I'm an attorney. I've represented women in sex discrimination suits. I've represented countless workers in labor arbitrations. One of the main reasons sex discrimination is hard to prove is that it's so rare. If sex discrimination were nearly widespread enough to account for 23% difference in wages nationwide, there'd be so much evidence cases would become laughably easy to prove. I mean think about what it would mean for discrimination to make that much of a difference in wages for that many people. Just to take a couple of hypothetical examples, if all women were discriminated against equally (i.e reveived 77% of the salary of their male counterparts), there would potentially be the same number of lawsuits as women and girls working full or part time. I forget what that number is, but I think it's on the order of 80M. Courts in this country are swamped with asbestos litigation that has produced about 600,000 suits so far. Can you imagine what they'd be doing with 100 times that many?

A second hypothetical would have "only" half the women and girls discriminated against which would mean that each one of them would earn about 54 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make, and there would be up to 40M lawsuits (if I have the right employment figure). Do you honestly believe that corporate America has the competence to keep a lid on those types of figures? I don't. And of course an attorney can subpoena a company's records.

Now with that many women being discriminated against, it couldn't just be little ma and pa employers doing it, it'd be huge ones like GM and McDonalds. And middle management at those companies don't make those decisions, so there'd be memos to all branches and regions that said something like "When you hire a man start him at $10/hour, but when you hire a woman, start her at $5.40/hr. In short, a trial lawyer's dream.

The cases are difficult to win precisely because that type of evidence doesn't exist. It doesn't exist because nothing like that level of discrimination exists.

I'm beginning to think math is tough for you. You throw numbers around that don't make much sense. $100M recovery? Two of my best friends do nothing but employment law and they don't seem to be quite that rich. Too bad.

As to the Walmart case, if the women prove their case and if it's about wages, then that will be a big deal. Of course it still won't have much effect on the overall totals, but still it'll be significant. I mean, even you can do that math, right?

As to the numbers, I've explained this to you before several months ago. This is the last time.

The US Census Bureau statistics are what show the disparity in incomes that are so much cited, the current figure being 77%. They got that figure by interviewing some people in person and sending out questionnaires to others. They asked them lots of questions including their sex and how much they made in the last year. That gave them the fact that women in the aggregate make about 77% of what men make. See? Those figures include women who don't work, men who don't work, women who work full time, men who work full time, etc.

Those figures establish the discrepancy in incomes, but they don't explain it, so what does? The answer is "other figures." For example, the ones I've given now 3 times on this thread alone - that women who work full time still work about 12% less than men who work full time. But that, obviously is only 12% of the difference which is 23%, so what explains the rest of it? What explains a large part of it is the fact that about 8M fewer women work at all than do men. Since they don't work, they don't earn money but were included in the Census Bureau data, so that explains another 9% or so. That gives us about 21% of the 23%. The rest is probably explained by seniority and by differences in how much women and men work part time and some perhaps by discrimination.

Now to me this looks really simple, but if it doesn't to you, ask someone else to explain it to you.

Finally, you claim I think that sex discrimination is really blatant. As before, I wish you would read what I write. In responding to MWise, I really tried to make it clear that it is precisely because it is not blatant that it is so hard to prove. I've tried these cases; you haven't.

that the cost in American lives, while certainly the most important cost to us, is far from the only cost of this war. The maimed and killed Iraqis, the injured and disfigured Americans and the wasted dollars are all important cost of this war.

One of the things Republicans have always championed about themselves is their supposedly hard-headed business approach to governing. They always do the cost-benefit analysis, right? Which is why it's so odd that you never hear them even attempt to make the case that, not only can we "win" this war, but that the effort will be worth the cost.