Maria Shriver is too smart not to know the data she pedals in her new tome has been discredited. But it makes for a good “poor me” story for liberal feminists who — oddly and sadly — cling to victimhood. Charlotte Hayes takes on Shriver in this piece.
If you like your 77-cent wage gap, you can keep your 77-cent wage gap, despite the data: The Shriver Report cites again and again the debunked figure of a 77-cent gender wage gap—supposedly what a woman earns to a man’s dollar. Don’t these people read newspapers and magazines? This figure repeatedly has been revised, including by feminist writer Hanna Rosin, who hangs her hat at The Atlantic (which put on an all-day powwow on The Shriver Report). The liberal American Association of University Women put out a report in 2012 that officially put the gender wage gap at 82 cents in the executive summary, but admitted in its actually analysis that when relevant factors such as number of hours work and industry were taken into account the gap was really more like six percent. The Labor Department has put the wage gap at 87 cents on the dollar for men and women working 40-hour weeks. For men and women working 30 to 34 hours, women earn 109 percent of what men earn—an inconvenient truth. The authors of The Shriver Report know that it’s hard to make a case for massive government intervention to close a minus six percent wage gap. Moreover, these affluent, condescending women know that they will get away with pitching this lie. It goes unchallenged by low information voters, including those who work for elite media outlets.
There was a time when a woman would have been embarrassed to cling to the “poor me” narrative.
Ladies it is well past time to grow up, move on, pursue your dreams, and be happy.
