While I applaud Advocate columnist and assistant city editor Mary-Ann Barr on a regular basis for her willingness to take a stand on issues of the day, even if I routinely disagree, her March 9 column is at least deserving of a strong rebuttal based upon some routinely ignored facts about income equality in the workforce.

One of the great bugbears of feminism is the mythical wage “gender gap.”

I say it’s mythical because, while you can’t ignore the factual statistics quoted by Barr in her column, basic analysis of those very statistics tends to debunk the myth.

The premise, essentially, is that because we can demonstrate that women earn less than men, there must be some form of discrimination at work here.

Well, actually, there is discrimination at work here.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess, to be more accurate), the discrimination is considerably less than malevolent.

I don’t dispute that women earn less than men, in most cases. I also don’t dispute that university educated men usually earn more than women.

It’s also an indisputable fact that more than half of all university grads are women.

But, as they say, the devil is in the details.

Just for starters, ask yourself this question: “How many women do I know who have sustained a workplace injury resulting in stitches, or the complete or partial loss of a finger?”

It’s a start because it illustrates a fundamental difference between the types of careers men choose versus women.

For anyone who chooses to eschew the expense of college or university, skilled trades can provide incomes equal to or greater than what many university graduates can expect to achieve in their lifetime.

But many trades involve the use of machines and tools that routinely have a habit of taking a bite out of you if you’re not careful. Been there, done that. My hands bear the scars of 15 years of hands-on machining.

The point is that women routinely avoid careers that carry the routine risk of even minor personal injury, or intense physical labour for that matter. The problem is that those jobs also tend to pay more.

The hard reality is that when you find women in the trades, they’re making what the guys make, period.

The fact that university doesn’t appear to equalize the playing field is also a bit of a red herring, as it ignores the choices made.

Cue Hugh Hefner. A favourite statistician cum pundit whom I regularly turn to for statistical analysis has noted that the vast majority of Playboy’s Playmates of the Month — going back to 1970 — were university grads.

Said pundit found this little factoid to be so compelling that he has written several articles stemming from it.

The long and the short of it is that while women are enrolling in, and graduating from, university in greater numbers than ever, they are also making choices that have a built in reduced economic reward.

While male university grads still dominate the sciences and engineering, females tend towards the arts and humanities, where long-term financial prospects aren’t nearly as good.

The point?

If you have a degree in sociology or political science (like some 400 Playboy Playmates) more than 10 years old that’s generating you a 60K income, in the private sector, I’ll show you my pictures of Bigfoot.

It’s not that the workforce is discriminating against women.

It’s that they’re discriminating against sound economic choices.

The real world paints a different picture than the feminist spin doctors want you to see.

Show me a nurse who routinely works shifts and averages 40 hours per week, and I’ll show you someone who makes $60,000 per year and up, male or female.

If you look at the professions of law, medicine and accounting, women working alongside men earn as much as the men. Women in the engineering fields earn equally to men doing the same work. I italicize because engineering firms will attest that female engineers often turn down hazardous duty or field work.

I’ll bet Barr that the editorial floor of the Advocate is pretty much gender-blind.

The fact that the “gender gap” in other provinces is less than Alberta’s is more a function of the increased presence of the public sector workforce in those provinces, and the tendency for government jobs to grossly overpay compared to private sector employers, because of the lack of value constraints.

The bottom line here is that many women do earn less than men, but it’s not discrimination.

It’s a choice.

Bill Greenwood is a local freelance columnist.