Opinion

Why Pay Equality is Irrational, Criminal, and a Job Killer

The USA women’s soccer team won the World Cup. Now they want to be paid what male soccer players are paid. Women’s soccer and basketball don’t draw the same crowds, interest, and money that the men’s teams do.

The total prize money for the women’s 2019 World Cup was $30 million, with the champion taking away about $4 million. The total for the men’s 2018 World Cup was $400 million, with the champions winning $38 million.

This seems blatantly unfair until you take into account the vastly different viewership and revenue from the two events. FIFA raked in more than $6 billion from the 2018 men’s World Cup. The women’s 2019 World Cup has been projected, when all is said and done, to make about $130 million.

The women’s tournament this year may have garnered about a billion viewers across all platforms, nothing to sneeze at, but the 2018 men’s World Cup had more than a billion viewers just for the final game.

Men’s soccer brings in more than 40 times as much revenue as well as much higher ratings and viewership. “People seem confused about World Cup pay. Each team gets paid from a total pot.” In the end, it’s about how much money is in the pot. In terms of percentages, it looks like men “men get paid less than women in proportion to the funds generated by the respective tournaments.”

If the women get their way, it won’t be long before biological women soccer players are replaced with transgender women, men masquerading as women, like this one:

Transgender footballer Hannah Mouncey, right, has opted not to nominate for the AFLW draft. Picture: Nicole Garmston

Did you know that eight members of Iran’s women’s soccer team are men who “are awaiting sex change surgery”? (Breitbart)

Liberals have been pushing “pay equality” laws for some time. Many of them are already in effect. Pay equity would require employers to pay women what men receive if their educational standards, work experience, and time on the job are equal. “Equal pay for equal work,” as the saying goes.

“Pay equity” is similar to the minimum wage. No matter a person’s skill level or experience, minimum wage laws require that every worker gets paid at least so much.

All of this sounds good on the surface. Why shouldn’t someone with the same skills, education, and experience get paid the same?

First, it’s no business of the government how much an employer pays anyone. If I want to pay someone a dollar an hour, I should be permitted to do so. Will I get anyone to work for a dollar an hour? Probably not. Not even my grandchildren will work for a dollar an hour.

Second, it shouldn’t matter to the government who I employ. It’s my company. I’m taking the risk. I’m paying the bills. If I want to discriminate, I should be allowed to do so.

Third, if a person, man or woman, is getting paid less for doing comparable work, then the simple thing to do is to go to the employer and ask for a raise. If the employer says no, the employee has three options, (1) stay put with the same salary at the same job, (2) look for a new job, or (3) start a new business. Maybe the employer can do better with a new employee and won’t have any problem if you quit. Maybe you are indispensable and making the company a lot of money. In that case, you might get the raise. There is, of course, the third option: Go out on your own and start your own company and pay yourself and your own employees what you believe is equitable.

Fourth, pay inequity as it is presented by (mostly) feminists is a myth. Men and women choose different career paths for a variety of reasons. Many women want flexibility in their jobs so they can have children. They might drop out of the workforce for a time in order to raise children. Some women chose jobs that give them more freedom in their career paths because of family considerations. This is one of the reasons there is “pay disparity” between men and women. Some jobs are just harder for women to do no matter how “equal” men and women work at the same job.

Fifth, once the government gets involved in determining what’s “fair,” the trial lawyers will have a field day.  We already have the EEOC making it difficult for employers on the issue of “discrimination” in terms of sex, handicap, religion, etc. We don’t need any more government intrusion.

One last point, women are making their way as entrepreneurs. The rise of female-owned businesses may be the result of past discrimination, but it’s most likely related to the fact that women got their training in mostly male-dominated companies, learned what they needed to know, started businesses that became attractive to investors who saw ways they could make money. Consider this from an article that appeared in USA Today (June 5, 2012):

[A]n emerging class of early-stage tech start-up executives is helping dispel the notion that there isn’t a leading role for them in the male-dominated valley. Company founders and leaders are coming out of Google, Salesforce.com and elsewhere for the excitement of shaping a young business.

This is being done without the help of “pay equity” laws. Government … keep out!

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