One of the big stories in the news recently was the “Day Without A Woman” strike that took place on March 8^th, where women across the country chose to take the day off of work to protest against workplace discrimination. This is not necessarily a bad idea on the surface, seeing as how there are a handful of areas where women are disadvantaged in the workplace compared with men. Although the thing that was interesting about the march was that it seemed over the top compared to what it was fighting for.

The message of the march was to show the country what the economy would look like if women were absent from the working world and the consumer world for one day. The central themes of the march were things along the lines of closing the gender pay gap. However, that pay gap, the 78% figure that is so often cited, has actually been debunked. There is evidence that there is some sort of discrimination based pay gap pertaining to gender, but it is actually much smaller than 78 cents on the dollar, and it can’t even be proven that discrimination is the cause.

Researchers presented the statistic that if every woman had participated in the strike, it would have cost the economy $21 billion dollars. Obviously every woman didn’t participate, but even so, that is quite a staggering figure when you take into account that the march centered around a pay gap statistic that is skewed, and a handful of other relatively minor first world problems. When you take that into consideration, it kind of makes the strikers seem a little conceded and spoiled. However, on another note, it was reported that several women lost their jobs over the strike. That is also quite over the top and unfair, considering it was only a single day of work.