by
Christina Sandefur
February
6, 2019
Last week, Democratic lawmakers reintroduced the
Paycheck Fairness Act, which they claim would protect
women from pay discrimination in the workplace. The Paycheck Fairness Act
sounds good, but “equal pay for
equal work” is already the law—and
has been for over 50 years.
So what’s left for the Paycheck Fairness Act? It would
force employers to report employees’ salaries to the government and allow
employees to use that information, without valuable context, as a weapon
against employers. And it would deem employers guilty until proven innocent,
forcing them to justify supposed pay disparities through costly litigation. In
other words, the bill treats women as incapable of negotiating the terms of their
employment—and as victims of the patriarchy if they should dare to choose
flexibility or other benefits over higher pay.
And it’s based on the “gender pay gap,” which has been
debunked time and time again. As the Heritage Foundation’s Romina Boccia points out, the
oft-cited gender pay gap statistic—that women are paid only 78 cents on the
man’s dollar—is misleading. When one takes into account a number of factors
based on individual preferences, such as education, choice of profession, level
of experience, and desire for flexibility, the “pay gap” is about 95 percent,
not 78 percent.
In fact, the arguments in favor of today’s Paycheck
Fairness Act were once rejected by egalitarian feminist groups who opposed
state laws “protecting” women from working too much or making too little money.
Indeed, the National Woman’s Party, original champion of the Equal Rights
Amendment, wholeheartedly rejected protective legislation
that singled women out for what they considered to be restrictive and
discriminatory treatment.
They weren’t the only ones. Nearly 50 years ago, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission declared
that state laws that “prohibit or limit the employment of females…in certain
occupations…do not take into account the capacities, preferences, and abilities
of individual females” and “conflict with and are superseded by title VII of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Yet the Paycheck Fairness Act does just that—it disregards
individual women’s preferences and could have the practical effect of pricing
women out of jobs.
If the Paycheck Fairness Act became law, it would more
than likely backfire and harm workers—both male and female. And it wouldn’t be
the first time such well-intentioned “protective” laws had that effect. In the
U.S., state women’s minimum wage laws of the early 20th century significantly reduced the employment of women.
More recently, a Harvard Business Review study of Denmark’s version of the
Paycheck Fairness Act found that, while the “pay gap” did shrink, it wasn’t
because women made more money, but because men made less.
The Paycheck Fairness Act would also undermine worker
productivity, by incentivizing businesses to move away from performance-based
pay. The same Harvard study showed a 2.5 percent decline in worker productivity
under Denmark’s version of the Paycheck Fairness Act. A decline in worker productivity
usually means fewer goods at higher prices—and a decrease in everyone’s
standard of living.
Moreover, the Paycheck Fairness Act would encourage employers to offer
one-size-fits-all jobs that don’t take into account
individual workers’ needs. Studies show that, on the whole, while men place a
high premium on a larger paycheck, women value flexibility at work
more than men do. That’s why the number of women-owned businesses increased by 3,000 percent
since 1972, and women
are increasingly choosing to work in the “gig” economy.
In these scenarios, women overwhelmingly believe they can get equal pay for
equal work. Laws like the Paycheck Fairness Act make it costly and undesirable
for employers to offer flexibility in hours and benefits. That hurts all employees—especially women.
So what can we do
to empower women to succeed? Let’s start by treating them as individuals with
unique preferences and needs. Instead of pushing one-size-fits-all, top-down agendas,
let’s get rid of unnecessary occupational licensing
laws and pave the way for all individuals—regardless
of sex—to pursue the job of their choice.
Christina
Sandefur is the Executive Vice President of the Goldwater Institute.
