The gender wage pay gap has been the subject of enormous controversy since it was revealed that female employees in the White House earn 18% less than their male colleagues. It was an interesting revelation in light of President Barack Obama‘s campaign claiming that “despite decades of progress, women still make only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes.” The hypocrisy is punctuated by the fact that during the election the President’s focused on forcing his opponent Mitt Romney to endorse the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act. The act was purported to make it easier for women to file discrimination lawsuits. The President tweeted, “Mitt Romney still won’t say whether he’d stand up for equal pay, but he did tell us he has ‘binders full of women,’. That’s very funny, but it doesn’t address the fact that the President has adopted a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude in regards to equal pay.

Many economists have claimed that pay discrepancies in the workforce based on gender are either non-existent or so miniscule as to be irrelevant. What they attempt to prove is that discrimination is not the key factor in the pay gap. Studies show that women enter and leave the work force at higher rates than men and men are more likely to major in engineering, computer science and mathematics which are highly profitable fields. Conversely, women tend to major in English, education and psychology. Social science fields normally pay less money and an apples to apples comparison of men and womens salaries has shown that if any pay gap does exist, it is very small and affected by factors unconnected to discriminatory policies. One survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reduces the pay gap to less than .05 cents on the dollar. 

FreedomWorks employees are conducting a livestream event tonight featuring an all-female panel that will discuss this issue, the minimum wage and the US Post Office’s new fashion line.

Participants are encouraged to login and chat with thousands of other grassroots activists across the country at live.freedomworks.org

FREEDOMWORKS ON TAP

DO MEN MAKE MORE THAN WOMEN?

STARRING: KRISTINA RIBALI

JACKIE BODNAR

JULIE BOROWSKI

EMILIA HUNEKE-BERGQUIST