By Joshua Sharf | Complete Colorado
Every March, it’s the same story – literally. Local media run a series of lazy stories about the alleged gender pay gap, mixing up aggregate and individual statistics, and mentioning–then discarding–career and life choice differences.
This year, the Colorado Sun’s Tamara Chuang adds a new twist, the pandemic, which they manage to include with a typical lack of curiosity and critical thought. The article is a mass of logical inconsistency, internal contradictions, and what looks for all the world like a failure to read her own work.
First, she uncritically repeats the claim that the 13-cent difference between men’s and women’s earnings constitutes a meaningful “pay gap.” Then, she quotes at length an economist who gives numerous reasons why that gap doesn’t represent a difference in pay for equal work, without ever quantifying the proper corrections. Finally, she blames the pandemic for a large widening of the gap in 2020, but credits a 2020 law for the post-pandemic return to normal.