Pay Gap Flap and Cookies

Explaining about why men were charged more than women at a recent SDSU bake sale, "It's just to raise awareness," NOW @ SDSU Co-President Amanda Whitehead reportedly said, "A lot of people don't realize that white women make 75 percent of every dollar a white man makes or Hispanic women make 50 percent. It's pretty ridiculous".

In April the San Diego Union Tribune ran “Marking Equal Pay Day in the U.S.”, by Myrra Lee, past President of the La Mesa/El Cajon American Association of University Women (AAUW), who noted “Thirty-seven years from now, in 2044, will be the year in which California women will receive approximately the same wages that men will achieve by working one year – from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31.”

First, any information from flibbertigibbet NOW and AAUW is suspect. In 1991, the AAUW announced: “Most [girls] emerge from adolescence with a poor self-image.” The AAUW ballyhooed that into girls were horrendously disadvantaged in our school systems, a devastating myth destroyed by Professor Christina Hoff Sommers in her book “The War Against Boys.” The AAUW ushered in “Take Your Daughter to School Day”, which after public outcry changed to Take Your Daughter/Son to School Day so boys could participate. Worse, the AAUW Advocacy Fund has been instrumental in the Title IX debacle, which morphed from a laudable expansion of women’s school sports to the arguably decimation of free speech on college campuses, all under the guise of gender discrimination.

As Lee correctly implies women do have more options to leave and re enter the workforce; but, women, by choice, typically don’t take long hours, dangerous, high paying jobs; like, commercial fishing, truck driving in Iraq, ironworking, diesel mechanics, or window cleaning 80 stories up. Women typically seek "soft jobs".

When discussing college educated women and wage disparity at least Lee focuses on the few fields where a disparity exists, albeit for legitimate reasons having nothing to do with gender discrimination, but fails to highlight the numerous fields in which women’s remuneration outstrips that of men, particularly in Engineering fields where NOW, the AAWU, and other myopic radical feminist organizations typically maintain the pay gap is the greatest.

Whitehead on the other hand offers no such distinction. Instead she proferred stereotypical, incomplete, and misdirectional assertions which do little but perpetuate anti-man and racist (white only) ideology. Any white male student might be disciplined or perhaps expelled for even whispering similar generalizations about black or hispanic women, even if factual.

Business Week’s article earlier this month, “Surprise! Women on the Board Earn More,” takes the debate to a new level by reporting “The Corporate Library, a corporate governance and executive compensation research group, reports the median earnings for female corporate directors is $120,000. That's about $15,000 higher than the median total compensation for male directors, which is $104,375…the study, which looked at the pay of more than 25,000 directors at more than 3,200 companies”.

In August 2007, in Women Earn More in U.S. Big Cities than Men, Reuters reported that, “The research, completed by the Department of Sociology at Queens College in New York, showed full-time female employees in their 20s surpassing same-age males in cities like Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis, Dallas and New York…In Dallas, these women earn 20 percent more than men, while in New York City they earn 17 percent more”.

Last year in “Why Men Earn More”, Dr. Warren Farrell clearly established that women college graduates starting salaries in many professional fields is higher than men, like Petroleum engineering (108%), Computer programming (117%), Agricultural engineering (110%), careers in humanities (130%), Chemistry (103%)… Farrell lists another 39 major fields where women’s median pay is more than men, like Sales engineers (143%), Engineering managers (108%), Financial analysts (118%), Legislators (133%), transportation workers (130%)…

Refusing to believe NOW @ SDSU’s spurious pandering, finance and statistics senior Adam Hyman passed out free doughnuts to men at the bake sale, “(I did this) to prove a point that if a woman were really getting paid 75 percent of what a man is, they could just quit their job and go work for somebody else… If this discrimination was real, then a company that only hires women would be better at business”. Or, as Warren Farrell has said, “If women make 75% (or, 50%) of what men make why would anyone hire a man?”

Bernice Kanner’s 2004 book Pocketbook Power, reports that women spend $6 trillion a year; or, 600 times the value of the gold in Fort Knox. Women make 88 percent of the retail purchases in America. Among other things, women buy 53 percent of all stocks, 51% of all sports equipment, 85% of all toilet tissue, and 88% of all health insurance... and, control two-thirds of the wealth in America.

One might wonder where women get all the money they spend, particularly if they earn so much less than do men. Then again, there’s alimony, child support, and inheritance, but that’s another discussion…oh, and also, according to Kanner, primary ways women achieve wealth.

