Writing for The National Review, National Center for Policy Analysis senior fellow Bruce Bartlett takes a look at the “comparable worth” of men and women in the work force, and finds some not-so-surprising (to my way of thinking) trends:

As time has gone by, young women entering the labor force for the first time have found a profoundly different environment than their mothers

faced. According to an article in the March issue of the Monthly Labor Review, young women today are far more educated than their mothers. Thirty percent of women aged 25 to 34 now have four years of college education compared with just 18% in 1975.

Young women are also working more hours and are less likely to be married or have children than their counterparts 25 years ago. The percentage of such women working full-time rose from 74.3% in 1975 to 80.3% in 1999, and those working more than 50 hours a week rose from 45.5% to 62.9%. In 1975, just 11% of women aged 25 to 34 had never been married. By 1999, that figure almost tripled to 30%. The percentage of women with children in this age bracket fell from 76% to 60% over the same period.

In short, women were becoming more like men as far as employers were concerned. As a consequence, their employment status and earnings have risen. The percentage of women working in high-paying executive positions increased from 9.2% in 1983 to 15.5% in 2000, while those working in low-paying clerical positions fell from 30.2% to 22.6%. This has led to an increase in earnings relative to men from 67% in 1979 to 82% in 2000 for young women [my emphasis]

Bartlett makes a good point here — though he phrases it in such a way (see emphasis) as to rankle those who still wield the word “patriarchy” as if it were a big floppy dildo meant for bitch-slapping dispassionate critical discourse on gender equity into a cowed silence (and by “dispassionate discourse,” I mean discourse based around employment and wage-earning statistics, as well as mainstream sexual attitudes — not genderfem oppression fantasies). The vast majority of employers care about earnings, not gender politics; and in those instances when gender politics do run foremost in their minds, the likely motivation is consideration over harrassment policies or unspoken quotas or sex-related medical benefits.

New Internal Revenue Service data confirm the growing equality of the sexes in terms of income. They indicate that many women now earn more than their male counterparts. As higher-earning younger women displace lower-earning older women, this trend is likely to continue.

Because many women will enter and exit the workplace in fits and starts (thanks to pregnancy or child care leaves), the overall earnings numbers, I suspect, will always skew toward men. But the real measure of what Bartlett calls “sexual equilibrium” will only truly be known once we’re able to compare large numbers of comparably educated men and women whose continuous service times in a particular field are roughly identitical.

All the rest being equal, the pay received by men and women will be roughly equal, too, I’d be willing to bet. If not, then at least we’ve identified an actual inequity problem, and we’d be in a position to fix it.

Equality of opportunity, and an end to enforced proportionality politics. Yup, I’d march in that protest parade.

[update: my wife, who graduated with a degree in Women’s Studies (she also majored in Italian and English, and so now works, naturally, in the IT field) made some interesting observations. First, she informs me that the only people who care about these kinds of arguments are the hard core genderfems — whose policy aspirations dictate a strategy of finding and highlighting inequities (that may or may not exist) — and “conservatives,” whose own political philosophies dictate that they constantly challenge agressive identity politics of the kind practiced with so much aplomb by hard core feminists.

Working in a university English department, I’m painfully aware of the role played by identity politics — particularly gender politics — in the world of the academy (in general) and the humanities (in particular); however, I willingly concede that the spheres I operate in are a great deal more insular than most, and that my workplace environment likely is far different from that of the wider corporate world.

Does this mean these things aren’t worth talking about? Of course not. But perhaps I’m investing the debate with more juice than it actually carries in the broader political universe…]