Christina Hoff Sommers, who is featured in the video, is an old-school feminist and philosophy professor. She takes issue with more modern, disruptive feminists, especially when they are malicious and rely on biased reports or unfounded emotions to make their arguments. Some stereotypes of feminists are not true and are undeserved--and some are distinct to Utah--but others are manifest in more vocal segments of the movement which have created the stereotypes. These malicious feminists are known to bully, threaten, and attack their opponents both verbally and physically. Many of them do hate men and hate any woman that defends men. They gather in demonstration at meetings and suppress the freedom of speech and they are destroying college campuses around the Western world. Their arguments are based on emotion and anger rather than logic. Christina Sommers has become one of their targets, though she is a feminist herself.
Let's limit the discussion of the gender gap to Western society for simplicity. (In most other parts of the world there are undisputed atrocities committed against woman because of their gender. We already agree that this is wrong.)
We often see quoted that women in the US make less than men in the workforce--a man earning $1 for every 77 cents that a woman earns. This is true and is an observation based on raw data without accounting for any variables. It is easy to make an assumption and entirely attribute this to the attitudes of a male dominated workforce which suppresses women based on their gender. Reality, as is nearly always the case, is much more complicated. Researchers have identified a multitude of variables that account for this phenomenon. I will list some reasons why men earn more.
Men are more likely to work overtime, weekends, night shift, and to take less leave. They are also more likely to take on hazardous tasks. All of these factors lead to higher pay for "equal work", meaning the same job description. Men are known to be more shrewd in negotiating salaries and raises. When in mixed gender working groups, men tend to be more competitive and women tend to be more submissive. (Interestingly, when men work only with other men they are less competitive and when women work with only other women they are more competitive.) Men are risk takers, which tends to pay off in benefits, and women like security. In terms of job placement, a large section of the highest paying jobs--those in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)--is dominated by men simply because they are more likely to enjoy those jobs and do well at them when women are less likely to do the same. This is not an education gap: it is an interest and aptitude gap.
What is our goal in terms of equality? The wage gap dilemma becomes a preference between equal opportunity and equal outcome. I am of the opinion that if we enforce equal outcomes we are in fact enslaving the population and creating injustice. There is a name for equality of outcome: it is communism. Equal opportunity is the definition of fairness and freedom; running the race is up to individual efforts (not ruling out symbiosis, altruism, and selfless service). Although we all have tendencies, every individual has a choice. We should fight for and protect that choice.
Women in the US have already won equal opportunity in terms of employment as it is illegal to discriminate based on gender or any other protected status. If women want to close the pay gap, they are free to pursue a career in STEM, negotiate higher pay, work some overtime or night shift, earn that raise, or whatever it takes. The women that make these choices receive the benefits; we should not penalize them for their ambition. Is there bias in the workforce? I'm sure there is and for many reasons--and not just against women. It will be difficult to entirely eliminate bias, but we can work toward that end. The biases that have survived do so by being so slight in nature as to be near impossible to prove in a court of law.
Western society is biased against men in many ways. I think feminists would identify with men on these points given the history of their own movement. Policies and culture are difficult to change.
