Peter Hemmingson: Pay Equity Racket

It is disappointing to see ACT’s Brooke van Velden going into bat for tweaking pay equity legislation rather than for blowing it out of the water altogether.

In the annals of modern political fiction, few narratives are more intellectually bankrupt—and more persistently weaponised—than the myth of the gender pay gap. 

 

Not the actual gap between individuals performing the same work for the same employer under the same conditions—because that gap doesn’t exist—but the emotionally manipulative, statistically fraudulent claim that women as a class are systemically underpaid is because they are women.

 

Even worse is the ideologically loaded notion of “pay equity”: the claim that female-dominated occupations are systematically “undervalued” and therefore should be paid the same as male-dominated occupations with which they have nothing in common—except perhaps some fabricated “comparable worth” dreamed up by an academic committee or public-sector grievance tribunal.

 

Let’s call it what it is: arrant nonsense.

 

The idea that women are legally denied equal pay for the same work is a lie, full stop. Equal pay for equal work has been mandated by law for decades in every Western nation. But that’s not what the grievance merchants mean. 

 

What they really want is equal pay for unequal work—and that’s where the fraud begins.

Under “pay equity” logic, a male drainlayer and a female librarian should earn the same because their jobs are “equally valuable.” 

 

Never mind that one works in filth, outdoors, in the cold and rain, handling physically taxing labour with public health risks, often required to work overtime to get the job done—and the other works predictable hours in a warm, quiet building reading to children. 

 

In the real world, the market pays more for labour that is dirty, dangerous, or scarce—not for occupations that make the practitioner feel good about herself.

 

A persistent feminist fallacy is the idea that jobs should be paid based on how emotionally or socially valuable they feel, rather than on the economic principles of supply, demand, skill scarcity, and willingness to endure hardship. If warm fuzzies paid the bills, social workers would earn more than software engineers.

 

The labour market does not care whether a job is traditionally male or female. It rewards risk, responsibility, reliability, and results. That’s why there are six-figure salaries for deep-sea welders and oil rig workers, and modest ones for preschool teachers and receptionists. Not because of sexism, but because most people would rather not leave their families for weeks at a time to risk death or chronic injury doing difficult, dirty jobs.

 

Even within the same occupation, “apples to apples” comparisons tell the real story. Consider a male graduate and a female law graduate from the same university, with identical grades across the same papers passed. 

 

They begin their careers on the same day, at the same law firm, on identical starting salaries as staff solicitors. Five years on, she steps away from the workforce to raise children. After a five-year hiatus, she returns to work three days a week, resuming her role as a staff solicitor. 

 

Her male counterpart, who continued working full-time and billing 70–80 hours a week as a staff solicitor, has made partner. His greater seniority and higher income are the natural result of continuous effort and workplace commitment—not discrimination. 

 

The reality is that few female lawyers are willing or able to combine motherhood with the brutal time demands required to ascend to partnership. There is no injustice in this. It’s economics 101.

 

As Thomas Sowell has made abundantly clear, the gender pay gap disappears—or even reverses—when you compare like with like: men and women of the same age, education, experience, hours worked, and job type. 

 

But the politically useful narrative relies on comparing aggregates—all working men vs. all working women—without accounting for the factors that actually determine earnings.

 

And what are those factors?

Women disproportionately take time out of the workforce to raise children. In economics, time is money, and skills atrophy. That affects long-term earnings. Women are more likely to work part-time, often by choice, particularly while raising families. This isn’t oppression; it’s a trade-off.

 

Women tend to choose clean, people-focused, emotionally rewarding roles—nursing, teaching, social work, office jobs—while men dominate high-risk, high-pay sectors like engineering, construction, and mining. 

 

Men consistently work longer hours and are more likely to take undesirable shifts, relocate for work, or take on demanding high-responsibility roles.

 

The vast majority of workplace deaths, serious injuries, and physically arduous jobs involve men. As Warren Farrell pointed out, men do the “death professions.” And they’re compensated accordingly.

 

Many men—skilled and unskilled—consciously choose higher-earning careers to fulfill their expected role as future providers. Many women make career decisions based on personal interest, flexibility, or alignment with family life—assuming, whether consciously or not, that their final standard of living will be provided by a man.

 

It’s only when relationships break down—leaving many women working while raising children alone—that economics begins to feel like injustice. Yet in most cases, women are the custodial parents by choice, because that’s the arrangement they prefer. 

 

Many studies show that never-married, childless women in their 40s tend to out-earn their male peers at the same seniority level. Where’s the patriarchy now?

 

Ironically, “pay equity” is deeply sexist. It assumes women are incapable of making informed career decisions, and that when they inevitably end up earning less, it must be someone else’s fault. It infantilises female agency, painting women as helpless victims rather than sovereign actors in charge of their own economic destiny.

 

This is not equality. It is affirmative grievance politics masquerading as social justice.

 

As with so much of the modern Left’s agenda, the real goal isn’t fairness—it’s control. “Pay equity” demands the state override market signals to enforce ideological outcomes. It’s not enough that women can freely enter any field, compete, and be paid accordingly. 

 

No, the outcome must be manipulated to reflect equity, even if that means punishing men, distorting market logic, or forcing employers to pretend that all work is created equal.

 

This is not economics. It is soft Marxism wearing a pink ribbon.

Wages are not awarded based on moral sentiment or activist pressure. They are the result of millions of voluntary exchanges in a competitive marketplace, governed by risk, responsibility, skill scarcity, and value creation.

 

The wage gap is not a crisis. It is a mirror reflecting the accumulated outcomes of human choice. And those crying foul at the reflection are less interested in justice than they are in power.

 

Let’s call it what it is: an ideological racket.

Peter Hemmingson is a New Zealander of multiple ethnic origins, who believes in a single standard of citizenship for all.