Vol. 4, No. 3: February 7, 2000

President Clinton proved on January 27 in his State of the Union Address that he is planning to put the "if at first you don’t succeed" adage to good use with his Fiscal Year 2001 budget. Among his "try, try again" policies are the $27 million Equal Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. Both Acts portray women as victims of their gender, both are recycled versions of previous measures, and both are based on faulty information.

The President claims that women are paid 75 percent of every dollar that men earn, a relic from the days of the "comparable worth" debate. What he doesn’t explain is that the number comes from taking what the average full-time working woman makes and dividing it by the average of what a full-time male worker earns.

"It compares women who have chosen to be social workers to men who have chosen to be lawyers; women who work 35 hours a week to men who work 48," observes Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of Women’s Figures. And the government’s own statistics refute the President’s case.

A 1998 U.S. Department of Labor study found that for women between the ages of 25 and 34 with a bachelor’s degree, the wage gap is practically eliminated in some male-dominated fields. Female engineers earn 99 percent of their male counterparts’ salaries, and the male-dominated world of economics shows no difference in the salaries of men and women. Salaries for women between the ages of 35 and 44 exceed those of men by 109 percent in the fields of architecture and environmental design.

According to Women’s Figures, a recent book co-published by the Independent Women’s Forum and the American Enterprise Institute, among people ages 27 to 33 who have never had a child, women’s earnings are close to 98 percent of men’s.

Obviously career and family considerations can make a difference in selecting a profession and can affect one’s salary. President Clinton even admits that some of the gap can be explained by differences in education, experience, and occupation. But his Administration continues to perpetuate the pay-gap myth.

The President’s Paycheck Fairness Act would direct federal agencies to collect data about wage disparities and increase penalties for employers who violate equal-pay statutes. Congress rejected a similar proposal one year ago.

The Equal Pay Act would give $10 million to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to provide training and technical assistance to employers on how to comply with the equal-pay requirement. The EEOC would also develop public service announcements educating the public about equal-pay laws. The Initiative would provide $17 million to the Department of Labor (DOL) to train women in non-traditional jobs and to fund projects to increase women’s participation in non-traditional apprenticeships.

Both measures should be rejected as unnecessary and counterproductive. They are not only based on a myth but also perpetuate the stereotype of women as helpless victims. This does a great disservice to women everywhere who work hard to achieve their goals without the government’s help. It is time for the government to stop providing solutions for non-existent problems and start believing in a woman’s ability to succeed without federal mandates.

—Laura Steadman
Research Assistant