Let’s take a deeper look at the gender pay gap before we protest

On Wednesday, Iceland became the first nation in the world to mandate — by law — that women and men are paid equally for equal work.

The pundits on the morning news shows were celebrating in applauding the news.

We are fresh off of International Women’s Day, when the chants at rallies across the country were “equal pay for equal work.”

See, what the protesters are mad about is something the Obama administration threw out a few years ago when it claimed that there is a 23-cent gender pay gap in this country.

That’s a good statistic to quote when you’re looking to get people riled up and rally behind your feminist cause. But the problem with that stat is that it is patently false.

Here’s how they came up with the 23-cent gender pay gap: They took the median salary of every full-time male in the nation and compared it to the median income of every full-time female in the nation. They found out that there is a 23 percent difference in those two median numbers.

What they didn’t take into account was occupation, education, experience, position, or hours worked per week.

In my mind, we can forget all of those variables and focus on the biggest of all: personal choice.

I always tell my children that life is about choices. The choices you make today will impact the rest of your life, especially when it comes to your chosen career field.

I think all of us can agree that your college major is a personal choice. Right? Good, I’m glad we can agree on something.

A study by Georgetown University looked at the top five college majors with the highest income potential. They found only one of those five majors has more female than male students — and that one only had 2 percent more women than men.

When they looked at the five majors with the lowest income potential, they found only one of those five majors has a majority of male student.

With that alone, I could drop the mic and walk off the stage, completely debunking the myth of society being to blame for women missing out on 23 percent of their hard-earned cash.

Another oft-heard argument is that it is unfair that women are punished monetarily for having children. They claim that it is a reproductive rights issue and that women are somehow oppressed by their decision to have children or work less after they have children.

Once again, that comes down to choice. No one ever said that you MUST have a child.

Here’s a personal example for you: My lovely neighbors have a gender wage gap in their household of 100 percent. She works full-time as a head of nursing at a local hospital. He stays home, makes no money and is raising their three children.

THAT, my precious social justice warriors, is a choice! No one told them he couldn’t stay home with the kids. No one told them she shouldn’t work 50 hours a week.

I understand that there are some gender norms that need to be challenged and ultimately changed, but the fictitious gender wage injustice just isn’t one of them.

So maybe the protesters and activists should change their chants from, “equal pay for equal work” to “equal pay for equal work, education, experience, life choices, talent, hours worked…”

You get the idea.

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