Blake Masters, an Arizona GOP Senate candidate says the gender pay gap is not real, it’s actually a myth perpetuated by Democrats. He insisted that men are paid more because they do the “risky” and “most dangerous jobs.”
“Women are not paid less in America than men. It’s a left-wing narrative, this gender pay gap. When you control for the occupations, when you control for people taking time out to, you know, birth children, things are actually pretty equal. And men do the most dangerous jobs,” Masters says in video footage from a February candidates forum obtained by NBC News.
“Men are the ones who are doing risky, you know, fishing crab in Alaska. And sometimes those jobs pay more. Sometimes those jobs pay more, and so I think we got to push back on the fake left-wing narrative that women don’t have equal rights in this country,” he added.
Masters is one of several Republicans running to try and unseat incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly in November. His candidacy has received significant financial support from the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, according to NBC. Thiel also backed J.D. Vance’s campaign in Ohio.
According to Pew Research Center report, the gender pay gap in the U.S. has remained relatively stable over the last 15 years, with women in 2020 earning just 84 percent of what men earned.
Women have to work an extra 42 days to make the same amount of money as their male co-workers.
At this current rate, the gender pay gap won’t close until 2111, according to the American Association of University Women.
Despite these facts Masters is doubling down.
“Everyone knows I am right here and this clip makes me look good,” he wrote on Twitter.
This is not the first controversy surrounding Masters’ campaign. Earlier this month, he took aim at the case that established the right to access birth control, according to Insider.
“I am 100% pro-life. Roe v. Wade was a horrible decision. It was wrong the day it was decided in 1973, it’s wrong today, and it must be reversed. But the fight doesn’t stop there,” Master’s campaign website says. He pledged to “vote only for federal judges who understand that Roe and Griswold and Casey were wrongly decided, and that there is no constitutional right to abortion.”
In 1965, the Griswold case overturned a statewide ban on birth control and protected citizen’s rights to privacy against state restrictions on contraceptives.