If all that were not enough it appears Whitehead and her discriminatory cookie pricing violated California's Unruh Act which forbids discrimination based on gender. Each violation, that is, each time NOW @ SDSU sold a cookie, could be worth up to $4,000 to the man who had the sweet tooth. If NOW @ SDSU sold 100 cookies to men then NOW @ SDSU and its parent organization might be liable for $400,000. Though for sure the deep pocket National Organization of Women would most likely pay the fines.

"It's just to raise awareness," said Whitehead, since a lot of people don’t realize how underpaid are women compared to white men, which she felt was “pretty ridiculous”.

Most people don’t realize the truth either because of questionable crusaders like Whitehead, Myra Lee, and organizations like NOW and the AAUW, a sophistic and destructive complotment far beyond ridiculous.

The fact is that American women are the most catered to, well educated, protected, and wealthy women in the world. Maybe by 2044, thirty-seven years from now, awareness will rise sufficiently so men can be free too.

Take Care,

Harry Crouch

Starucks and Casey Gwinn

I headed to the new Starbucks two blocks from our Men's Center wondering what I should write for my first Blog entry. In contention were the importance of the presumption of innocence versus a presumption of guilt, or how victim compensation programs go unnoticed as a primary culprit in the domestic violence industry debacle, and perhaps even something about why women organizations are shedding "women" from their names in favor of gender neutrality.

This Starbucks commands the busiest retail corner of a new high-rise split in two to accommodate a trolley stop. I wanted a turkey bacon and egg dry bread sandwich. Getting in line I heard, "Hi Harry." It was Casey Gwinn, retired San Diego City Attorney, new director of the San Diego YWCA, point man for President Bush's 16 city Family Violence Programs, and still the leading male in the now international domestic violence industry.

We talked about how nice it was to have a Starbucks close to our offices; the recent horrendous Santa Anna fueled fires in the county, and sandwiches. I recommended the turkey bacon and egg on dry bread. He ordered two, bought mine, and had a bold coffee. As we left he accepted my offer to show him our Men's Center.

We crossed "C" Street, crossed 11th, chatted past the YWCA, crossed 10th into the parking lot of our building, and maneuvered the stairwell leading to our Men's Center offices. I showed him the conference room; break room, and our suite of three offices. He had a few minutes before his next meeting. As he lowered into the offered chair in my office his eyes began taking things in. He was two feet from my Mensbiz framed print showing a woman in handcuffs being led away by police with the caption "Prosecute False Accusers". Six feet in front of him propped up on my computer is a 30"x36" red, white, and blue poster "Choice for Men is no Choice!" He scanned the two hundred or so books I have in my office, things like Farrell's Father and Child Reunion, Shelly Klein's The Most Evil Women in History, Susan Faludi's infamous Backlash, Braver's Divorced Dads, Horwitz's The Professors, Behavioral Neurology by Pincus...

Casey explained that he had just returned from an opening of another Family Justice Center in Louisiana. He was also a guest speaker at a Domestic Violence shindig of some sort in Florida and talked about abused men and women. Casey is involved with a faith based community prisoner re entry program. I explained our prison "tolling" project and the importance of suspending child support payments for incarcerated non-custodial parents. We discussed retraining orders and Supervising Family Court Judge Oberholtzer's recent move to close Domestic Violence Court in favor of integrating DV responsibilities back into regular Family Court, which we both agree made sense administratively. Years ago I designed, implemented, and supervised statewide pretrial services for the Alaska Court System that in part involved screening felons for release on their own recognizance as bail. Strong community ties dramatically increased the probability that release on one's own recognizance would be successful. I suggested that the same may apply in restraining order situations, since to my knowledge, there no program has even tested the idea. Casey seemed intrigued but favored the quick issuance of restraining orders without a court hearing. We also, discussed at some length why abused men have a harder time coming forward than abused women.

We talked for about 30 minutes about such things before Casey had to get to his 10:00 o'clock meeting. On the way out I pointed out the Mashproject's posters. I explained that one of the reasons why men have a hard time coming forward is because of the lack of male friendly literature and outreach materials. I suggested that we touch bases again in a month or so and talk about the YWCA or President Bush's Family Violence Center initiative buying the set of four Mashproject posters for each of the 16 Family Violence Centers around the nation.

Actually, a group is planning the 17th Family Violence Center in East Count San Diego. I received an earlier invitation to a planning session. If I can find it I should attend. What a pain.

God working in mysterious ways brings opportunities in the strangest forms.