This is the article I wrote for yesterday's edition of the Chronicle. Even though an "editor" edited it so that the first part is choppy at best, the message obviously got across to the person who responded. Take a look.

EQUAL PAY DAY 2007

Imagine walking into a neighborhood store and passing a table advertising cookies for sale 77 cents for men, $1 for women!

Today is Equal Pay Day, the point in the year to which a woman must work to achieve pay equity.

According to the 2006 Census Bureau, women on average earned 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts.
For minority women, the wage gap is worse. African-American women make 66 cents and Latinas make 55 cents for each male's $1. Over a working lifetime, this wage disparity costs the average American woman and her family an estimated $523,000 in lost wages.

To match men's earnings for the year 2006, women had to work from January 2007 to April 2007, an extra four months.

Her male counterpart must work five days a week for twelve months, whereas the woman will have to work seven days a week for 16 months to earn equivalent wages.

Women have made remarkable progress in education during the past three decades, which is partly responsible for narrowing the wage gap. However, these gains have yet to translate into full equity in pay even for college-educated women who work full time. And, unfortunately, the narrowing of the gap between men and women's earnings is also partly caused by a decline in the real value of the wages earned by men without college degrees.

Pay equity is a matter of justice.

Our elected representatives, employers and all of us must commit to supporting fairness in compensation, equitable access and advancement in employment and vigorous enforcement of employment antidiscrimination
statutes.

We must support initiatives that seek to close the persistent and sizable wage gap between men and women.

KAREN McKIBBEN MORRIS president, American Association of University Women Houston

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Hahn of Houston wrote:
"According to the 2006 Census Bureau, women on average earned 77 cents
for every dollar paid to their male counterparts." This is the way in
which the disparity is often couched. But what does it mean?

Does it mean that a female firefighter makes 77 cents for every dollar that a male makes? If that were the case, I would not be that displeased considering the male is probably more adept at carrying bodies from a
burning buildings and wrestling with heavy hoses. Besides, the female would not have had to meet entrance requirements as stringent as those the male did.

Does it mean that women select the type of jobs that are less remunerative than men? Teachers and secretaries do tend to make little, and perhaps that is something that our society collectively needs to remedy. However, I do think whether one gets off at 3 pm and has summers off or spends a significant portion of the day chatting and surfing the
web should enter into our calculus.

Does it mean that, according to the bureau of labor statistics, men are more likely to work a greater of number of hours in their full-time jobs than women in their full-time jobs? Perhaps it means that women are less
available for promotion because, considering the time they devote to childrearing, they are unable to devote themselves as fully to their careers as men are.

I remember reading an article about a woman who was a CEO of a fortune 500 company. She quit after a while because the demands of her job would not permit her to take care of her family in a manner satisfactory to her. She did not blame corporate culture or her company specifically. She acted out of necessity.

The truth is that society still expects women to raise their children. When Ms. Morris complains about the inequality of it all, she makes it seem as though we can point our fingers at some dastardly employer who oppresses women intentionally and out of spite. The issue is more profound than that, and in calling for "equality" with respect to income, she is really calling for a dramatic alteration of gender roles
and society so that women are no longer the primary caregivers to their children.

I wish she and her camp would say so honestly. Many people in society do call for an even split between husband and wife for all working, domestic chores, and childrearing. However, I would not relish being one of the first men to deemphasize my career in pursuit of this lofty ideal.

Imagine me on my next date, in response to my date's question, "What do you do?" "ME? Oh, I work at best buy... work isn't really a big priority for me, I kind of want to start a family." If you cannot appreciate why this would effectively decrease my range of potential mates by 95%, then you are being willfully dense.

The reason why women are attracted to men with stable and challenging careers is innate and impervious to feminist rhetoric. Consequently, so too is the reality that women will spend more of their time and energy raising children.

I should note by way of example that many of the women in my circle of acquaintance make an amount three times greater than the average household income for America. But there is a cost to that--holding off on procreation. Most women in my class have embraced the equality rhetoric, and the result is that educated Americans are being overwhelmingly outbred by uneducated Americans. After several generations of bright women living up to this ideal, they will be bred into obscurity and all that will remain is the ideal. Have you seen the movie Idiocracy?

It is not that women are incapable of devoting the time and intelligence to perform on par with men, it is just that doing so is incompatible with raising a family. It is careless and mean of feminists to espouse these ideals knowing little girls will feel less than equal if they
decide to be a mom instead of a top earner.