If you didn't catch "Meet the Press" yesterday, you missed a lively conversation about, among other things, women's votes in 2012 and the policy controversies that have put women's issues at the forefront of the political landscape.
As you'll see in this clip, around the 5:20 mark, Rachel noted the pay disparity between men and women in this country, which prompted some unexpected pushback (and incessant interruptions) from Republican strategist Alex Castellanos.
The angle to this to keep in mind is that the Republicans on the panel, Castellanos and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), simply reject the available facts on the wage gap. Despite ample evidence that shows women make less than men for the same work, Castellanos chooses to believe his own version of reality in which that's not the case.
As Rachel responded, "Wow. OK. Well, we're working from different facts." She added that this parallel perspective is critically important:
"The interruption is important, I think, because now we know, at least from both of your [Castellanos and McMorris Rodgers] perspectives, that women are not faring worst than men in the economy, that women aren't getting paid less for equal work. I think that's a serious difference in factual understanding of the world. But given that, some of us believe that women are getting paid less than men for doing the same work, there's something called the Fair Pay Act. There was a court ruling that said the statute of limitations, if you're getting paid less than a man, if you're subject to discrimination, starts before you know that discrimination is happening, effectively cutting off your recourse to the courts. You didn't know you were being discriminated against, you can't go.
"The first law passed by this administration is the Fair Pay Act to remedy that court ruling. The Mitt Romney campaign put you [McMorris Rodgers] out as a surrogate to talk -- to shore up people's feelings about this issue after they could not say whether or not Mitt Romney would've signed that bill. You're supposed to make us feel better about it. You voted against the Fair Pay Act. It's not about whether or not you have a female surrogate. It's about policy and whether or not you want to fix some of the structural discrimination that women really do face that Republicans don't believe is happening."
There's simply no shared foundation of reality, which in turn shapes the policy debate in unproductive ways. The left sees gender-based pay disparity and looks for mechanisms to address the problem; the right rejects the existence of the disparity and sees no use for the solutions because, to them, there is no problem.
For his part, Castellanos tried to move the conversation away from the substance, evidence, and fact-based policies, and instead told Rachel, "I love how passionate you are. I wish you were as right about what you're saying as you are passionate about it. I really do."
Rachel noted that his comments were condescending, adding, "My passion on this issue is actually me making a factual argument on it."
Because the conservatives on the panel are "working from different facts," the factual arguments didn't seem to matter.
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I'm a liberal and a Democrat so let me get that out of the way first. Second, I watch TRMS just about every day and I both admire and respect her and the show.
I am also very hesitant to write this comment because I know I'm going to get blasted as a republican operative, but my conscience forces me to do so. You can tell that I am not just one of the republican trollers out there who make uninformed comments here and basically just blast away while never showing any real evidence to back up what they say, or to insight into why they believe what they do.
Ok, with that out of the way here I go. I once had a professor in school that said when you allow for differences in length of time on a job and total time off during the total length of time worked, most (not all) pay discrepancy goes away. That was many years ago but repeated in my head every time I read/heard about about pay discrepancy between men and women. So, I did what most republicans don't do and simply Googled it to see what evidence I could find on both sides of the argument.
Here is some of what I found and to be honest, I find the arguments quite compelling for the case that MOST of the pay discrepancy that shows up in the more or less raw data from the Labor Department etc. is explained by things OTHER than discrimination.
http://jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=2a1f8ad4-f649-4ad3-a742-268d946962db
http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GenderGap.html
http://www.learnliberty.org/content/do-women-earn-less-men
Please also read his comments on comments to his comments: http://www.coordinationproblem.org/2012/01/myths-about-my-views-on-the-myth-of-the-gender-wage-gap.html
I didn't read the original study so with this next link please consider the source. I found it relevant because I think it's what the guy arguing with Rachel on Meet the Press was alluding to: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/09/01/cities-where-women-outearn-male-counterparts/
If there are studies that refute the links I have posted above I'm open to reading them, so please comment. I think that this is an important conversation worth having. On the other-hand if you are just going to blast away and call me an idiot, don't bother because then you are no better than our republican "friends".
I think the majority of posters who have been posting evidence about pay equity have agreed that most, although not all, of the difference in pay is not due to discrimination. Two things:
There is a proportion of it that IS caused by discrimination. That discrimination should be brought to court. This is, of course, what the Lily Ledbetter act allows.
