The Paycheck Fairness Act's Realpolitik

On average, women make only 77 cents for every dollar men get. But election year grandstanding has put paid to real equity

Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 June 2012 13.20 EDT


Once again, with dispiriting regularity, yet another bill to make it easier to fight for equal pay for women and men has come up for debate by Congress. And once again, we are being bombarded by misleading punditry funded by interested thinktanks.

Is this issue dead, as claimed – and if so, is one of the key justifications for arguing that feminism is unnecessary, correct? Sadly, the answer is a resounding "no".

Opponents of the Paycheck Fairness Act have been stealthy and effective at seeding the debate with disinformation. A well-worn iteration on television and in highbrow analysis magazines is that the wage gap is really due to a "choices gap" – meaning that, these days, any wage disparity between men and women has to do only with the different lifestyle choices women are making. They say women opt for a "mommy track", for instance, or for professions that yield them more freedom to stay home with children.