The Drive to Limit Women’s Choices

Bernie Sanders, who has become Hillary’s equal in hysterical attempts to remain relevant, reaches new heights of orgasmic bombast.

Iceland just became the first country in the world to make it illegal to pay men more than women. In the United States in 2016, black women made 62.5 cents on the dollar compared to white men and hispanic women made 54.4 cents. That is a disgrace. pic.twitter.com/y2sxSWYVrm

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 3, 2018

It isn’t enough to remind doddering Sanders that President John Kennedy signed The Equal Pay Act of 1963, or that Iceland has been passing equal pay laws since 1961. It’s that this new law, which demands any employer with 25 or more employees to be audited and seek certification from the state every three years that their men and women employees are being paid “equally,” moves beyond simple salary transparency …

In brief, the equal-pay standard described the process that companies and public institutions can follow in order to ensure equal pay within the workplace. In order to achieve this, the employer must determine which work tasks each position entails and then assign a value. The salary must be decided based on the position and not the person carrying out the work. The idea is that this will eliminate salary discrimination.

Unless one has two people equally committed to performing their best, then the quality of the work done will devolve to the level of the worst worker. What is the incentive to be the best? Anyone who has worked in a union shop is familiar with this scenario.

Then there are the unintended consequences of coveting your co-worker’s salary …

In 2013, Jofridur Hanna Sigfusdottir, a payroll clerk at a municipality office in Kopavogur in southwestern Iceland, filed a complaint to the government’s Complaints Committee on equal rights arguing that a male counterpart was a pay grade higher.

After the committee ruled in her favor, the municipality lowered the man’s wages to Ms. Sigfusdottir’s level.

“I went home crying,” she said in an interview. “I would have never gone forward with the case knowing it would only lead to my colleague receiving less.”

In the face of actual studies that show the wage gap is myth, this urgent push to ostensibly close it reveals a troubling desire to limit women’s choices and exert greater State control of all individuals.

Ms. Valdimarsdottir, an organizer of the demonstrations in 2016, said inequality still persisted in other areas of Icelandic society, such as wealth distribution and representation in the arts and literature, as well as in the upper echelons of business.

“We have come a long way and we are in the forefront of gender equality in the world,” she said. “But we are so far from having equality in Iceland.”

…

Thorgerdur Einarsdottir, a professor of gender studies at the University of Iceland, said the equal pay law was useful but was “no magic wand.”

“A law implementing a standardized job evaluation is not a solid fix to a problem this ambiguous,” she said. “The deeply rooted stereotypes that favor men and women for certain jobs and professions are the fundamental problem.”

One person’s stereotype is another person’s choice. Imagine the shock to the properly woke parents, shoving toy trucks at their daughter, only to have her stubbornly chooses baby dolls. Not nurture, nature.

And what makes anyone believe that fundamental sex differences would disappear in adulthood? Women generally prioritize spending time away from the workplace, caring for children, making a home and, if they have a career outside the home, choosing jobs/professions with predictable hours, less physical risk, and less stress. It is why one will find more women dermatologists than neurosurgeons; more grade school teachers than oil rig workers.

Of course, the societal busybodies who wish to erase all sex differences are not above demanding either greater government interference in things like paid child care or even making the choice to be a stay-at-home mother illegal.

Rather than wail about the supposed liberation in a woman’s right to choose to shun paid employment, we should make it a legal requirement that all parents of children of school-age or older are gainfully employed.

As the Democratic National Committee put it in 2012, “We all belong to the Government.” And if the government decides the wage gap is more important than your bourgeoisie view of personal choice … well, stop being so deplorable.