I have mowed a lawn once in my life. It took me twice as long as it usually takes my father, and when I had finished, it looked twice as bad. Not only that, but I also turned a perfectly acceptable pair of sneakers into chlorophyll-colored foot ornaments. Needless to say, no one ever asked me to mow a lawn again.

Membership in the so-called “weaker sex” is not without its perks. Not only can I count on one hand the number of times I’ve cut the grass, I’ve never had to change a tire myself. (In fact, I couldn’t even buy a tire without calling my dad for help. The salesman kept asking me mystifying questions, like “What kind of engine do you have?” and “What brand of tire would you like?”) I’ve had all the pleasures of fishing, without ever touching the worm or the fish. And in three years of moving in and out of the dorms, I have no recollection of ever having hauled my mini-fridge from my car to my room.

Ah, the joys of being female!

Yet, even from a position of relative privilege, some women still make claims of oppression with as much vehemence and vitriol as if they were still living in 1950.

Last week, the National Organization for Women and the National Commission on Pay Equity acknowledged Equal Pay Day on April 19. The occasion supposedly marks the number of days into the next year that a woman has to work to earn the same amount of money that a man earns annually. The date is determined by using the widely quoted statistic that a woman earns only 77 cents on the dollar that a man earns.

They’re not the only ones bemoaning the “gender gap.” The Des Moines Register pointed out last month that Iowa and Mississippi are the only states to have never elected a woman to Congress or as governor. The insinuation is clear: Being in the company of Mississippi is about as humiliating as being Napoleon Dynamite’s date to the prom.

Just this month, the Daily made a similarly startling discovery. I hope you were sitting down when you read this headline: “Males outnumber females in faculty; solutions discussed.”

For all the supposed “proof” of gender discrimination, you’d be hard-pressed to find any evidence of discrimination in Iowa’s election codes or in Iowa State’s hiring policies.

Furthermore, the 77 cents statistic is a misleading simplification. It only compares the median female full-time income with the median male full-time income. It fails to take into account other intervening variables, like the number of hours worked (men work more overtime), working conditions (men work in more hazardous occupations), years of experience (men normally do not take time off to raise children), and education (men study more marketable fields, like engineering, science and math, and they receive more post-graduate degrees).

A ranking by the Jobs Rated Almanac shows that of the 25 “worst” jobs, men make up 92 percent of the work force. Ninety-eight percent of lumberjacks, 97 percent of construction workers, 97 percent of firefighters and 93 percent of garbage collectors are men. Low-skill, male-dominated jobs often involve physically taxing labor, in harsh conditions with low job security. To induce people to take these jobs, employers must offer higher wages as compensation.

In contrast, low-skill female-dominated jobs, like secretarial or retail work, are of the less physical, air-conditioned, monotonous variety. Not surprisingly, they pay less.

This “unequal” distribution of labor and wages is not the result of latent sexism in society, but the consequence of decisions made by millions of people with differing priorities when it comes to income, comfort, security, free time and family. Some people would rather chop down trees than take care of babies; some people prefer French literature to Physics 222. Their careers and income reflect those preferences.

As for me, I’ll be perfectly happy with my career as long as I never find myself covered in sweat and grass clippings again.