Gender pay equity

For years we've heard about the gender wage "gap" -- women making only 80 cents or whatever for every $1 earned by a male counterpart.

The perceived discrimination has over the years led to litigation and even legislation. Remember so-called "gender equity" proposals, under which a government panel would be in charge of settling approved wages for certain professions to ensure that women in "comparable" positions earned the same as men?

The state of Minnesota has precisely such a board, which at one time held that a delivery van driver and a clerk typist had to be paid the same wages because they did "equal work." Never mind the realities of the labor market.

Meantime, the Obama administration has been outspoken in its advocacy for gender pay equity, proposing new boards and commissions -- even congressional action.

Well, now comes the New York research firm Reach Advisors, which pored over reams of census data and concluded, USA Today reports, that "single, childless women in their twenties (are) ... outearning their male counterparts in the USA's largest metropolitan areas."

In Atlanta, the disparity is 21 percent. It's 15 percent in San Diego and 12 percent in Los Angeles and Phoenix.

Overall, in 39 of the 50 largest American metropolitan areas, young women without kids make more on average than comparable men. In eight others, it's a draw.

This should come as no surprise to critics of "pay equity" laws, who have long pointed out that women lagged behind men in terms of wages because they tend to pick lower-paying fields and have their career paths disrupted by child birth and child care issues. But with women now receiving the majority of bachelor's degrees in this country and holding off on marriage and raising a family, the marketplace has responded with higher wages for women.

Thus we eagerly await the president's proposal to address this obvious discrimination against single, childless twenty-something men who watch in frustration as their female counterparts pocket heftier paychecks than they do. After all, what about fairness?

Something must be done!