A rebuttal of the wage gap myth

True "diversity" is not achievable, and no one should attempt to enforce it. That's going about it in completely the wrong way, because by enforcing that you have your _token minorities in their slots,_ you have brought us right back to the problem of discrimination. Except instead of just being _perceived_ as discrimination because the ratio of X:Y appears to be skewed, it would _actually_ be discrimination because now the ratio of X:Y is being skewed in favor of Y, by a misguided executive who wants the company to look altruistic, when in reality, they just denied the job to a qualified applicant on the basis of him _not_ being Y (Y could be anything--black, female, trans, latino, muslim). This is not just shitty practice; it's a _violation of the law._

"It is illegal for an employer to publish a job advertisement that shows a preference for or discourages someone from applying for a job because of his or her race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. For example, a help-wanted ad that seeks "females" or "recent college graduates" may discourage men and people over 40 from applying and may violate the law."
-Prohibited Practices - Job Advertisements, eeoc.gov

I _am_ going somewhere with this. Take that X:Y argument and apply it to women in the workforce. You cannot _force or expect_ the ratio of men:women to be equal in all professions. This expectation is not realistic, is counter to the ethos of equal opportunity, is against the law, and is used to form grotesquely misrepresentative judgments about labor statistics, like the myth that women make 78% of what a man makes. This is simply not true. The ratio of men:women in the workforce is not something that any employer can legally have control over, so if you add up the salaries of all working men and women in the U.S, there is always going to be a difference, and the X:Y ratio is only _one_ of the many variables that affects how much income any given person receives. To take that difference and assert that women are suffering an injustice is -- if not an outright failure to understand what that difference actually _means_ -- a gross, dishonest and unethical misrepresentation of statistics, and a rejection of the efforts lawmakers have made to ensure that such a thing cannot happen. In other words, one is insinuating that they know better than said lawmakers and those who pushed them into action. Not only is this an incredibly arrogant viewpoint to take, but it also invalidates every past Civil Rights movement that has led up to our current labor laws, which are *designed* to be inclusive.