The rest of the pay equity gap has to do with, I'd argue, structural and cultural problems (okay, maybe I should be more neutral and say 'factors', but I'm just waking up and I'm cranky) that could also be addressed (although I think it would be difficult for the government to address most of them). Why are professions dominated by women paid less than professions dominated by men? Why are women less likely to go into those high-paying professions? Why are women still the ones under cultural pressure to be the partner who leaves the work force to take care of children? Why are women the ones who are more frequently responsible for child-care and other household duties even when both partners are working? Just because it isn't caused by evil people twirling their mustaches and deliberately keeping women down doesn't mean it couldn't benefit the workforce and the economy to see pay equity - existing because of BOTH reasons - reduced.
@Lauren- thank you!
I keep trying to explain this: you are making all these statements for why women are being paid differently than men, but I don't think it's ever occured to you that women being paid less than men is NOT an ideal situation socially or economically. Lilly Ledbetter certainly doesn't address these cultural differences, but these problems do exist. It should be talked about so that we can address the problems. It is not OK that women are paid differently than men. There is no justification for this. To make the argument that "well women take time off for children"...well OK then why do we have such a disproportionate amount of women doing this? I mean it's just insane. Your counter argument basically becomes it's OK for businesses to pay women less because our society discriminates against the sexes and businesses are just taking advantage of that. It's an insane argument.
But not all. So what explains what the other factors fail to explain?
To an extent you are swatting at a straw man. Nobody to my knowledge is claiming that the entirety of the pay imbalance is due to discrimination. It's not necessary to make such a case, but it also isn't sufficient to provide only a partial explanation for the pay gap. To account for it fully, you have to account for the whole thing. If factors other than discrimination account for some of the imbalance, it is not unreasonable to look to discrimination to account for the part of the imbalance that other factors do not explain.
There are many amazing comments in this thread and I wish I had time to read them all! So this might have already been said, but wage gap denial joins an ever-growing, never-shrinking list of Republican denials that have a very simple motive - corporate profits. Yes, there's an inherent misogyny in wage gap denial that lingers in the Republican party along with racism and homophobia, but I don't think that's the primary motive behind the denial.
Wage gap denial (like climate change denial) creates a more socially acceptable way for Republicans to do nothing to fix the problem. As long as they're allowed to do nothing to fix the problem, corporations will continue to add the differences between what they pay men and what they pay women to their profits rather than paying them to their female employees.
There are other Republican talking points that are thinly veiled denials as well. Justifying the most unbalanced and unfair federal tax rates using terms like "job creators" and throwing out red herrings like the percentages of overall tax revenues paid by the various income brackets creates a denial of the unfair tax rates throughout the citizenry. Even their most infamous and overt rejection, climate change denial, is often couched in talk of "freedom" and "entrepreneurial spirit" being crushed by taxes and regulation.
It's insidious, and the Republicans have unfortunately been wildly successful in perpetuating their long list of denials even among segments of the population that receive no benefit from them and are often even directly hurt by them.
Alex's claim that "businesses would just hire the cheapest labor" wasn't responded to. I just wanted to direct any interested reader into the thorough research conducted by Barbara Reskin and Patricia Roos that gives the explanation for why Alex's counterfactual is misguided: Labor Queues. In Job Queues, Gender Queues (1990), the researchers have conducted impressive case studies across labor types that explain why businesses don't just hire the cheapest labor.
It is naive to assume that all businesses only hire on bottom-line wage considerations.
Oh, Rachel honey. I don't mean to sound snide, but.....
You REALLY didn't know that this is what Republicans think?
Dude, I could have told you this is what they think. In a heartbeat.
"Hey, what do Republican's think of the gender wage gap?"
"What gender wage gap?"
I'm suprised you DIDN'T know this.
Maybe it's because I was raised by Republicans, but I thought you were too...
Well done, Rachel! It's always heartening to skewer the wrong-doers with their own arguments.
Could Castellanos been more condescending? I don't believe so. It's interesting how he made the same statement over and over again: The Obama administration is trying to create these false crises because they do not wish to talk about the economy. With all due respect to Mr. Castellanos, he's simply wrong. And if anyone is making an attempt at misdirection, it is Mr. Castellanos and the overwhelming majority of Republicans (both inside Washington and out). The economy is improving. The President has been more than willing to speak to the efforts that his administration made, despite the unprecendented obstructionism by the Right, to try to steady the country's economy after it experienced the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression. And we should not leave unmentioned, again, this was a downturn that was largely delivered to the nation (and the world) courtesy of the Republican-led administrations and legislature of the last 3+ decades (with some unfortunate, misguided assists by Pres. Clinton).
