Stephen Miller just enjoys provoking people. He criticized African-American students for protesting racist comments. In his latest diatribe he criticizes feminists for seeking equal pay.
Once again, Miller abuses facts attempting to make his offensive point. Women do work about 85 percent as many hours as men, but why is that?
Maybe it is because in our society, women are expected to pull a full second shift of unpaid labor in the home. Add up those hours of labor and see how a woman's workday compares to that of a man.
Miller claims that "women also choose lower paying professions [in] service fields." We as analytical readers of his column should ask why women choose these professions. Is it because historically these fields were the only ones open to women? Or maybe gender stereotypes still force women into caring jobs. Or maybe, preferences for the concept of a male's family wage keeps wages in teaching and other caring professions lower than they should be.
Miller argues that none of these reasons for the pay gap have anything "to do with gender discrimination." Well, this is what gender discrimination is: the expectation that women as a whole are these caring creatures who sacrifice higher wages for caring jobs out of the goodness of their hearts and not because of societal pressures and stereotypes. I hope when Miller leaves the 1950s and finally decides to get a job other than attempting to use a college newspaper column to agitate society, he works for a woman who will educate him.
Michelle Robinson
Trinity '06
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