Will Stronger Equal Pay Laws Backfire on Moms?

Last month, Jen blogged about pay gap between women and men. She shared the campaign "Out of the Way of Fair Pay" by the Center For American Progress, which argued that there needs to be more laws to protect equal pay for equal work, and blamed the wage gap on discrimination of women by employers. In doing so, this followed the century-old rhetoric from women's rights advocates, starting before the 1960s. Equal pay has become a timely topic again as many political pundits think that it will be the top of President-Elect Barak Obama's agenda when he takes office next week. In fact, during the campaign, CNNMoney.com reported "It's baaaack!!" in reference to the "wage gap" debate.

Obama campaigned as a stout advocate of equal pay for women: He argued that women "women still make only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes." He pointed out that he supported the Fair Pay Restoration Act and promised to "close the wage gap between men and women." He blasted Senator John McCain's infamous remark that women need more "education and training" to close the pay gap.

Mothers in particular are affected by the pay gap. As MomsRising.org states: "Non-mothers earn 10 percent less than their male counterparts; mothers earn 27 percent less; and single mothers earn between 34 percent and 44 percent less." In other words, mothers are affected four times more than non-mothers.

Despite these alarming facts, more equal pay legislation is not the solution for the pay gap. First, there already exist many laws to guarantee equal pay for equal work, including the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, and Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Second, the U.S. Department of Labor, and many other economic experts, has already shown that the pay gap is not based on equal work at all, but instead due to so-called "fair" factors.

In fact, the "pay gap" is not a comparison of one woman and one man doing the same job, but just an average of all women and all men who work full-time doing unequal, very different jobs. For instance, in education, men often choose higher-paid majors than women choose. Eighty percent (80%) of engineering majors are men. Men also receive more-marketing training and experience for future promotions, as well. Men then take higher-paid jobs in the private sector where many women choose to become teachers in the public sector. In addition, men are also in the workforce longer and more constantly. Women tend to leave the workforce for a certain number of years to focus on child rearing. Men are also willing to take jobs that require longer-hour days. While many women choose "full-time" jobs that require 30-40 hours per week, men mostly fill the jobs that require 60 hours and more per week. Therefore, the "77 cents on the man's dollar" myth (which is now statistically 79 cents on the dollar) has been debunked. Blogger Glenn Sacks pointed out "When men and women of matched qualifications are working in matched jobs, women earn as much as men do." The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor publishes the statistics on women's earnings every year.

However, that does not mean that the pay gap is not a major problem for mothers' and women's rights. Indeed, the pay gap is even more alarming because it cannot be solved by simple anti-discrimination laws. A truth that may disturb some Obama fans is that Senator McCain's solution, while incomplete, is a better answer. In fact, unnecessary equal pay legislation may just create a bias against hiring women in the first place, or to increased unsuccessful litigation. If the pay gap is not due to discrimination, anti-discrimination laws will not lead to any actual increased pay for women. These unintended consequences have already been seen in the UK and in Germany and were reported by the Washington Post last October.

Instead, there needs to be a new way of solving the pay gap through a combination of the methods below. First, during elementary school, there needs to be more math programs for girls to help them learn and gain interest in the higher-paid science-based vocations as compared to the lower-paid arts-based vocations. Second, at the high school level, women need to receive the salary data for various careers to make informed decisions on their college major or technical training.

Most importantly, there needs to be better protection for all workers so that there is less of a gap between all workers - men or women. By better protection, I mean that there needs to be: 1) higher minimum wages; 2) paid sick leave; and 3) stated maximum hours in a work day for overtime purposes without exceptions. By doing so, we will increase the benefits for the employees with the lowest paying jobs with no benefits - namely, moms - and make the choice to higher men who can work longer hours less seductive for employers since overtime pay will include all workers, including salaried workers.

Finally, although slightly less important, we need more funding for school loans so that women can afford the "education and training" that Senator McCain correctly pointed out that women need, and a universal childcare system. Without subsidized childcare, in the same manner that states subsidize state university systems, women are sometimes forced to leave the workforce to rear children since they cannot afford the childcare.

In other words, lets stop treating the symptoms (wage gap) and start treating the root cause (worse, lower-paid jobs for woman who cannot work as many hours as men or who do not have the training to take higher-paid jobs). This solution does not mean that men and women would have equal pay - and it shouldn't. It just means that the "wage gap" would be due to educated choices that women, or men, may make to take lower paid jobs for the simple reason that those jobs interest them more.