this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024
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Come on, dude, there is no female wage gap. It's just that men choose high-salary jobs, like doctor or lawyer, and women choose low-salary jobs, like female doctor or female lawyer.
Time to dig this back up again, I guess:
There literally is no gender "wage gap". Firstly, the "wage gap" is a misnomer for the "earnings gap" (using the correct term makes it more clear that the difference is in average overall earning, not in the pay received per hour of the same work), and assuming whatever gap there is is caused by sexism is literally the same logic as the creationist's 'god of the gaps' argument re the fossil record; with that argument, creationists say X couldn't possibly have evolved into Y, that God was involved. Then when a transitional fossil Z between X and Y is found, the creationist says that God's influence must actually be between X and Z, and Z and Y. And so on ad infinitum, creating a situation where the creationist will always find a way to convince themselves that they're correct, despite the ever-increasing amount of evidence against them.
When it comes to the earnings gap, the actual gap that exists, the cause is assumed to be sexism/misogyny in the same way God is assumed to be how different species came about. But then as time goes on, research is done, and more and more of the gap is accounted for via factors that have nothing to do with discrimination/prejudice/etc., the argument changes to 'whatever gap remains unaccounted for, that must be the part caused by sexism/misogyny!"
That portion being due to sexism/misogyny is always based on pure assumption--there is zero hard evidence that instances of sexism (no one argues there is zero of it) comprise a statistically-significant portion (no one being intellectually honest would argue it's literally zero) of the earnings gap between men and women.
For anyone curious, here's a list of factors that contribute to the gender earnings gap, from the above link:
Note: None of those gaps above apply universally, but reflect overall gender differences that apply in general and on average.
My favorite part of this AEI op-ed (look up the fellows of this august think tank institution if you have a minute) is that the author lists no notes, references, or citations for a single claim in the piece. Now that's how you do it! Start a Hudson Institute it Heritage Foundation and once you've got the banner to put behind a panel of prestigious sounding fellows, bam! You've got the patina of credibility! Back it with a couple hundred million in tax-cheat lobbying endowments and you've got a stew going baby!
My favourite part of that list is that a bunch of reasons are implicitly gendered. E.g. 'men are more likely to have had more continuous years of employment...' - gee I sure wonder why that could be - and apparently there's just no problem there at all in their mind. 'women are more likely to work shorter hours to ~~pick up the slack~~ do things like raise children and make sure their habitation isn't a health hazard. Like maybe some of these bullet points aren't so much counter arguments as exactly the kind of thing we should be targeting when considering the pay gap. Why is it culturally acceptable that women should do all a disproportionate amount of household chores? And let's also note that there's also been research that suggests that wages for specialist fields have historically shifted to reflect the balance of men Vs women in the field. Why is teaching so low paid now? Why is software engineering more highly paid. Stupid list, SMH