Yes Braxton, The Gender Pay Gap is Real
Sexism is bad enough. What’s worse, by several orders of magnitude, is the dishonesty of those who deny its existence.
And for now, I’m not even talking about the way in which some downplay the crisis of rape culture and sexual predation by celebrities, politicians, college boys and others possessed of a sense that they are entitled to women’s time, attention and bodies.
For now, I’m just speaking of the arrogant dismissal of long-verifiable gender inequities in labor market compensation. To hear right-wingers tell it, the much heralded pay gap is a leftist myth cooked up by dishonest feminists to unfairly malign men and poison the minds of women as to the supposed unfairness they experience in America.
To make their case, the dude-bros of denial don’t dispute that women, on balance, receive less pay than men across the labor market. But they insist that the explanations for that gap are unrelated to discrimination or unequal opportunities rooted in sexism.
Rather, they insist, gaps are the result of occupational choices, work effort, women taking time off to bear children, and differences in negotiating strategies between men and women, among other things. Once these things are…
