Obama's equal-pay myth is one thing. The GOP's chauvinism is a problem

Go ahead, turn the White House's 77-cents quote into the new 47% video. But don't preach until you know where wage-gap vigilantism gets us

Ana Marie Cox
theguardian.com, Wednesday 16 April 2014 07.30 EDT

Republicans have been both very right and very wrong about their many objections over the past week to the White House's flashy "paycheck equality" push. They're right to characterize it as a mostly political ploy, an unserious legislative gambit to prove that Republicans are insensitive to the needs of working women. (Who knows why Democrats felt they had to force the issue – Republicans are perfectly capable of proving their insensitivity all by themselves.) Republicans are also correct in pointing out that women have made steady gains receiving equal pay for equal work; if you correct for enough "lifestyle choice" factors, the gap almost disappears.

But here's where Republicans are wrong: they believe that a gender pay gap due to "lifestyle choices" is somehow OK, or inevitable, or – and this gets to the core fallacy of modern conservatism – that it is OK because it is inevitable.

The Obama administration has hammered on the misleading statistic that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes, and placed most of its rhetorical bet on claiming to have a solution to the problem of women not receiving equal pay for equal work.

Truth is, out of the many approaches outlined in the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA) currently languishing in Congress, very few would do anything about the 77-cent problem, because that pay gap exists outside of the narrow scope of equally qualified women and men in the same job getting different pay.

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/16/obama-equal-pay-myth-77-cents-gop-bill