The True Story of the Gender Pay Gap
The Patriarchy is Totally Slacking off
“Does that mean women are receiving lower pay for equal work? That is possibly the case in certain places, but by and large, it’s not that, it’s something else.”
-Claudia Goldin, Harvard economist
A disturbing thing happened last week at my local meeting of the National Patriarchy Society. As you are undoubtedly aware, straight, middle-aged white men gather in small NPS groups on the second Tuesday of every month to celebrate our position at the top of the social hierarchy and review strategies to further restrict economic opportunities for women and minorities.
The meetings are usually a lot of fun and last week's gathering was due to be a humdinger because it was Equal Pay Day (EPD), the annual commemoration of the Patriarchy's success in limiting women's earnings to no more than 80% of what a man makes for the same work.
As is our tradition, we huddled in front of the network TV morning shows, ready to savor them discussing another year of highly effective discrimination. Then the chairman of our Gender Pay Disparity Proliferation committee, Nick Murphy, arrived. He usually brings donuts on EPD but today he looked utterly defeated.
"Nick," I said. "you're still a member of the most privileged class of humans ever to exist. Why the long face?"
He lifted his head halfway, looked at me through moist eyes, and groaned. "It appears that all our efforts here aren't paying off quite like we thought they were."
Concerned for my compatriot, I asked, "What do you mean?"
"You know how the gender pay gap is widely accepted to be an unavoidable 20% differential for men and women doing the same work?"
"Do I know it?" I asked rhetorically. "Buddy, it's what gets me out of bed every morning!"
"As it turns out, it's not quite that simple," he offered apologetically. "According to CNBC, women now make 84 cents for every dollar a man makes."
"CNBC said that? I thought they were our friends."
"Apparently not," he said, shaking his head.
I took a second to consider this report. "Even still, pal—a 16% premium based solely on the fact that we have dicks—that is something to celebrate!"
Yet, Nick did not smile. Instead, he pulled out his phone and held it in my direction. "It gets worse. Listen to this.”
He showed me the podcast Freakonomics Radio and an episode titled The True Story of the Gender Pay Gap, an interview between host Stephen Dubner and Claudia Goldin, a professor of economics at Harvard.
I walked to the back room, sat on our "casting couch," and pressed play. As Professor Goldin explained her decades of research studying women in the workplace, the room started to spin. Among other heretical nonsense, she claimed that the gap in men's and women's compensation was not caused by the Patriarchy's intentional suppression of female wages!
Based on her thorough analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, she concluded that “It’s hard to find the smoking guns (proving discrimination).”
Instead, she alleged the delta resulted from a slew of factors, like the kind of work women choose and the number of consecutive years they spend in the workplace. But mostly, the cause lay in women’s inclination toward more "temporal flexibility" in their work.
“So therefore…if a woman wants to practice law…being a corporate counsel would give her more flexibility. That doesn’t mean that she’s working fewer hours than she would’ve worked otherwise, but she can work her hours, and she gets paid somewhat less.”
-Claudia Goldin
I could feel my world crumbling beneath my feet. "Nick," I screamed. "What is this horseshit?!?"
"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, Paul, but the gender wage gap has almost nothing to do with our efforts to keep women in their place. Rather, it’s the product of aggregated, rational decisions made by women themselves," Nick explained. “We may have succeeded in setting parental expectations that make it more challenging for women to succeed at work, but it’s not the widespread conspiracy of misogyny we want people to think it is.”
I shoved my fingers in my ears.
"La, la, la, la…I can't hear Nick talking right now… 'rational aggregation…societal structure…blah blah blah.'" I yelled. "It's not their decisions, Nick. It's the work we, the Patriarchy, have been committed to for many decades. It's the work that you do!"
Nick shook his head. "I would love to take credit for it, but as Goldin explains in a separate interview with that other Freakonomics guy, the data clearly show that professional families choose for one spouse to take a job that is a lucrative grind and allow the other to work a more flexible job. She calls it ‘couple inequity’ and in the significant majority of cases, the latter spouse is the wife."
"BLASPHEMER!"
"I know, I know. I was just as shocked as you. But if you stop and think about it, it makes complete sense," Nick explained. "And the pattern even holds for same-sex couples, so..."
It was too hard to accept. "But we've spent years cultivating the narrative that we are the ones preserving male dominance, and no one has had the guts to question it! Has the media picked up on this?"
"Well, that's the silver lining," Nick answered, a flicker of hope returning to his face. "Major news outlets pretty much just recite the top-line summary, which isn’t false, but does not represent an apples-to-apples comparison of the kind of work or the circumstances under which it’s being done.”
"So why can't this Professor Goldin person just allow people to continue believing that our discriminatory efforts are working?" I asked.
"My theory—and it's just a theory, so don't shoot me or torch me on social media for trying to think this through," Nick began sheepishly. “Is that Professor Goldin wants to see women achieve their full human potential. And because she does, she is—with intellectual rigor, courage, and empathy—shining a light on the true nature of the problem."
"Hold on, Nick—is she suggesting that it's not productive to persuade girls and young women that they are doomed to make 1/5 less than their male counterparts no matter what?" I inquired.
Nick shook his head and continued, "It sounds as if—instead of perpetuating divisive tropes—she wants to focus on the underlying structural issues, like how we design the workplace, how we socialize our daughters, and why women, even those with very demanding jobs, still take on much more of the childcare, eldercare, and housekeeping responsibilities than their male partners do."
"Nick, this is awful. Is there anything to feel hopeful about?" I begged. "Please tell me sexual harassment is still a thing."
"Sure it is! There are still plenty of creepy dudes out there, and we can definitely take credit for that," he said. "But it's clear our best work is behind us."
My self-worth shattered, I looked at Nick with tears in my eyes.
"This sucks," I croaked. "I'm moving to Saudi Arabia."
Paul Ollinger is the host of the Crazy Money podcast. Whether you liked or hated the above post, you’ll enjoy his conversation with Daniel Markovits, author of The Meritocracy Trap.
Great essay done with your brilliant satirical skills. I have long wondered about this topic. To oversimplify the life of white collar working adults, we all face choices over time that are choices between more money or more happiness. My observation over the years is that male egos and social conditioning push men to always emphasize decisions that lead to more money. Women, on the other hand, seem much more capable of balance - they are better at chasing financial security while pursuing more happiness as the real goal. My own life is evidence of this. My wife and I built our careers in advertising and media. I made more money but my wife had more family time. After my career at Yahoo! blew up, I became an independent consultant working mostly from home while my wife, knowing that I had the kids covered, made very ambitious decisions to take her career up a notch. I've done really well as a consultant but I have done much, much better at being a dad ever since this pivot in my life. But, I have made far less money than I would have if I went back into the ad agency world where seven figure compensation beckoned. I chose more happiness and within a few years, my wife was the one getting paid a whole lot more than I was. It had nothing to do with sexism and everything to do with our evolving roles in our family as parents and breadwinners.
While male bashing can still be fun at cocktail hour, my experience has shown that gap can be closed if women would just find the freedom and expertise to #beasmartask.