The blog Exposing Feminism has posted a good, brief article on the recent quasi-reprimand received by Harriet Harperson, the deputy leader of the UK’s governing Labour Party, regarding the misleading use of statistics in claiming that there is a substantial “wage gap” based on sex in the UK.
Statistics is largely an exercise in smoke and mirrors, as any statistically-fluent academic can confirm. Yet it is good to see that at least some voices are rising in the governments of the West to say: it is a time to try to get past some of the worst obfuscations and stereotypes, and drill down to what the differences actually are, and, hopefully, what drives them.
Specifically, this letter from Sir Michael Scholar, the Chair of the UK Statistical Authority, states that the actual mean wage gap for full time employees in the UK is 12.8%, not the 22.6% “blended” figure spouted by Harperson and her minions at the Orwellian-named “Equality and Human Rights Commission”. Sir Michael further notes that:
The casual reader would be surprised to learn then that median hourly earnings of women and of men (excluding overtime) are very close, with women’s median pay actually being slightly higher than men’s (by 3.4 per cent).
We should not entertain illusions about what this means. It means nothing other than this: feminist women in government institutions are making up statistics to justify passage of laws that will screw men when women, in actual fact, are mostly earning as much as men are if not more.
The reason for the average disparity, as compared to the mean, I would suspect is the infamous “glass ceiling” canard, which I commented on here. Needless to say, the story is a familiar one: when you peer past the smoke and mirrors of statistical obfuscation and selective reporting of them in “studies” generated by politically-slanted interest groups, the bottom line is that the wage gap based on sex is almost entirely due to female career choice and lifestyle choice decisions. To blame men, the so-called “patriarchy”, or discrimination for the decisions women are themselves making is rank misandry, full stop.
It’s good to see that at least one man has the courage to raise his hand and call foul on this vile, shameless misinformation campaign by the UK’s feminist regime.
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Note: I have been extremely busy at work this Fall, which has led to fewer posts here. As I speak I am getting ready to leave for the UK later today, which means another week of less than average participation in the blogosphere. It’s an occupational hazard of mine, but thanks for reading, and I hope to be back to posting more regularly when things calm down a bit on the professional front. Cheers — N
