Cost-effective to fire men and hire women - problemo solved

Bring men DOWN to the woman's rate and save money!

I would revise the Social Security Act to the extent that the formula for entitled retirement for women be based on actuarial data reflecting gender longevity. Women live 4.9 more years than men.. therefore monthly SS payments to women should be pro-rated substantially DOWNWARDS to ensure a fair gender based equalization of total benefit and contributions paid into the system. Of course, this would also mean that annual SS payments to men of color would have to be revised UPWARDS to compensate for their much shorter lifespan.

This is a bogus issue. Many women leave the workforce for 5 or 10 years to raise their children, and then return. My wife was out of work for 11 years as she raised our 4 kids. So when she returned to looking for a job in her profession her skills were over a decade stale so it would be absurd to think anyone (man or woman) with 10 year old skills should be paid equal to someone who had those skills. If you multiply this phenomenon out over the entire population it explains the majority of the pay gap.

Consider that men are still the main support of the traditional family and if you lowered his pay how would he support his family? There are factors to consider why some women make less than men - as Charles stated above - I am not 100% sure but don't working women as a block make more than men? thought I heard that on talk radio but did not research to confirm...I hate this argument-why are people always being pitted against each other along every conceivable line

I've read that men are killed on the job at a higher rate than women? Why don't men complain about this inequality?

Your salary is something best kept between you and your employer. If you two disagree about your worth to the organization, you should plan on finding work in a new organization.

I might add that statistics about mortgage approval rates for minorities were a similar issue 10-20 years ago. This led to some bad legislation and programs, IMHO, where banks and/or the government subsidized loans they wouldn't normally give out.

In my view, this was one of many government steps on a slippery slope that led to the housing bubble.

This is a tricky issue, because if you legislate a solution you can really make it difficult for companies to build meritocracies and get rid of bad people.

On the other hand, it's almost certainly true that women and minorities are victims of generalizations on the part of hiring managers. There was a really cool study several years ago where people took identical resumes and submitted them to campus recruiting offices with a stereotypically whitebread name and also with a stereotypical african-american name. The white names had much, much higher callback rates. I think this study was later repeated with male/female names and got similar results.

I fear that any "legislation" would end up like the well-intentioned affirmative action...a great idea in theory but the reality is that someone will still end up being discriminated against.

Will highly qualified men start to be denied raises/employment because companies will be forced to give higher pay and/or raises to a woman regardless of her performance/qualifications? Will we mandate that women get paid MORE just because of their anatomy? Isn't this just as discriminatory?

Will companies hire less women because they know they will be "mandated" to give some kind of pay increase to these potential employees? This opens up a can of worms that we, as a nation, are not prepared to deal with.

This isn't a communist country...and the concept that we should pay everyone the same regardless of job performance reeks of socialism. Anyone (male or female) who is not happy with their salary can look for a job elsewhere. Or, they can go back to school to gain more skills/knowledge thus making them more valuable in today's job market.

People in the same position should be paid the same if they have the years of service with the company, do the same functions,etc. That being said, women, because they tend to live longer than men should pay a higher rate into SS and have a later age for full benefit.

Of course you have to pass a law! The folks who think corporations can be trusted
brought you George Bush and may just bring you Mitt.

The Obama/Romney debate was suppose to be on the economy and not on Foreign Policy. It was quite obvious that both Obama and Crowley knew the answer to the question, regardless of how skewed or off message from what was originally intended when stated by Obama in the Rose Garden. Both Crowley and Obama knew this, the only one who was clueless as to what was going on, was Romney which is why he had an expression of dismay. He was caught off stride and as a result was surprised, "shocked" that Candy Crowley had the transcript from the Rose Garden statement, right in her hands. Kind of a Coincidence ?

The pay Gap is a myth, if anything more women are being hired and more women are part of the full time work force !

Women want jobs and careers which mean for something, but when you compare apples to apples there is no discrimination. In fact if a woman is compensated more or in many instances women earn more than men. No one talks about it. Let's face it we women have feminized our society. Men are on the decline, losing jobs, not achieving career fulfillment, taking a second place role in families. If anything I would like to see equity and fairness in the workplace for both sexes.

I don't understand why this is a presidential issue. I work in a professional field and I never have felt like I was paid less because I'm a female. What people make should be between them and their employeer. Everyone brings different skills to their job and work place, so that's why they are paid different. The are private business and they should stay private. A company should be able to pay who ever whatever they like.

Salary is negotiated between the employee and their employer. Perhaps men tend to be more aggressive during this negotiation. Also, salary is about more than the tasks done in a specific hour of work. It is about the employees long term performance. Women still have the stereotypical role of primary caretaker of children and elderly in the family. This means they will generally be leaving work more often for things like having children, staying home for months or years after having children, working mothers hours as children grow up, and to go take care of ailing elderly parents. Men do some of this too, maybe 83%?

So to be more specific I would not eliminate the pay gap through regulation but instead through coaching on how women can move into dominance in more areas. For example women are still far more likely to become nurses than doctors while men are more likely to become doctors than nurses. Men are more likely to become construction foremen while women are more likely to become back office administrators. Men are more likely to become pilots while women are more likely to become flight attendants. Close those gaps and you start to close the statistic.

Legislation like FPA would only increase the salaries of the trial lawyers. Also this is another sideshow issue being foisted by the partisans to disguise the miserable economy which is hurting men AND women.

You could also try to find ways to encourage more men to be the ones that leave the workplace to handle family needs like childcare and elder care instead of the woman. This would reduce the pay gap by making hiring men in their family raising years just as much of a risk as hiring women which would drive them mens pay down and close the gap. I've worked with alot of men and women over the years. Many of the women I've worked with have left the job to have children. I've never worked with a man that took more than a week or two off when they had children. Sure, it's easy to give either one unpaid leave but like I said in my earlier post it isn't just about the pay for those weeks or months, it's the impact on the business. Having a superstar attorney out for months during a critical trial, or an accountant out during tax season, or a fire-fighter out during a dry season puts alot of strain on the organization.

I'd rather see us as a country figure out how to get back to a single earner economy. The fight for equality in the workplace backfired in my opinion. It didn't take the economy long to figure out that if both members of the household were now able to work then the household could surely afford to pay twice as much for everything. It also didn't take long for the divorce rate to reflect the fact that "the bread winner" was no longer a requirement and that he could be dropped while she goes out and earns her own bread. I wish it could have been a him or her movement instead of a her too movement. I sure hate sending my kids to daycare instead of one of us being able to watch them ourselves.