Equal pay for equal risk

I am the son of a working mother, the husband of a woman who has been successful in every business endeavor, the father of a brilliant girl who I absolutely believe will make an impact on the world.

So when I hear about women not being paid the same as a man, only earning 77 percent of what a man earns, of this on-going inequality in pay, I say ...

Why not?

This isn't about talent or brains or work ethic. Across the board, I believe those things even out. I have worked with and for brilliant women, just as I have brilliant men.

But it all comes down to an old saying, "the greater the risk, the greater the reward."

And men, day-in and day-out, take the greater risk.

Don't believe me?

Say you're on a cruise ship, like the Titanic. You hit an ice berg, and the ship is going down. What do they say? "Women and children first." Women even before children! In every movie about the Titanic, you don't see the women left standing on the bow of the ship with the band playing "Nearer My God To Thee." It's always the men. It's expected.

But it's not just cruise ships.

What happens in a hostage situation? Say some guy is holding 20 people at gun point in a bank. The police have the place surrounded, and he is demanding a car to take him, unhindered, to the airport, where he will fly to Cuba. If he doesn't get what he wants, he will start killing hostages. And what do the hostage negotiators always say? "Give us something to show we can negotiate in good faith. Let the women and children go...''

Firemen are taught when saving people in a burning buildling to look for "women and children" first. A man can be up on the fifth floor, full-bore panic mode, but if there's a woman in the same room ... guess who comes out first?

So men get paid more than women? They deserve it, just for the fact that society does not value a man's life as highly as it does "women and children." Men are apparently considered replaceable; women are valuable commodities (and I can understand why). If that value doesn't always translate into salary, I'd say its more than compensated in other, very tangible ways. And until that changes .....

I'm kidding. Seriously. It's a joke.

But sometimes my mind just goes this way.