In his State of the Union address, President Obama tried to continue the myth that women are paid drastically less than men, but there’s a catch — he didn’t repeat the debunked claim that women earn 77 cents to the dollar that men earn.
Given his administration’s past attempts to persuade American women that they are vastly underpaid — while at the same time paying women in the White House less — it’s clear what Obama was going for when he said this Tuesday night:
“That’s why this Congress still needs to pass a law that makes sure a woman is paid the same as a man for doing the same work. Really. It’s 2015. It’s time.”
To believe this passage, one would have to ignore the fact that the Equal Pay Act already exists.
But Obama’s speech is missing any mention of just how differently men and women are paid. Perhaps this is because the Bureau of Labor Statistics pointed out that it’s not Congress but women’s own choices that result in the supposed wage gap.
And maybe it’s because the White House knows this to be true, as Betsey Stevenson, member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, admitted last April.
Even with the false statistic removed, Obama does a disservice to women by continuing to tell them they’re all victims.
