Asian-descent Americans have long enjoyed notably higher incomes than their white countrymen do. It’s also true that men earn more money than women do. Now, question:
Are both, neither, or just one of these wage gaps seen as a “problem” to be “remedied”?
If you answered “just one” — and know which one it is — then you just may be acquainted with a fashionable modern form of discrimination: treating some inter-group disparities as more equal than others.
Nobel Prize Recipient
A case in point involves Claudia Goldin, who in 2023 became only the third woman to win be awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. Goldin was recognized for helping “to explain why women have been under-represented in the labour market for at least the past two centuries, and why even today they continue to earn less than men on average (by around 13%),” reported Scientific American last year.
Making Goldin relatively unique is that she doesn’t, as so many media have done, clumsily chalk the male-female wage gap up to invidious discrimination. Rather, men are far more likely to work higher-paying jobs requiring “long and inflexible hours,” she acknowledges.
Only, she brands this “greedy work.”
Imagine that, and you probably fancied it the fruits of ambition, industriousness, or familial duty. But you’re not a Nobel laureate.
Explaining the intersex wage gap and what Goldin got a Nobel for, website Inc. writes:
Here is a snapshot of her research: Jobs that require “long and inflexible hours” pay the most—Goldin calls that phenomenon “greedy work.” In investment banking and law, clients want to work with one person and will pay a premium for those long hours and that dedication. Men have typically filled these jobs, while women have done the same work in less “greedy” environments—typically, in smaller firms or different career paths. Why? Babies, Goldin found.
Women and men earn similar wages until a woman has her first baby. Then, the divide begins. Women take more time off for childbirth (naturally) than men do, even though men are also entitled to 12 weeks of FMLA time if they otherwise meet the criteria. Women work fewer hours after having children as well.
The irony is that this isn’t just a Captain Obvious explanation; it’s a Captain It’s Been Explained Ad Infinitum one. Why Goldin received a Nobel for rehashing truths others have propounded for decades was not reported.
Men and Women Have Different Priorities
One of those other could-be Nobel laureates was journalist Carrie Lukas. As she wrote in 2007, “In truth, I’m the cause of the wage gap — I and hundreds of thousands of women like me.”
“I have a good education and have worked full time for 10 years. Yet throughout my career, I’ve made things other than money a priority,” she explained. After elaborating on this, she stated, “When I had my daughter, I took time off and then opted to stay home full time and telecommute.”
“Women make similar trade-offs all the time,” Lukas later added. “Surveys have shown for years that women tend to place a higher priority on flexibility and personal fulfillment than do men, who focus more on pay.”
And now, a generation later, we hear that “Goldin’s research found that women value ‘temporal flexibility’ above pay,” relates Inc. This means they “value ‘time flexibility’ above pay.” You probably won’t win a Nobel, though, unless you use words like “temporal.”
However you phrase it, it is assuredly true. But do you not think many men would like focusing on “flexibility” and “personal fulfillment”? A lot of fellows work hard (and on their first heart attack) because they have families to support. Duty calls.
Is the Wage Gap Truly a Problem?
Inc. proceeds to suggest “remedies” for the intersex wage gap, such as allowing “remote work,” “job sharing,” hiring people with “workforce gaps,” and supporting “women in making their own path.”
(One suggestion, focusing “on productivity rather than time-in-seat,” is good in general, though there is a correlation between the two.)
Yet as a top MSN commenter wrote responding to the Inc. piece, “Why should a business have to find ways to help women be successful?” If this sounds heartless, consider: Do social engineers wring their hands trying to find ways to help whites — who, again, earn less than Asians — be successful?
Do they trouble over the gap whereby men constitute 92 percent of workplace deaths (which exists, do note, partially because men take on almost all the dangerous jobs, some of which pay handsomely)?
Success Is Relative
“Success” is relative here, too. Financially, Asians are successful relative to whites, whites are relative to blacks and Hispanics, men are relative to women, 45-year-olds are relative to 25-year-olds, Norwegians are relative to Russians, Westerners are relative to non-Westerners, etc. It does matter whether people can support themselves comfortably; it does not matter, at all, that one group earns more than another (an inevitability).
That many think otherwise not only reflects Equality Dogma — and “equality tells you nothing about quality” — but shallowness. We (and “success” for that matter) are not defined merely by wealth. Are doctors less worthy than hedge-fund managers because they earn considerably less?
It’s also destructive to demean what often are the fruits of industriousness as “greedy work.” It’s ironic, too, coming from Goldin, a woman with a $1 million annual salary.
Yet there’s another irony: Schemes designed to eliminate the intersex wage gap don’t even help “women.” Why? Well, if men get paid less because they have to subsidize the social-engineering-dictated over-compensation of some female colleagues, they’ll be less able to support their families — i.e., their wives and kids. And this can force women who would otherwise choose to stay home to enter the workforce, thereby ripping them away from those kids.
So the most that can be said is that wage-gap schemes enrich single women at the expense of married women and their daughters. Female empowerment, indeed.
