Bolling's Fact-Free Attack On Wage Equality Legislation

Today, as guest-host for Your World with Neil Cavuto, Bolling did a segment with Young America's Foundation's Kate Obenshain attacking gender wage equality legislation. Senate Democrats are advocating for the passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, legislation designed to combat gender wage discrimination suffered by women in the workplace.

Rather than discuss the merits of the legislation, Bolling and Obenshain spent most of their time attacking the motives of the senators and members of the Obama administration championing the legislation.

The closest they came to a substantive discussion of the need for pay equity legislation was mentioning a Rasmussen Reports poll that found that 73 percent of employed adults found that their own workplace is “free of gender discrimination.”

Even leaving aside the issue of whether asking people whether there is gender discrimination in their own workplace has anything to do with whether people believe that employment discrimination exists in the country as a whole, why does it matter what polling says? What really matters is whether there is a wage gap. And on that subject, the data is clear.

Data from the U.S. Census shows that women's earnings represent only 77 percent of what men earn. This pay gap extends across all backgrounds, ages and levels of achievement, as demonstrated by the American Association of University Women. Even accounting for industry, occupation, and a plethora of other factors, research has indicated a persistent discrepancy between wages.

Furthermore, even Bolling's and Obenshain's attempt to attack the people championing workplace equity is flawed. Obenshain's claim that Senate Democrats do not practice the pay equity they preach has already been debunked. And her claim that Obama's economic policies have disproportionately impacted women negatively is equally flawed.