The misogynist US Chamber of Commerce

[deminks]

from a couple of days ago

THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND THE PAY GAP.... Looking back through recent history, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce isn't exactly known for its efforts championing the concerns of women in the workforce. The Chamber, among other things, has opposed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Family & Medical Leave Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act.

But the Chamber of Commerce still manages to surprise.

Today is the 90th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, establishing American women's right to vote. To honor the occasion, Jen O'Malley Dillon, the executive director of the Democratic National Committee, sent a message to the party's email list, heralding the date's significance, but noting there's still work to be done, especially in closing the gender pay gap.

The Chamber was unimpressed, and said so on its official blog, arguing that those "fighting for 'full equality' are trying to actually legislate away choice." The piece goes on to draw some bizarre conclusions from a recent David Leonhardt piece in the New York Times.

There is much that was good in this article -- for instance the acknowledgment that most of the
current "pay gap" is the result of individual choice rather than discrimination; but I believe
that the overall tone is one of those cultural changes we need to make -- the idea that giving
up "pay and promotions" is a "terribly steep price" to pay for time away from work. These are
only two of the many things that people value and depending on the weight that you assign to
each of your values giving up a little might gain you a lot. Equality is a matter of ensuring
equal access to opportunity, not ensuring identical outcomes in some areas depending on which
opportunities you choose to take.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_08/025265.php

The Chamber tries to do damage control:

http://www.chamberpost.com/2010/08/a-wrong-and-wrongheaded-look-at-the-wage-gap.html

Yesterday, Brad Peck posted a piece on ChamberPost about the wage gap between men and women. There is a lot that I don't like about the piece. It is simplistic and misguided. Even worse, I find it very, very old fashioned. "Women still face challenges at work because of their own work-life choices", blah, blah, blah. It is an argument from the 1960's.

The trouble that it is an argument that doesn't explain a whole bunch of bad things. Why, for example, does the number of Fortune 500 women CEO's and senior managers seem to have topped out? That is a truth that impacts a whole bunch of women who have made a wide variety of work-life choices. It certainly isn't an outcome one would predict if all companies were really the "equal opportunity" (let alone "equal outcome") workplaces that Brad implies that they are. The "glass ceiling" is real and simply blaming it on women's work-life choices is ridiculous.

There is also a lot of good evidence that women make great entrepreneurs. Shouldn't that tell us something? Why is it that a large number of large, institutional environments don't work for women -- but ones they create for themselves do?

The bottom line is that I found Brad's post to be both wrong and wrong-headed. Luckily, as the COO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce my opinion on these matters counts a lot more than his does when it comes to Chamber policy and operations.

(end snip)

So, the hate filled post that appeared on their blog is wrong because there are some great female CEO's and rich female entrepreneurs who have had to fight or be held back? Luckily, he's the COO?

[madrchsod]

1. just over 50% of the workers in the usa are women...