Want to save 23% on your company's wage expenses? Think it's not possible? Here's one simple trick you can do to start saving today:

That's right, just hire women. Women keep parroting the misleading statistic that they only make 77 cents to every dollar a man makes, so why don't more companies simply replace all—or the majority—of their workforce with women?

Save 23%. Hire women.

Even if you disagree with everything I said, even if you decide to be an incorrigible moron and disregard 100% of the evidence and sources, the results are the same: women don't make up a large majority of the workforce. This is the smoking gun. There is no disputing this.

Women make up about 51% of the workforce, according to the US Department of Labor1. So either companies don't want to save 23% on their wages, or the "77%" wage gap number is bullshit, because both can't be true. We know for a fact that companies are willing to break immigration laws by hiring illegal aliens to pay them less, so why would they draw the line there and not hire women as well if they could simply pay them less? If wage discrimination is as wholesale and sweeping as critics claim, and women are just as equal and capable as men—and they are—then we should see a significant bump in employment figures for women. We don't because the 77% figure is misleading.

If I had to wager a guess, I'd suspect that the numbers are probably being skewed by women's groups for the purpose of pushing the narrative that they're eternally victimized so they can stay relevant and keep getting funding and attention from supporters (to the tune of $3.7 million dollars). Case in point, one of the largest sources disseminating this statistic is the American Association of University Women (AAUW). The AAUW has created a "legal advocacy fund" which is the largest US-based legal fund focused solely on sex discrimination cases against women (and only women).

The AAUW has a vested interest in making sure there's plenty of healthy controversy and belief that women are constantly being victimized by wage discrimination. In fact, one of the requirements your sexual discrimination case has to meet is your willingness to let them use your case for further publicity and funding:

Some of what they do is important advocacy for legitimate sexual discrimination cases. I know plenty of women in real life who've been sexually harassed in the workplace. It does happen, and it's unfortunate that groups like the AAUW exist to capitalize on the publicity it generates. I wouldn't be so suspicious of their motives if they weren't so tenaciously pushing this misleading "77%" statistic.

Even the non-partisan PolitiFact website, noted for its fair approach towards fact-checking political claims, calls this number misleading:

PolitiFact published yet another article in 2013 calling this claim "mostly false." 4

Even if you disagree with PolitiFact, my own awesome research and the "smoking gun" of a balanced workforce, critics struggle to contend with the fact that countless studies have shown that women have a higher job-satisfaction, despite the supposed wage inequality. In fact, there are so many studies done on the satisfaction disparity that the phenomenon has its own name: "The Gender Job-Satisfaction Paradox." It's the observation that women supposedly have worse-paying jobs, less managerial representation, less power in government, etc, etc. All off these attributes supposedly make for "better" jobs, and yet, despite not having them, women are more satisfied with their employment.

The prevailing theory is that it's because women are conditioned to have lower expectations in the workplace. It's a shallow theory because it doesn't account for the women who are ambitious and do strive for managerial positions and larger roles in government. There are plenty of powerful, successful and wealthy women who break this mold every day. Why? Rather than asking why women who succeed are successful, activists focus on the negative and ask instead: why are they not? And only if we're defining "success" in life by the narrow definition of having a job that pays well or having political power in government. There's nothing wrong with wanting to take time off from your career to focus on raising your family, or to pursue something that makes you happy rather than dealing with stressful corporate bullshit all your life.

My own theory, completely unsubstantiated by any studies or research, but a sound theory nonetheless: jobs that pay lower have fewer responsibilities, less at stake and are generally less stressful. A foreman on a construction site has significantly more responsibilities and pressure-to-perform than a typical social worker who works with individuals on a one-on-one basis. Lower pay doesn't necessarily reflect in the importance of a job, however, any more than the cost of the lug nuts that keep your wheels on your car reflects their importance to driving; a $20,000 car cannot run without $20 lug nuts. The reason social workers often take lower-paying jobs is because they find their jobs personally or spiritually fulfilling. I'd argue that social service jobs are not only important, but vital to a thriving society, and that people who choose these careers do so not because of money, but in spite of it.

Update (04-30-2015):

Something I neglected to mention when I originally published this piece is that the fact that women are far more likely to negotiate for salary when specific words are used to cue them for negotiations (for example, saying women can "ask for more" instead of "negotiate for more"). In a study published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology called, "Who goes to the bargaining table? The influence of gender and framing on the initiation of negotiation" (Small et al, 2007), four researchers did a thorough test on salary negotiations by gender. They found that when women are informed that they can "ask" for more rather than "negotiate" for more, not only does the negotiation gap disappear, but women are actually 4% more likely than men to negotiate for more with 73% female versus 69% male (Small, 607). This is significant, because without the "ask control," men are 25% more likely to ask for more money with 83% male to 58% female.

The study also tested a "power frame of mind" as a control for negotiations by asking participants to recall a situation in which they had "control and influence over others" and how it made them feel before negotiating for a salary. They found that this made women more likely to "negotiate" for salary, but found no difference when they used the word "ask." The fact that the negotiation-gap disappears entirely when the language is changed is a fact that's largely glossed over and ignored in press releases that want to further the victimhood narrative.

Here are some of the sources mentioned in the video above. I'll be linking to more as time goes on because I have a huge list of studies that I didn't even get to at the time of this publication. I rule pretty hard, but there are only so many hours in a day.

Sources:

I've listed the sources in order of appearance, where possible:

Washington Post - Fact checking the 2014 State of the Union Address
Department of Labor study - An Analysis of Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women
AAUW - When controlled for education and career choices, women make 93% "of what men earned," p 20, 34
New York Times - Home Depot settles discrimination suit for $87.5 million
Stockholm School of Economics - Study finding that even in egalitarian societies, women are less likely to negotiate for salaries
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - "Who Goes to the Bargaining Table? The Influence of Gender and Framing on the Initiation of Negotiation" (Small, et al)
Monster.com - Women's salaries are equal to, or outearn men in engineering fields
Washington Post - Women less likely to negotiate for salaries at Carnegie Mellon
JSTOR - Gender differences in job satisfaction
Science Direct - Why are women so happy at work?
Springer.com - Job satisfaction may vary by occupation
New York Times - Money, Gender and Job Satisfaction
Bloomberg - Number of US Ralph Lauren employees estimated at 14,000
Glass Door - Ralph Lauren cashier salary estimates
Forbes - Ralph Lauren CEO salary *Note: The hourly rate was calculated by assuming there were roughly 20 cashiers at the flagship store making an average of $19,770 per year.
Pew Research Center - What men value versus what women value in the workforce
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) - Gender-Job Satisfaction Differences across Europe: An Indicator for Labor Market Modernization
Bank of Tokyo - Factor Decomposition of the Gender.Job Satisfaction Paradox: Evidence from Japan
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis - Debate about what percentage of wage disparity is due to sexual discrimination
Centenary.edu - Gender paradox in work satisfaction apparent in the Protestant Clergy
Washington Post - White House's use of data on the gender wage gap

I may be posting more sources for you to ignore in the future.

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