Paycheck Fairness Act is anti-womens' employment

Scheduled to come to a vote in Congress tomorrow, the Paycheck Fairness Act is a bad solution to a statistically trumped-up problem.

The most frequently cited statistic is that women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. However, not all of that gap can be attributed to discrimination.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that comparing male and female full-time workers, men work more hours: 8.2 versus 7.8 hours per day, on average. Just assuming an exactly even hourly rate, we'd expect women to earn 95% of men's total on a yearly basis; however, there are also more women working part-time than men, widening the gap further. Men are also disproportionately likely to die from an injury on the job, as this chart shows.

Source: US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, and Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, 2012.

But put aside those statistical details. A gap in male-female wages undoubtedly remains, and some of it is probably due to gender-bias and discrimination. What does the Paycheck Fairness Act do to fix that?

The Act would strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which already requires similar workers be paid the same. The new legislation would expand the damages that women can claim in court, and give women more tools to sue their employers if discrimination is suspected.

The new law would result in effectively unlimited liability for a business sued for giving unequal pay. Put yourself in the shoes of a small business owner. Suppose you are considering hiring either a male or female employee for an entry-level position. Suddenly knowing that your business could be shut down if a court decides your payment to the woman is unfair, who would you be more inclined to hire?

Let's think of another group that has been "protected" by sweeping federal legislation. Persons with physical disabilities are given additional tort resources by the Americans with Disabilities Act if it's found that they were treated unfairly. A paper by Acemoglu and Angrist (2001), using reliable econometric techniques, found that employment of disabled people dropped substantially following the ADA's passage. Now, twenty years later, physically disabled persons are unemployed at record levels.

There are obvious weaknesses in the analogy between the Paycheck Fairness Act and Americans with Disabilities Act - women are a larger segment of the population, and aren't physically limited from doing most jobs - but a lesson remains. Creating new protected classes of workers is not always to that group's overall benefit.

Even well-intentioned laws may end up punishing businesses for hiring certain workers, which hurts both individuals and the economy as a whole. The Paycheck Fairness Act is almost certainly dead in the water; even without passage, its political purpose will have been achieved. But, if President Obama and the Democrats want to show they are helping women, a first step is to not shut them out of the labor market.

Komen Foundation Pilloried for Planned Parenthood Policy - and Rightly So

Earlier this week the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation said they'd be eliminating their grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings. The resulting social media uproar, however, quickly caused them to reverse that decision and issue a sickly-sweet apology press release.

I know blood in the water when I see it; my duty to the blogosphere wouldn't be met without helping to smear Komen's momentarily-vulnerable public image further. After all, it's not every day you can feel righteous while slinging mud on a charity.

The recent furor raises a broader question: how much of what the Komen Foundation does is actually getting us closer to a cure for breast cancer? According to their website, 84% is spent "on our mission." But, that "mission" is defined pretty broadly.

From Komen's donation page.

The screenings, research, and treatment services that Komen provides are definitely valuable, but those only make up 46% of the overall budget. That leaves 54% percent taken up by administration, fundraising and "education" (a.k.a. advertisements). Basically, for every dollar that Komen takes in, a little over half of it goes out toward seeking another dollar. It's inefficient.

Maybe "education" about the risk of breast cancer is important, and causes some people to get treatment who otherwise would not. But, there are obviously some diminishing returns to awareness. Breast and prostate cancer are the number two causes of cancer-related deaths for women and men, respectively, but breast cancer receives much more public money and attention.

Data source: Aminou R, Altekruse SF, Edwards BK, et al. SEER Cancer Statistics Review: 1975-2006. Cancer Statistics, National Cancer Institute. May 29, 2009

A cynic would say that it's more fun to talk about breasts than the inside of men's asses, and probably be right. Some recent "sexy" breast cancer awareness campaigns help to reinforce that cynical view. While the incidence of prostate cancer has risen rapidly over the last 20 years, much faster than the rate of breast cancer, the National Cancer Institute spent twice as much on breast cancer as it did on prostate cancer in 2008.

There shouldn't have to be a fight between different anti-cancer organizations for funding. All of these diseases deserve serious study and research toward a cure. But, there also shouldn't be pseudo-political organizations like the Komen Foundation sucking up resources for runs, pink ribbons, Facebook campaigns, "awareness", and other things commonly known to not stop cancer. If you want your donation to make a difference, write a check to a research lab, not a lobbying group. With their stance on Planned Parenthood, the Komen Foundation has revealed itself to be much closer to the latter.

Female Infanticide Isn't a Women's Issue. It's a Human Issue.

A news article today, Female Heads of State Discuss How 'Climate Change'--But Not Sex-Selective Abortions--Hurt Women, highlights how female leaders are declining to discuss the issue of female infanticide in a current summit. When asked for a comment on the issue by CNS News, they were told

“I think the council is unlikely to take that kind of a stand,” Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and president of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, responded.” It’s not that kind of a body.”

‘Women who have joined the council because they qualify as a former president, prime minister, or the ministerial level that Margot (Wallstrom, special representative to the United Nations Secretary General on sexual violence) chairs to empower, to support, to make visible and to listen to the voices of women.”

“And so that issue [abortion of female babies] would be more appropriate to some other kind of activist group,” Robinson said.

Robinson also said “the nearest I can come to it” is her work to combat child marriage, including the fact that “religion and tradition are often distorted to subjugate women.”

According to an Oct. 4, 2011 report by CQ Global Researcher, an estimated 160 million female babies have been killed by abortion or were killed or left to die after they were born in India, China and other Asian countries in the past 30 years.

Some feminists are probably outraged by this omission, but I am actually sympathetic to Mrs. Robinson's view here. While sex-selective abortion is targeted at young girls in China and India, it may be the men of those societies who are losing the most, not the women.

Putting aside the ethical issues surrounding abortion (I don't plan to open that can of worms) an undeniable effect is that the fetus never experiences life outside the womb. The "victims" of female infanticide never see the male-dominated world which they would be born into, so they really can't be said to suffer as a result of it. The group who really loses out are young men, many of whom by sheer arithmetic certainty will never be able to marry or start a family of their own.

In fact, sex-selective abortion may even increase the bargaining power available to women living now or born in the future. When single women become a scarce commodity, their bargaining position relative to men improves. Women can demand better conditions and treatment under marriage, because if the wife leaves her (ex-)husband will have less chance at remarriage. Paradoxically, the female infanticide which occurs under a male-dominated system may actually become that system's undoing!

Some would say that sex-selective abortion causes an increase in prostitution, which may be true. However, one would still expect prostitutes to benefit from increased bargaining power as well, when demand for their services increases. While this is probably less desirable than a world in which no women turn to the sex trade, it is also probably better than sex workers living in desperate poverty.

If CNS News had worked through the economic implications of female infanticide more thoroughly, they might have been less outraged by its omission in favor of discussing climate change. Sex-selective abortion has many negative social effects, but from a purely selfish standpoint it should really be the men who are most concerned about it - not women.