Labor Day was instituted in 1882 as a national celebration of the social and economic achievements of American workers. Yet female workers often miss out on that important acknowledgment. Instead, they are reminded of what they have not achieved.

Gender preference advocates cry "wage gap" and "glass ceiling," citing numbers devoid of context while ignoring the tremendous strides that women have made in recent decades. And as female representation in the labor force is increasing, women are discovering the barrier is not a ceiling of glass but one of federal red tape.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau, three out of four women between the ages of 20-54 are labor-force participants. Women’s share of the labor force reached 46 percent in 1994 and has remained steady ever since. However, this near equal representation in the work force should not imply that women are now making the same choices as men. More than a third of the bachelor’s degrees earned by women are in the lower-paying liberal arts. Only 31.4 percent choose "managerial and professional specialty" jobs, the fields considered most financially lucrative. And one out of four working women chooses the flexibility of part-time employment.

Nonetheless, gender-preference advocates take median weekly earnings, strip them of the context that would include experience, continuous years in the work force, occupational preference, educational attainment, and field of study, and come up with the statistic that women earn 76 percent of what men earn. However, if these factors are taken into consideration, there actually isn’t much of a wage gap to complain about.

The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth showed that among people age 27-33 who have never had children, women earn 98 percent of what men earn. If we examine men and women with similar educational attainment in the same occupation, we see the "wage gap" dissolve further. Female engineers with bachelor’s degrees earn 99 percent of their male counterparts’ wages and, in other areas as well, contextual examination refutes the glass-ceiling myth.

In 1998, according to a Catalyst study, women held 11.2 percent of Fortune 500 management positions. This is a huge leap from 1.5 percent in the mid-1980s. And although special interest groups may want to attribute this achievement to preference policies and push for even higher numbers, the fact is that the numbers are growing because women are gaining the education and work force experience necessary to qualify them for these positions.

The typical pre-requisite for senior corporate management positions is 25 years in the labor force and an MBA. Although only seven percent of MBA graduates were women 25 years ago, today that number has increased to more than one third. According to a Korn/Ferry study, during the past decade alone, the number of female executive vice-presidents has more than doubled.

However, women continue to exercise individual choice in their work force participation. A Roper Starch poll found that 87 percent of women employed full time would prefer to spend more time with their children. In order to gain more flexibility, many women are starting their own businesses.

According to the National Foundation for Women Business Owners (NFWBO), as of 1999 there are 9.1 million women-owned businesses, accounting for 38 percent of all firms in the U.S. These businesses employ over 27.5 million people and generate over $3.6 trillion in sales. NFWBO also found that in the last decade, the number of women-owned firms increased by 103 percent, and within those firms employment increased by 320 percent and sales went up by 436 percent.

Women are now starting businesses at twice the rate of men. Yet in spite of the supportive rhetoric coming from the federal government, inflexible regulations and arcane tax policies often thwart women’s efforts. According to the Small Business Administration, firms with 20 to 49 employees spend an average of 19 cents out of every dollar of revenue on regulatory costs. A full 80 percent of the total costs paid by firms with fewer than ten employees is taken up in tax compliance and payroll record keeping.

Small business owners operate in fear that they may violate an obscure rule and suffer government fines and probable bankruptcy. In 1996, the Code of Federal Regulations, which includes all regulations now in effect, totaled 132,112 pages. In a 1995 survey by the United States Trust Company, 91 percent of female respondents said they feel most threatened by government-required paperwork, and 90 percent feel threatened by the array of taxes on business, products, and services.

Although economists agree that small businesses, many owned by women, deserve the credit for today’s vibrant domestic economy, the government persists in stifling their growth with regulations. Instead of incorporating gender preference policies that contradict the principle of equality, the best interests of female entrepreneurs would be served by regulatory reform and small business tax cuts. It’s government-issue red tape, not glass, that is crippling women’s ability to compete in the marketplace.

—Joanna Elachi