DV Journal

“It is inconceivable that in 2023, women in Pennsylvania still earn less than their male colleagues for the same work.”

That claim, from state Sen. Steven Santarsiero (D-Bucks), echoes decades of arguments from feminists and other left-wing activists who have alleged that women are paid considerably less than their male colleagues for doing the same jobs.

Santarsiero last week introduced a bill meant to help remedy the “pay gap” allegedly suffered by women in Pennsylvania. The proposal, co-sponsored by Sen. Maria Collett (D-Montgomery), is meant to update the state’s existing equal pay laws to help “reinvigorate Pennsylvania’s economy, and lift women and children out of poverty,” as Santarsiero said in a press release.

“Pennsylvania women still earn even less on the dollar than women in other states,” Collett said in the release, arguing the “disparity is even more pronounced for women of color.”

Santarsiero’s office did not respond to a request for more information on the senator’s claims about wage gaps. Bailey Landis, a spokeswoman for Collett’s office, indicated her claims about pay gaps were drawn from data gathered by the American Association of University Women.

“There are certainly many contributing factors to the gender pay gap, as the senators mention in their bill memo,” Landis told the Delaware Valley Journal. “This bill would specifically update Pennsylvania’s Equal Pay Law to make needed improvements and prevent wage discrimination.”

Activists regularly claim the gap is due in no small part to anti-woman discrimination by employers. Yet after years of advocacy and research, the evidence for a major artificial gap between men’s and women’s pay rates remains elusive, with experts claiming that a variety of factors affect the difference between male and female salaries, of which outright discrimination is only one small possibility.

Metropolitan State University at Denver Professor Christina Huber told DVJ that “much of the gender pay gap reflects the fact that women continue to be overrepresented in underpaying jobs.”

Huber, a professor of economics, said that on average “men and women choose different types of occupations.”

“If we compare men and women within the same occupation, then nearly one-third of the gender pay gap disappears,” she said.

“Much of the rest of the gap reflects that even within the same occupations, women choose different types of careers,” Huber continued.

She cited a hypothetical in which a man and woman both begin at a law firm after graduating from law school, where both will make the same salary.

“However, over the next several years as the woman starts a family, she is more likely to move from the demanding, high-powered law firm to a more family-friendly firm, that allows flexible working hours and perhaps remote work at home,” she continued.

Rakesh Kochhar, a senior researcher at Pew Research, said that “the vast literature on the gender pay gap has identified a multitude of factors, some linked more closely to issues at the workplace (e.g., pay levels) and others more closely linked to issues outside of the workplace,” like parenthood.

“[A]s far as I am aware, consensus on the precise contribution of each of these factors is lacking,” Kochhar continued. “In other words, I couldn’t say that X percent of the pay gap is due to this factor, Y percent is due to that factor, and so on.”

The compensation and data firm Payscale said in an analysis this year that when controlled for extraneous factors, the gender pay gap is $0.01, or one penny.

“Although .99 cents may seem very close to $1, small differences in earnings on the dollar can compound over the course of a lifetime career,” the firm argued.

Huber argued that, though the small pay gap after controlling for factors is “likely to reflect discrimination,” though she said existing laws have already done well to reduce that aspect of the gap.

“Our nation’s discrimination laws have worked very well at eliminating pay discrimination among men and women, but there is likely some small aspect remaining,” she said.

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I’ll admit it, I find Women’s History Month slightly obnoxious. In my defense, for a year I was in charge of editing all the proclamations from the White House trumpeting the named months, dampening my celebratory attitude. But before I earn an anti-feminist label, hear me out.

For one, the way we celebrate seems to accomplish little, or worse. SoulCycle wants to sell me the tiniest $52 WHM tank top. Will this small piece of cloth launch women into a new era of greatness? And when we do try to accomplish something, every event, email or donation drive promoting women assumes we love the equity agenda, open borders, and expensive and unreliable energy, as if women are monolithic in our views.

And the misinformation throughout the month is astounding. Women are paid 82 cents on the male dollar, I am told on repeat (ignoring differences in hours worked, profession and so on). But before I put on my marching shoes, I remind myself my own husband makes more than me because I eagerly rejected a soul-crushing job in favor of one I absolutely love. I will not be shamed into prioritizing 18 cents over happiness, balance and career satisfaction, that is for sure.

And I dislike minimizing people to their genitals. If someone has done something great, why not celebrate that achievement rather than genetic facts? As in, if we’d like to celebrate Kamala Harris, is there some accomplishment (and no, titles are not accomplishments) we can celebrate rather than just pointing out skin color and sex, like the White House did?

But, I’ll be a feminist yet. Why? Because I want to celebrate womanhood. There’s just so much to appreciate.

Unfortunately, when our society finally does get around to celebrating the accomplishments of women, it’s only their most male-sounding achievements. Being rich. Being powerful. Being athletic.

To be sure, there’s nothing wrong with being a Girl Boss. I myself collected three degrees and rose through the ranks at the White House, certainly worthwhile experiences, paved by Girl Bosses before me. But, is there nothing about femininity and womanhood itself to celebrate? It may not make the history books, but what about the women who raised Condoleezza Rice or Ruth Bader Ginsburg? We don’t need to know their names to be thankful for their work. And make no mistake — it is work.

By celebrating only career moves and finances, our society adopts the stance that men’s priorities must be the right ones. How misogynistic. The societal acceptance of these priorities is so invasive we barely recognize it. Netflix has a Girl Boss series right now, “Inventing Anna.” (It’s not worth watching.) The main character is a journalist who abandons her newborn so she can write a frivolous follow-up story about a criminal. I suppose this is supposed to be admirable. She is, after all, taking the steps a man would probably take. But why is the male norm the model? Is there nothing to applaud about drawing lines at work?

