NITA LOWEY THINKS THE FREE MARKET IS SEXIST

Voted YES for Stronger enforcement against gender-based pay discrimination in the Paycheck Fairness Act
(Jan 2009)

Females earn roughly 30% less then males earn in the work place.

When Nita Lowey looks at this general statistic she wrongfully assumes that the free market has failed and that this wage gap is due to sexism in the work place and that male employers have some kind of natural animosity towards women. This, of course, is completely untrue. Although I do not deny that there is sexism, the free market is actually a deterrent of it and creates more equality in the work place...not less.

Profit, above all else, is what drives entrance into the free market. If there is no profit to be made there is little motivation to start your own business. Why then would an employer knowingly hire a male employee, when he knows that if he hired an equally capable female, he could pay her 30% less, keep the difference, and increase his profits? The answer is...he wouldn't. The female would certainly be hired. But let's say the employer was sexist and foolish and didn't hire the female. In a free market with open competition, there is always market forces grinding away at its competitors that hire higher priced workers when they could have hired lower priced workers. These sexist employers would either be weeded out of the market by losing business to cheaper competition or forced to adopted non-sexist policies.

The argument that the market is inherently sexist doesn't make much sense. But nevertheless, the fact remains that females earn roughly 30% less then males. So why is this?

This actually can be explained by the:

Marital Asymmetry Hypothesis:
This says that marriage/relationships have asymmetrical effects on male and female incomes and is the leading cause for men to earn more than women.

If we compare the pay between women that have never been married and never have had children to a man's salary it has a difference of 1%. But once a woman has married or has had children, the gap becomes enormous. If there was actually sexism in the free market the large gap in income would always be there.

So now we have to ask: Why does this huge gap appear when a woman is married and/or has children?

This is because there is an unequal sharing of chores and child raising in the household, which happens to predominantly fall on the woman's shoulders. In a society, where two groups are more or less equal, and you give a burden to one of the groups, something has to suffer. This is called opportunity costs...whenever you do one thing it always comes at the cost of something else. For example, Michael Phelps would not be a world class swimmer if he had to sacrifice his time in the pool for any number of different things. Such is the case with women's salaries. By taking more time away from their profession then their spouse they are in turn causing their skilll level to atrophy thus stagnating their salary. This holds true for men that stay at home or for single parents who can not afford to work late and put in extra hours or take classes to help them advance in their field.

But what Nita should ask herself is: Why do women predominantly choose to take on the responsibilities of household chores and child care?

Students of socio-biology say that this is human nature and that we are somehow hardwired this way because of what it took millions of years ago to survive. Like all living beings our main purpose is to procreate to ensure our society's longevity. Beings that do not live by this code eventually become extinct. We have evolved into a patriarchal society because we have descended from civilizations where the men were more expendable to the society and as a result would risk their lives to hunt and protect the village. Women, on the other hand, stayed in the village and took care of the children because they were a precious commodity. For the same reason, farmers only need to keep one bull on the farm to procreate with fifty cows to have a healthy number of livestock, men would risk their lives knowing that it would take fewer men to populate the society then women. Women are nature's insurance policy.

For more sociobiological information I suggest listening to Walter Block's lecture:


The pay gap is not due to sexism in the free market but because of the individual's choice on how to balance the responsibilities of a relationship, a family and a career. And unless Nita wants to do something as ridiculous as begin to attack a family's right to choose how to most effectively provide for themselves, she will not be able to lower the pay gap without destroying the economy. This bill may seem as if it promotes equality in the work place but what it actually does is open businesses up to frivolous lawsuits and a lot of extra expenses that will either result in a loss of jobs or the destruction of the business.

IT'S TIME FOR NITA TO LEAVE THE FREE MARKET ALONE!