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Posts Tagged ‘Patty Murray’
May 24th, 2012 at 7:51 pm
Exposed: Senate Dem Hypocrisy on Gender-Pay-Gap

A Washington Free Beacon analysis of salaries paid to staff members of Democratic Senators discovered that 37 of the 50 members in the Democratic caucus paid their female staffers less than male counterparts.

Two of the worst offenders are Senators Patty Murray of Washington and Chuck Schumer of New York.  The gender-pay-gap in Murray’s office is 35.2 percent.  Schumer pays men 36 percent more than women.

The Free Beacon’s report highlights two aspects of the so-called gender-pay-gap.  First, those like Murray and Schumer who’ve used the issue to raise money and demonize conservatives are hypocrites.  Second, the likely defenses for Murray and Schumer – that disparities in pay are due to differences in job titles and responsibilities – are exactly the same defenses that private firms use when challenged by liberals.

Elsewhere in the Free Beacon report it explains why the percentages for Murray, Schumer, and company give the lie to their talking points about grossly disproportionate gender bias in pay rates:

[The percentages for Murray and Schumer are] well above the 23 percent gap that Democrats claim exists between male and female workers nationwide. The figure is based on a 2010 U.S. Census Bureau report, and is technically accurate. However, as CNN’s Lisa Sylvester has reported, when factors such as area of employment, hours of work, and time in the workplace are taken into account, the gap shrinks to about 5 percent.

As Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute has explained, “the famous gender-wage gap is to a considerable degree a gender-hours gap.”  Simply put, women, on average, work less hours than men because many women choose to either work part-time or leave and return to have children and raise families.  Working less hours over the course of a career means less seniority, less promotion, and yes, less pay.

Presumably, the women that make this choice prefer the trade-off.  The point here isn’t to argue in favor of working mothers or those whom stay at home.  Either depends on prudential factors unique to each woman.  Rather, it’s to point out that disparities in pay between women and men – contra liberals like Murray and Schumer – have several other reasonable explanations, all of which align with experience and common sense, than rank gender discrimination.

If Senate Democrats plow ahead as planned with a push to force more votes on legislation to address the so-called gender-pay-gap, then it’s practically the duty of their Republican colleagues to force a debate about the transparent hypocrisy underlying the scam.