Alain Guillot

Life, Leadership, and Money Matters

Debunking the Pay Gap Myth Insights from Claudia Goldin and Industry Experts

The Gender Pay Gap is a Myth, it Doesn’t Exist

The pay gap between men and women is not due to discrimination but rather to various other factors.

According to Claudia Goldin, Nobel Prize winner in Economics in 2023 for her research on the gender gap, when men and women start their careers, they earn similar amounts. However, as life progresses, a difference becomes apparent, especially when a couple decides to have a baby. At this point, women’s salary income decelerates, while men’s salary income continues to increase, often with a paternal premium. The reason lies in the highest-paid professions, which are often “greedy jobs” that demand 100 hours a week.

Greedy jobs are characterized by working long hours, often with less control over when the hours are worked. Demands are often made last minute with the assumption that they will be met. On the upside, they are often the highest paying jobs, even when considered on a per-hour basis.

1 greedy job + a flexible job will usually earn more then 2 flexible jobs, even if the hours worked between the couple collectively are the same.

Men tend to increase their work hours and receive a bonus when they have children, a phenomenon known as the “fatherhood wage premium.” Women, meanwhile, experience the “motherhood penalty,” which studies have found is closely tied to conscious or subconscious bias against mothers, who may be viewed by employers as less competent or committed to the job.

The data about the motherhood penalty and the fatherhood bonus present a clear-cut look at American culture’s ambiguous feelings about gender and work. Even in the age of “Lean In,” when women with children run Fortune 500 companies and head the Federal Reserve, traditional notions about fathers as breadwinners and mothers as caregivers remain deeply ingrained. 

3:15

In the next video, we have Jordan Peterson explaining that in Scandinavian countries, which have moved more towards gender equality than any other set of countries in the world, women have chosen careers that are more in accordance with their gender.

33:00

Here is entrepreneur Maya Milusheva, a woman in tech, explaining why she prefers to work with men rather than women. Among other things, she points out that when a programming problem arises, men are willing to stay at work all night until the problem is fixed, while women prefer to go home regardless.

Maya Milusheva made a passionate claim against the topic women in tech, saying:

  • I am a woman
  • I am a good developer
  • I am a mother
  • I am a CEO of a successful IT company
  • when I hire I want the best people for my company and they are men
  • women simply don’t have the required tech skills/level of expertise
  • the whole talk about women in open source/diversity is bullshit
  • girls need to sit down on their asses and read more, code more, etc.
Minute 35

All this to say that there is no pay gap. Women and men get paid exactly the same for the same job. The gap is based on the kinds of jobs that men and women choose.

Men just choose to work in industries that pay more, men are willing to work longer hours, men are willing to work in more dangerous jobs, men are more likely to move, Men are more likely to work outside, they are more likely to work in the STEM fields which can be scaled, and that’s all hidden under the idea that the reason why they earn more is because of their gender.

So my conclusion after watching these experts talk is that there no gender gap, men just choose to work in industries that pay more, men are willing to work longer hours,
men are willing to work in more dangerous jobs,
men are more likely to move,
men are more likely to work outside,
they are more likely to work in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields which can be scaled, and that’s all hidden under the idea that the reason why they earn more is because of their gender.

So, my conclusion after watching these experts is that there is no gender gap. Men just choose to work in industries that pay more, are willing to work longer hours, are willing to work in more dangerous jobs, are more likely to move, are more likely to work outside, and are more likely to work in STEM fields. The reason why they earn more is not because of their gender but because of their choices.

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