Gender Differences in Income

"I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life working my ass off and getting nowhere just because I followed rules that I had nothing to do with setting up, OK?"
--Tess McGill (Working Girl)

The Obama administration has trotted out a 'War on Women' campaign seeking to divert attention from key issues (e.g., economic performance) and to rile its base in an election year.

A common argument of 'women's rights advocates' is that women earn less than men in the US. Indeed, when total income earned by females/# of labor force females is compared to total income earned by males/# of labor force males, then income per woman is about 75% of income per man. This is 'proof,' claim women's rights advocates, of unfair, discriminatory practices in the workplace.

This claim must overcome many counters. From a pure reasoning perspective, discriminatory practices against women cannot persist in markets where factors of production trade freely. If it were true that women were being underpaid for their production by certain bigoted employers, then other employers more interested in improving their profits would offer greater pay and hire these productive workers for the benefit of their operations.

Bigotry of any kind (gender, race, nationality, etc) is penalized by the profit motive which necessarily is blind to any difference beyond productivity and performance.

Claimants of discriminatory pay practices must explain how such discrimination is able to persist under existing market conditions.

A more empirical counterargument posits that lower pay/woman is the result of various choices that women make regarding their income-producing capacity. For example, and as observed here, women generally select different educational choices than men and make career decisions more in the context of primary child raising responsibility than men. Studies that control for these various factors show little difference in earnings between women and men.

Claimants of discriminatory pay practices must explain why such empirical studies are not valid.