You’ve heard of the gender wage gap. Unless you’ve just woken up from a thirty-year coma, you’ve had “seventy-nine cents on the dollar!” shoved in your face almost daily since about 1990.
It’s a lie, and everyone except children and imbeciles knows it’s a lie. (Side note: if you find someone who isn’t simply repeating the line for her own benefit but truly believes it, ask which one she is.) But set it aside.
There’s another economic gap, a real one, in the US and most of the Western world. No, I’m not talking about the racial earnings gap. That’s another lie. Nor am I talking about the savings gap, the retirement income gap, or the home ownership gap. Lies, all lies, once you control for factors other than sex, race, and such.
I’m talking about the spending gap.
Women in the US control about 75% of discretionary spending. The exact number is debatable because of fuzziness around the definitions. However, the exact number doesn’t matter. The basic fact is not in dispute. In fact, a number of women’s magazines and business journal tout it. “Women control most of the family’s spending. And that’s as it should be.” “Women drive the consumer economy. Your business plan must recognize this.”
(Another side note: Isn’t it strange how large swathes of law, business, and public policy must be distorted for the tiny fraction of the population which is intersex, nonbinary, or post-op transsexual, but when it comes to studies like these, everyone is either a man or a woman; if there’s any other category, the numbers are too small to affect the results. Strange!)
If we need non-stop ad campaigns and blaming and working groups and corporate promises to “do better” because of a (fictional) 21% pay gap, then surely we need to do something about a (real) 66% gap. Unequal outcomes are plain evidence of discrimination.
I call for a public awareness campaign to call attention to this situation. An inequity has already become an iniquity. We need to stop it before it gets worse. This campaign should be funded to thrice the level of the past forty years of “wage gap” campaigning, to reflect the relative injustice.
I call for a government watchdog commission to monitor floor space in retail outlets, advertising, and number of products in both physical stores and online shops.
If the spending gap is not rectified in a timely fashion, I call for regulation of commerce. It is unlikely that merchants will willingly reduce their profits in the name of equity, so they must be forced. Quotas may be needed if guidelines do not result in equality. If every corporation had men filling at least 50% of its board, executives, and C-suite, this would give a voice to those currently discriminated against. There is no acceptable reason not to mandate this.
Discrimination of any kind cannot be tolerated. The difference in consumer spending is proof of discrimination. Any steps necessary to eliminate it are not only justified but required.
“…I call for regulation of commerce”
Call for, my baggy ass. Take a page from their own playbook: Insist on, nay, demand. Then, if they don’t give us what we want, RIOTS. REAL riots, not the phony J6 kind.
“The basic fact is not in dispute.”
Hmm, I’d like to see the data because I don’t believe it.
Having wandered by the cross post at DP and reading the comments, I suppose the answer lies in what you consider discretionary spending to actually encompass. The sentence “Women in the US control about 75% of discretionary spending.” throws me off a bit, since by my definition the average family has very little left to be discretionary. If that term is broad enough to cover food, meals, clothing, transportation, mowing, etc. then I suppose it would be true.