Competition Suppresses Women's Wages

The National Women's Conference has decreed that water flow up hill, and all that remains is compliance.  Surely Congress will cooperate and repeal the law of gravity.

It was an eventful week in Houston Texas, for women of all philosophical persuasions.

On one side of town 12,000 libbers ram-rodded 25 declarations including homosexual privileges, paid government abortions and seven more years to qualify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Across town an equal number of traditionalists adopted resolutions supporting family, birth, and pro-women labor laws.

It was an uneven contest in that most newspaper ink and broadcast time went to the activists, and that the federal government subsidized them to the tune of 5 million tax-payer dollars.

Yet, one can not escape the feeling that the so called "feminist movement" may have reached its high water mark still short of its major goals.

No matter how hard the entertainment industry tries to persuade us that homosexuality is acceptable, if not sophisticated, parents will never consent to gay teachers in our schools.

The killing of the unborn is contrary to nature and can not be condoned as a national policy until there is consensus for national suicide.

After five years of intensive pressure, the equal rights amendment is still three states short of the 38 necessary for ratification.  It is six states short if three early ratifiers that changed their minds are permitted to withdraw.

Momentum is swinging toward the social values that accord women a special place - toward existing hard-won laws that protect them from dangerous and arduous work, toward legal claim to family support.

The ERA drive has been slowed by excess emotional baggage.  The rights to "equal pay for equal work" have been overwhelmed by sex.  The feminists proclaim a distaste for sex discrimination but emphasize lesbianism, abortion, and unencumbered bosoms.

The Houston rights convention, for example, was opened by a trio of gorgeous, buxom, scantily clad women prancing down the main aisle with a freedom torch.  Throughout the proceedings women in the audience showed their approval by waving brassieres.  How can we ignore sex when the natural difference is given such prominence?

In the field of employment, career women have a legitimate complaint.  However, their beef should be directed toward their own gender.  It is competition that keeps women's wages at prevailing rates, not inherent greed of male employers.

Labor is subject to the forces of supply and demand just as any other goods or services.  As long as some women in an area will work for $2 an hour, a hard pressed employer will use that labor before he will assume a voluntary wage burden of $4 an hour.  An employer who pays $4 for labor for which his competitor pays half as much will soon be bankrupt with no jobs to offer.

Women will accept lower wages than a man for several reasons.

First of all, the competition is keener.  There are proportionately fewer "suitable" jobs for women than for men.  Women activists complain, with some justification, that this is an unfair handicap.  Efforts of women to enter previously all-male occupations - such as the military, safety forces, and heavy industry - is a useful assault on artificial barriers.

Ironically, it is male workers - not employers - who resist integration of women.  As excess female labor competes, wage costs will be driven lower.

Women also trade off higher wages for special privileges.  For better or worse, the family revolves around the mother, the giver of life.  Her family has first call on her time and energy.  A woman will subordinate her job to have a baby, take care of sick children, cook for her family, go with her husband on his vacation.

In return for a competitive labor cost, employers of women adjust work schedules to fit the special needs of mothers and wives.

Family priority will always put women at a disadvantage in the commercial working world.  An employer faced with hiring a man and woman of equal ability at equal pay will tend to favor the man who will be able to subordinate his family to his job.

Cultural realities make it mighty tough for the single, working woman who by choice or circumstance disdains the role of matriarch.  I can't suggest a solution and so I am willing to support ERA so long as it is used for promoting job equality.

The majority of Americans, men and women, want assurance however, that suspect sexual practices don't get legitimatized in the process of trying to correct with legislation what society is slow to accept by custom.

Congress can't extend the allotted seven years for constitutional ratification, even if the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold such an action.  Far reaching proposals must meet a reasonable test of popular acceptance.  Intensity of minority feeling does not justify prolonged controversy in the hope political pressure eventually will force on the majority what argument can not.

Concerned women must use the remaining two years of ratification time to rid the ERA drive of superfluous "rights" propaganda.  Unless there is an immediate and forceful repudiation of abortion and homosexuality the large prize of job equality will escape them.

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