If there is any concept that may be widely misunderstood and has the potential to wreak havoc in the private sector, it is the fine-sounding idea of pay equity. In his recent speech to the province, Premier Ujjal Dosanjh argued that "women in BC still only earn 73% of what men earn" - the fabled "wage gap," and then used that statistic to justify pay equity legislation that will soon apply to the private sector.

In the debate over pay equity, it cannot be repeated often enough that the two are not what most people might assume on first hearing, i.e., the exact same paycheque for the exact same job, regardless of whether an employee is male or female. To discriminate on the basis of gender has long been illegal, as is proper.

Pay equity is instead about the more nebulous comparison known as "equal pay for work of equal value." One column cannot cover all aspects of this issue, but a summary of the spurious use of statistics and the erroneous assumptions is critical. For starters, the 73% statistic is of little help. Back in the early 1990s, advocates of pay equity in Ontario under the then NDP government argued that only one-third to one-quarter of that supposed wage gap was due to discrimination. The BC government's own paper on the subject now argues that half of that gap is due to hidden gender bias.

Both estimates are on shaky statistical ground. To understand why, imagine 100 female lawyers and 100 male lawyers at the beginning of their careers. Assume that both sets of lawyers went to Harvard, all were equally smart, received the exact same grades, and went to work for the exact same law firm and received the same starting salary. Furthermore, assume both genders worked the exact same hours over 40 years, billed at exact same expensive rates, never took unequal amounts of time off to raise children or to vacation. Assume also that an equal number of male lawyers and female lawyers were promoted to senior positions at the exact same time over the course of the careers.

If all of that happened, there would, of course, never be a "wage gap" between male and female lawyers. But if, for example, even one lawyer bolted from the firm for several years, to take an extended worldwide trip, run for politics, or to raise children - and then returned five years later, the first wage gap would appear. No law firm would necessarily pay the returning lawyer the same rate as that which their colleagues were earning, given that the other lawyers now have five years more experience. And that one choice would affect the aggregate statistic.

Those who argue gender wage gaps exist because of hidden discrimination ignore personal choices made by millions of people over decades and the tendency of men and women to make very different lifestyle choices. Also, there is an erroneous cause and effect assumption. If one believes that when the rooster crows and the sun rises, the first event must have caused the second, one might be tempted to buy the statistically questionable assumptions put forward by pay equity proponents.

This, in a nutshell, is the statistical and philosophical problem with equal pay for work of equal value - besides the very difficult problem of determining equal worth. (Most people might think their jobs are worth at least what professional hockey players are paid, but most people will still not receive million dollar paycheques.) Pay equity advocates insist they can account for the literally billions of decisions made over decades by men and women, account for all the factors, and come up with a precise measurement. That kind of assumption about the validity of their statistical analysis - as opposed to simple polling where a respondent might have three or four choices - is voodoo statistics dressed up as analysis, and it is unconvincing.