We'd only expect to see wage equality if women had exactly the same job preferences as men, which empirically is absolutely not the case.
To whoever downvoted this, I'd be interested to see your sources showing that women do in fact have the same job preferences as men. Because every study I've seen shows that their career preferences differ. Or do you genuinely not understand that if women on average have a preferences for fields that pay less, they'll earn less on average?
Gender Equality and Work
21–30 of 32 posts
Re: Gender Equality and Work
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
To whoever downvoted this, I'd be interested to see your sources showing that women do in fact have the same job preferences as men. Because every study I've seen shows that their career preferences differ. Or do you genuinely not understand that if women on average have a preferences for fields that pay less, they'll earn less on average?
I think the argument is the other way around: fields that women prefer pay less, ie. the field pays less because women prefer it. I don’t share that argument, I just wanted to point it out.
Re: Gender Equality and Work
#23As a father, I really can't understand how every article about this topic talks about as if fathers and mothers are just interchangeable. We are not. Mothers carry their child for ~9 months, they give birth to that child. The bond between a mother and her freshly born child is bigger than that of the father. Of course fathers are very important too, and yes fathers should spend more Time with their children in genera…
Re: Gender Equality and Work
#24As always, the OECD is leaving out other massive gaps. For instance, the working hour gap: even if you limit yourself to the class of full time workers, men work more hours than do women. There's the work satisfaction gap: women work in jobs that offer them more work satisfaction than men. There's the commute gap: men spend more time in their commutes per week than women do. There's the retirement gap: full time wome…
This would make more sense if it wasn't related to children. Women aren't just working fewer hours to relax. They work fewer hours because society demands that they do a whole extra job of raising children.
Re: Gender Equality and Work
#25As always, the OECD is leaving out other massive gaps. For instance, the working hour gap: even if you limit yourself to the class of full time workers, men work more hours than do women. There's the work satisfaction gap: women work in jobs that offer them more work satisfaction than men. There's the commute gap: men spend more time in their commutes per week than women do. There's the retirement gap: full time wome…
This would make more sense if it wasn't related to children. Women aren't just working fewer hours to relax. They work fewer hours because society demands that they do a whole extra job of raising children.
The only reason your formulation gets more play in media is that there's a strong social bias ascribing hypoagency to women (so whatever unfair pressures they face are due to patriarchal oppression) and hyperagency to men (so whatever unfair pressures they face are their own fault).
Re: Gender Equality and Work
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
"There is definitely social sexism being surfaced by the wage gap statistic, but it's against men, not women." I would say against both genders.
It is more complicated than I let on and not as simple as class X is victimized. However, it's frustrating that this pushback happens only when a random internet comment is oversimplifying in the men have it worse direction and never when a massive institution is oversimplifying in the women have it worse direction.
Just because institutions are oversimplifying doesn't mean we have to
Re: Gender Equality and Work
#27On page 43, it shows very clearly, that women who do not have children have almost no earnings gap.
Society can "fix" this in two ways: - introduce the same penalty for fathers, so that both earn less - which would IMHO lead to even less children - lift up families/mothers and help women not experience this gap, by having full time high quality child Care, have laws that allow mothers to take their children to Work, etc etc.
Second one is much harder to accomplish, because it costs money and time and effort.
The first one is Just forcing fathers to stay at home while mothers go back to Work.
Re: Gender Equality and Work
#28As always, the OECD is leaving out other massive gaps. For instance, the working hour gap: even if you limit yourself to the class of full time workers, men work more hours than do women. There's the work satisfaction gap: women work in jobs that offer them more work satisfaction than men. There's the commute gap: men spend more time in their commutes per week than women do. There's the retirement gap: full time wome…
This would make more sense if it wasn't related to children. Women aren't just working fewer hours to relax. They work fewer hours because society demands that they do a whole extra job of raising children.
Re: Gender Equality and Work
#29Most of the gender pay gap can be attributed to children: See https://www.henrikkleven.com/research/published/kleven-landa... On page 43, it shows very clearly, that women who do not have children have almost no earnings gap. Society can "fix" this in two ways: - introduce the same penalty for fathers, so that both earn less - which would IMHO lead to even less children - lift up families/mothers and help women not e…
Re: Gender Equality and Work
#30Most of the gender pay gap can be attributed to children: See https://www.henrikkleven.com/research/published/kleven-landa... On page 43, it shows very clearly, that women who do not have children have almost no earnings gap. Society can "fix" this in two ways: - introduce the same penalty for fathers, so that both earn less - which would IMHO lead to even less children - lift up families/mothers and help women not e…
I don't think that's the right context to put this in. The correct context would be that families that have children face costs associated with having kids and the monetary portion of those costs seems to express themselves disproportionately as a decrease in the woman's earnings. Those costs probably represent a real decrease in the value of labor so "fixing it" might push us further from an optimal outcome, not clo…