I Guess Things for American Women Are
Better Than I Thought
Glenn Sacks
© 2007
I guess things for American women are better than
I thought. Feminist Fox News/NPR commentator
Lis Wiehl’s new book The
51% Minority: How Women Still Are Not Equal and What You Can Do
About It informs us that “Women make up 51% of the American
population, yet still aren’t treated equally to men.” She highlights
the following complaints:
• A woman earns seventy-three cents for every
dollar a man makes.
• The law labels pregnancy a “disability.”
• Domestic violence remains the single biggest threat of injury to
women in America.
• The federal government continues to increase funding for
abstinence-only education, even though it’s proven to put our
daughters at greater risk for unwanted pregnancies and sexually
transmitted diseases.
• Health insurance plans are more likely to cover Viagra
prescriptions than birth control pills.
Let’s take these one by one:
Wiehl writes “A woman earns seventy-three
cents for every dollar a man makes.”
Feminists get this figure by comparing apples and
oranges–adding up what the average full-time employed male and
average full-time employed female earn, without accounting for the
fact that full-time employed men work longer hours than full-time
employed women and full-time employed women have, as a whole, 25%
less job experience than their male counterparts. Most of this gap
appears in older workers and, accordingly, the gender wage gap among
older workers is greater than that among younger workers, where
recent studies indicate that it is often nonexistent. Older women
earn less, in part, because they’ve lost years of career progress to
child rearing and homemaking.
Of the 25 most dangerous jobs in the United States
(according to the U.S. Department of Labor), all of them are
overwhelmingly or exclusively male. Over 90% of American workplace
deaths and serious injuries occur to men. It is not unfair in the
least that dangerous jobs pay more than safe jobs at the same skill
level.
If feminists were correct that women earn 75% of
what men earn for the same job, why wouldn’t American businesses
hire all-female work forces, cut their labor costs by 25% and
annihilate their competition?
The best recent work on the alleged “wage gap” was
done by Warren Farrell–see his book Why
Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap And What Women
Can Do About It. To hear a debate between feminist Martha
Burk and Warren Farrell on the ‘Wage Gap’ on
His Side with Glenn Sacks, click
here. Burk, incidentally, is one of the most likeable feminists
I’ve ever met.
Wiehl writes “The law labels pregnancy a
“disability.’”
I don’t understand exactly what this means or what
its significance is–if any feminist readers would like to educate
me, feel free. And no, I’m not being sarcastic–I’d be interested to
learn.
Wiehl writes “Domestic violence remains the
single biggest threat of injury to women in America.”
This myth has been discredited for a long time. In
my column
Domestic Violence Series Substitutes Emotion for Facts (San
Francisco Chronicle, 4/8/05), I explained:
“According to Emergency Room data collected by the
Centers for Disease Control and the DOJ, domestic violence accounts
for only 1% of women’s injuries, well behind accidental falls, motor
vehicle accidents, and even animal bites.”
The debunked study also included injuries from
victims of other crimes besides domestic violence, including crimes
where men were the victims. To learn more about the origins of this
false factoid, see my blog entry
Leading
Feminist DV Advocate Calls Me a ‘Notorious Right-Wing Nutcase’.
Wiehl writes “The federal government continues
to increase funding for abstinence-only education, even though it’s
proven to put our daughters at greater risk for unwanted pregnancies
and sexually transmitted diseases.”
I don’t know a lot about this issue and I’m not familiar with the
research on it, but I’ve always thought the feminists were probably
correct on this one. I would not, however, place the only emphasis
on girls, particularly when a 16 year-old kid’s inability to use a
condom properly can cost him a quarter of his salary until he’s
middle-aged.
Wiehl writes “Health insurance plans are more
likely to cover Viagra prescriptions than birth control pills.”
Another flawed argument. Feminists are correct that health plans
should include birth control, and I would support any efforts to
that effect. But the “Viagra vs. birth control” thing has always
been a very misleading comparison. Viagra is a medicine to solve a
health problem, Erectile Dysfunction. It cannot be equated with
birth control pills, condoms, etc.
Oddly enough, later Wiehl tells us “Besides being
the majority of the population, women also control the economy,
spending 80 percent of every discretionary dollar, and given that 54
percent of voters are female, we can swing an election. With our
numbers we can do something about it.”
I wonder how a group which “controls the economy”
and “spends 80 percent of every discretionary dollar” could be so
powerless and oppressed.
Jeffery M. Leving is one of America's
most prominent family law attorneys. He is the author of the new
HarperCollins book Divorce Wars: A Field Guide to the Winning
Tactics, Preemptive Strikes, and Top Maneuvers When Divorce Gets
Ugly. His website is www.dadsrights.com.
Glenn Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in
dozens of America's largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his
website at www.GlennSacks.com or via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
Copyright 2005 Glenn
Sacks, all rights reserved
