added.
So for the casual reader, the argument is that if you take two otherwise-identical professors, the female earns 77 cents for every male dollar. Only the Pravda reader recognizes that Maatz’ and Sylvester’s statements are vindicated if the woman makes 95 cents on the dollar of the seemingly identical man. Only readers who know academic politics will recognize what Maatz’ “as an adjunct professor” clause signifies. Yes, special-snowflake woman adjuncts can know it’s sex discrimination, just as special-snowflake NAM adjuncts can suss out racial bias at work. Generic-snowflake white male adjuncts are happy with their lot. Doubtlessly.
Here is AAUW’s Pay Gap page, with their pret-a-porter PDF/Powerpoint set of talking points.
Within the female dominated workforce in government service and public schools, there is a set salary that increases based on number of years experience. This is a defacto establishment of different pay for the same work. Yet watch the women shreak if you suggested a pay scale that was indeed equal, exactly equal, for all employees in a particular labor category. All 6th grade teachers get the same pay, regardless of tenure or experience. you would quickly discover that equal pay for equal work isn’t all that important after all.
if women are worried about making less then they can leave the scene.
There is no statistical evidence for gender discrimination in pay, in aggregate. None.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11240.pdf
“The gender gap is more difficult to analyze because the reasons for the difference are
harder to measure. Gender differences in schooling and cognitive skills as measured by
the AFQT are quite small and explain little of the pay gap. Instead the gender gap is
attributable to choices made by women concerning the amount of time and energy to
devote to a career as reflected in years of work experience, utilization of part-time work,
and workplace and job characteristics. There is no gender gap in wages among men and
women with similar family roles. Comparing the wage gap between women and men
ages 35-43 who have never married and never had a child, we find a small observed gap
in favor of women, which becomes insignificant after accounting for differences in skills
and job and workplace characteristics. What the average woman sacrifices in earnings
from choosing jobs that allow for part-time work and flexible work conditions is
presumably offset by a gain in the utility of time spent with children and family.”
It’s just such a tiring discussion, as the rebuttal is obvious – if women are underpaid for the same work (ie, output), then any capitalist worth his (or her) salt would immediately hire as many women as possible and reap immediate profit due to the labor pay differential. The progressives, who always rail against the evil profit motives of modern day robber barons, have to believe that such dollar-chasing jackals have an amazingly strong and principled (and universal) stand against women in the workplace. I can’t believe anyone can take the pay gap seriously, except perhaps man-hating dykes who enjoy sniffing their own ass, like Maddow and the Jizzabells.
They always say that they account for all of the different factors (i.e. time in the workforce, hours per week, types of jobs, time away from work for things like childbearing) but I would really like to know how they allowed for this. Seems like fuzzy math to me. Unfortunately the avg. person doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand the nuances of the statistical analysis, nor would they even take the time to probe more deeply. Anyone who has taken a few stats classes knows that what you include is just as important as what you leave out, and policy analysts make a living tweaking the raw data analysis in their favor. And yet we are just supposed to accept this 77 cents mantra as doctrine. They would have you believe that a deeply embedded, systemic problem of gender discrimination exists across the board and must be corrected on all fronts.
I would have loved to hear Maddow’s response to the fact that men make up 95% of the work place fatalities and injuries. Oh, that’s right, that question wasn’t posited. Gee, wonder why? Maddow, is in those soppy MSNBC commercials where she is walking around in a hard hat under some bridge (built by men) acting tough talking about how government based construction projects are what this country needs to get the economy going. I am sure that woman has never swung a pick in her life. Perhaps next commercial she can represent a DMV pink collar out on a fake disability claim.
At the most basic level, this all goes back to the entitlement “job” mentality versus the production/exchange paradigm. These people think of a job as: I do what you tell me to do, you give me a regular paycheck. It’s sort of like how urban libs think that food comes from the supermarket. They only see the immediate relationship between themselves and their employer, without really understanding the relationship between their employer and his customers which makes the job possible. So to libs, jobs are these magical things that just exist and therefore they ought to be distributed equally.
The other point to make is women of Maddow’s “ilk” (i.e. Manly Women) are probably more like men in their attitude towards work (even though they are still probably just pantsuit-wearing HR managers), but there are plenty of women out there who don’t take their jobs as seriously, and don’t really earn the same pay as men. A friend of mine admits that while she is a teacher and loves her job, she doesn’t consider her job to be at an equal level in terms of career path/earning power in comparison to her husband’s job. She like her job because she gets a lot of time off and it’s relatively low stress b/c she doesn’t teach in the hood. but they both see her job as supplemental income. Other girls I know have quit their jobs the minute they had kids (which I don’t see as a bad thing).
It’s mostly the Rachel Maddowtypes or the “modern” women who want to have a career and a kid by themselves with no husband or man in the picture that want equal pay for half the work.
I agree with Donny’s point about “women” like Maddow being the standard bearers of feminism. It applies to the men as well often enough.
http://www.mediabistro.com/agencyspy/files/original/SepABir.jpg
That’s Alex Pareene on the left and Maddow on the right.
I LIVE the perfect example of this issue… I commute 2 hours a day 5 days a week. My job is dangerous and very unpleasant. I used to have to work 12 hr days and be at work at 530 am so id get up at 330am get ready, drive an hour, work 12 get home at 7pm and HAD to report in rain sleet or snow… now in new position but still same at place work 8 hr days.
Wife has Collage degree (wont make use of), works 10 mins away and stays at job making less than could because:
Wont get up “early”
wont take long commute
likes the “flexibility” of her schedule (30hrs a week)
She should by all rights be making over twice what i do, but makes less than half of what i take home, and that’s AFTER i pay 550 out of my check for our health insurance…
And ladies, before you even say it, NO she isn’t doing more at home… i do 80% of it, cooking cleaning, yard work home maintenance.
THIS is what ill bet most men go through.
With that said, Ms. Maddow and her ilk can kindly eat my ass.
Alex Castellanos needs to bone up on some talking points which are not well-known. These battles usually boil down to rote talking points – he knew what Maddow was going to say before she said it and Maddow knew what Castellanos was going to say before he said it.
Imagine if he trotted out the following:
“CNN first cites a female professor who is the president of the American Association for University Women who asserts that the 77 cent pay gap exists. She says that she sees the pay gap at the university level as well.”
As a university professor, I assure you that this is true, but not in the direction she says. Female professors in my areas (STEM and business) always get a premium. I don’t have any female professors in my CS department because I can’t afford them.
And the reason men take a greater risk of death/work longer hours? so that they’ll have the extra status that women are looking for when looking for a husband. Don’t worry though gals, that is on the way out with us being divested from society.
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