Don’t Blame Discrimination for Gender Wage Gap

It’s a staple of feminist rhetoric: Women make less money than men because of discrimination.“We’d all like to think, in 2012, that pay discrimination is a thing of the past,” the progressive activist Joy Lawson wrote in the Huffington Post recently. “But the pay gap still exists, and it’s big: women earn an average of 77 cents on a man’s dollar.”

April 17 has been designated Equal Pay Day: Supposedly that’s how long women have to work to catch up to men’s pay from the previous year.

U.S. President Barack Obama has cited a similar statistic to promote legislation to make it easier to sue employers for discrimination. Democrats accuse Republicans who resist such laws of waging a “war on women.” Expect to hear more about the issue during the fall campaign.

Here’s the truth you won’t hear: The pay gap is exaggerated, discrimination doesn’t drive it and it’s not clear that government can eliminate it — or should even try.

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