#9

I chose to analyze a post from the ever-frightening site, Breitbart News. This quote comes from an article about Theresa May's attempts to increase workplace equality:

"The so-called gender pay gap, where women are believed to be paid less than men because of institutional sexism, has been repeatedly debunked, with research and free market campaigners finding that gaps in salary are due to: women studying ‘soft’ subjects at university, rather than reading for degrees in subjects such as engineering that lead to higher-paid jobs; women taking career breaks to have children; and men working longer hours so they end up being paid more."

This quote contains a huge piece of misinformation, as the gender wage gap has been proven over many studies, but it uses rhetoric to affect its audience. Phrases like "so-called" and "repeatedly debunked" offer no evidence, yet they communicate a certainty that is designed to make people blindly believe. The overall tone of the article is extremely dismissive of women arguing for wage equality, encouraging readers to trust this type of rhetoric and ignore the women who experience this issue by talking down to them from the start. Tone has a big effect on readers, and in this case the tone also works to reinforce the content of the piece.

The article uses small bits of truth in order to spread a larger piece of misinformation. It refers to research that says that 1) women study "soft" subjects in college, 2) women take breaks from work to have and care for children, and 3) men work longer hours. The reason this piece might be convincing to anyone trusting Breitbart News is that these three pieces of information are not untrue. However, the article places the blame on women's choices and completely ignores the cultural context behind these facts: 1) women are taught from birth that they do not belong in STEM jobs, and are often intimidated out of studying anything besides "soft" subjects in school, 2) only (biological) women can have children, we need children to continue the human race, and men expect women to take time off to care for children; they are culturally required to take this time off, and 3) men work longer hours because women are expected to take care of the home and family; this unpaid labor takes up time and means they are unable to work as long as men. The article completely ignores the fat that sexist institutions lie behind every reason they give for women's laziness that supposedly causes the wage gap.

Finally, these pieces of decontextualized evidence are used to obscure the fact that, despite the fact that women might work less hours or in lower paying fields, they still make less money than their male counterparts. If a man and a woman work the same job, for the same hours, with the same education and experience, the man will still make more than the woman. This article uses decontextualized pieces of information to make the argument appear "settled" while obscuring the actual fact of the wage gap.