And in our obsession to recognize male-centric accomplishments, we’ve predictably started recognizing men. Like the first female four-star officer in the Department of Health and Human Services, who is a man. Or a female weightlifting record holder, who is also a man.

This has gone too far. There’s more to life than the male norm. It’s OK to celebrate the innumerable facets of being a woman. Be proud if you’ve given life. Be proud if you show emotion. Be proud if your home is spotless, if only for a minute. Be proud if you’re an amazing cook. Be proud if someone likes your smile. Be proud if the kids were picked up on time. Be proud if you found the perfect heels. Be proud if you make other people happy, successful or fulfilled. Be proud of being a woman.

If we’re going to do a lady month, let’s do it right. Let’s celebrate the beauty and the joy of being a woman.

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I’m not a feminist. I suppose I don’t even have to explain that to regular readers, but you never know if someone who just casually comes across one of my columns has that momentary thought of, “Oh, an immigration lawyer, a woman, kind of mouthy, yup, she’s a feminist.”

Aside from thinking that the label sounds more like a gastric condition than a revered identity, my biggest problem with the term is that it evokes troubling imagery of anger and resentment. Feminists are not happy people, despite the fact that they insist they are. There’s this idea that being unfettered by family obligations and traditional values frees us to be our best selves.  As the raven-haired daughter of Danny Thomas once told us, we are “Free to Be, You and Me (but not You, If You Vote the Wrong Way).”

​That being said, I find myself replaying Helen Reddy over and over in my head these days. “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar” was a catchy tune that came out when I was in sixth grade at Merion Mercy, around the time that I was reading “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret.” The latter was a rite-of-passage book about getting your period for the first time, and how it defined being a woman. In my mind, those two things are closely connected, the ability to give life, and identity as a female. Biology is very much a part of being a woman, in my book.

Not everyone reads my book of course. Lately, the trans movement has gaslighted everyone into believing that gender and sex are simply societal constructs that can be changed at will, and whim. I know there are folks who have studied the whole issue of gender dysphoria and think my worldview is woefully simplistic and, more importantly, cruel. I am fully aware that even broaching the subject of gender in the context of biological reality is likely to get me hate mail.

It’s happened before, it will happen again. No surprise there, and no real regrets because I refuse to say that up is down and white is black. If you have a penis, you are not a woman. If you do not have a penis, you are not a man. You might identify as one, and you have a right to be respected as a child of God no matter how you present to the world. You can even have your gender changed on your birth certificate, and live your life as whatever sex gives you serenity, and calms the demons in your troubled soul.

But you cannot erase an entire group of people because of your own desire to reconcile the disconnect between your brain and your body. Let’s be blunt.

Rachel Levine, born Robert Levine, is not a biological woman. She, and I will use the pronoun she prefers, is a trans woman who began life as a male. She has every right to call herself whatever she wants, and many of us can respect her choices and her desire to live her adopted identity. But in pretending that she is an actual woman as opposed to a societal construct of a woman, we are telling women who grew up wondering when their periods were going to start that they are not exclusive.

They are simply an option. In other words, you don’t have to go through all of the trauma and triumph of being a biological female if you want to be called a Woman of the Year, as Levine was recently named by USA Today. You don’t have to have spent your earlier years struggling to make it in a man’s world, or deal with actual gender discrimination, or sexual harassment, or all of the other things that are common in the female experience. You just have to one day come out as female and demand that the world accept you as such. Even if you had a nice run as a male, in a society that rewarded you for being “not female.”

And then there’s Lia Thomas, the biological male who stole a women’s swimming title from actual women. “Her” victory is an affront to every girl who got up in the dark, pre-dawn hours and did endless, tedious, soul-crushing laps, end to end, reaching toward the glistening brass ring. Instead, a social phenomenon grasped it, stole it, and smiled as others cheered. Devastating and infuriating at the same time. An assault on women.

For a woman who started out saying she’s not a feminist, I sound a lot like a feminist.  But I’m really not.  I’m more of a humanist, and by that I mean I find value in the human condition alone. I believe that everyone should be treated with respect and dignity regardless of any extrinsic labels. Women who achieve great things are simply people who have achieved great things. Men who take their daughters to school and feed them breakfast are simply great parents (as well as achieving one of the greatest things, nurturing a child.) Gender is irrelevant to accomplishment.

Except when society decides to make gender relevant to accomplishment, as when we elect “Woman of the Year.” In that case, and even though I’m not a fan of Women’s History Month and Women’s Studies syllabi and all that stuff, I think that the person being picked as an exceptional woman should actually be a woman.

You might say that trans women are women, and according to the most enlightened standards of society you would be right. But a man who decided he was actually a woman trapped inside of a man’s body is very different from a woman who did the heavy lifting all of her life and scaled a mountain in stilettos, and backward (with apologies to Ginger Rogers.) If you are going to reward womanhood, please find a woman.

The fair thing would be to have “Trans Person of the Year,” if we really want to make gender a part of accomplishment. I don’t think anyone would have a problem with that, and I also believe it would honor trans individuals a lot more than lumping them in with the gender they ultimately embraced. After all, it takes courage to say that you are unhappy in your own skin, and then try and do something about it.

But you don’t get to erase me, a woman, because you did something about it. I am woman, and you damn well better hear me roar.

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