Castellanos, and many other Republicans, seem incapable of actually addressing more than one issue at a time. Yes. The economy is still recovering on shaky ground. No one has denied that. Not even the President. But yet, the Republicans, knowing this, continue to trumpet their soundly disproven economic theories of austerity, and the attempted demonizing of those Americans at the lower/lowest end of the economic spectrum. We need only look at the several European nations, including the UK, and see what austerity has brought them: double-dip recession (in the case of Britain), increased concerns over insolubility of nation-states' economies (Spain, Greece, Italy, to name a few). If the American citizens wish to follow the roadmap the Republicans have laid-out, and which their presumed nominee for President has embraced, then America should prepare itself for a much different, much more unequal, much more impoverished state-of-affairs.
What Castellanos and many of his Republican peers fail to appreciate and understand is that the many other issues, like women's rights, income disparity, and our faltering and failing infrastructure are integral parts of our country making a real, lasting and strong economic recovery. And for the President, or anyone aspiring to any elected office, to ignore them for the 'supposed' benefit of one single issue is not only a disservice to the constituents that they do, or with to, represent, but is also a plain and pure abdication of the responsibilities and authorities that come with elected office. Representing the people of the United States means that those individuals holding those positions are charged with acting for the benefit and welfare of all Americans. Republicans would like the American voter to believe that they do have the best interests of all Americans at-heart. Their actions speak a truth that indicates their true motives are in the opposite direction: caring only for the interests of the most wealthy; caring only to retain their elected positions; shamelessly allowing millions of Americans to wallow in hunger and poverty, all in the pursuit of securing and even greater portion of our nation's wealth for those who already hold the majority of it.
As you said so well, Rachel, this election is a clear choice between a party which has at its center a premise that all Americans would fair better if the most wealthy were allowed to conduct business as they saw fit, and were allowed to amass ever-greater amounts of wealth while having no real responsibility for the millions of Americans who are largely responsible for the individual's wealth, and a party which, while sometimes distracted and derailed by the ever-growing influence of money from corporate and wealthy individual donors, continue to believe that ALL Americans have the right to a reasonable standard of living ... and if the private sector is not able/willing to do its part to ensure that, then it is the government's responsibility to step-in and improve the conditions for those least able to do so for themselves.
I just have to wonder how some conservatives think! How can they NOT understand or even KNOW the facts and still be right ALL THE TIME??!!
Price of gas has DOUBLED during the Obama administration? Did anyone else catch that lie? I don't know where the Congresswoman lived that she was paying $1.82 for gas four years ago. It hasn't been that low for many years.
Who are the Republicans proposing as a source for the facts on this issue?
The U.S. Bureau on Labor Statistics stated that the disparity is 77 cents.
I am willing to accept his view of the facts if he can provide a credible source of shared truth.
If we are not to trust the Labor Bureau on this issue, who is he suggesting is the source of shared truth that our policy makers should be using? How many other facts are the Republicans proposing we should be dismissing from our Labor Bureau? If the Labor Bureau is broken or wrong on this - what are they proposing to fix it?
NextMSNBCStar is quite correct to praise Ms. Maddow's poise in these confrontations. I am appalled by the tactics she faces and astonished at the power she wields by somehow staying above the fray. It makes me proud to follow her. If you ever get a chance, do mention my respect.
Here's how it is; if you have a man and a woman doing the exact same job the same amount of hours with equal tenure and experience, there is a $.33 cent difference per dollar between what the male earns vs what the female earns. For those with less reasoning power. If you hire a female and male to do the exact same job for one hour at a dollar an hour, the male would be paid the full dollar and the female would be paid $.77 cents. Rachel is not anti republican or anti conservative, she is pro truth.
Maddow: Thanks you so much for representing liberal values in such a way that juxtaposition makes the specious conservative socio-political ideals untenable as your facts expose their parisology and demagoguery. You give us hope that we are not standing by idly allowing the conservatives to continue to turn our democracy into a theocratic oligarchy. For that we are grateful.
The problem of "working from different facts" is that sometimes one side is confusing opinion with fact - or even devoid of fact. Data represents FACT, and not opinion, and this is something that Castellanos either doesn't get, or feels free to disregard as a result of his place as a politician. Data can be incorrect, or interpreted incorrectly, but even then it is simply a mistake, not something to be mistrusted because it is data, but rather something to be carefully re-examined for accuracy. And in this case it has been re-examined for accuracy, to the point that we can conclude a FACT from the data: women are paid less than men, on average. Even if that 77% figure is off by a few percentage points, that's still (significantly) less.
Giving Castellanos and other Republicans like him the benefit of the doubt, the best we can say is that they are living in a fantasy, and part of why they get so up in arms when they get contradicted is because they are in denial - and, being more cynical, we can say that they have supported half-truths, twisted facts and lied to themselves so much that they can no longer tell the difference between truth and lies, fact and opinion, fantasy and reality.