A question about the gender wage gap.

[Proud Public Servant]

4. I think it's multifaceted

which is why it's such a tough nut to crack.

First, there's wage discrimination: unequal pay for equal work. That should be the easiest problem to solve, since the solution can be legislated.

Second, there's the cultural bias against "women's work." It's been years since I studied this, but I know that there's plenty of evidence that, the more a field (white- or blue-collar) is dominated by women, the lower the average wages in that field tend to be. There's even evidence that when a field goes from being male-dominated to female-dominated (e.g., teaching and secretarial work at the beginning of the 20th century), the wages go down, while if a field goes from being female-dominated to male-dominated (e.g., data processing at mid-century), the wages go up. How do you keep that from happening? I have no idea.

Third, there's what appears to be the fact that women are much more likely to sideline their careers for family purposes than men are. I've never seen, and would love to see, a wage-gap comparison that looks only at childless men and women; I'd bet the gap would be significantly narrower. What can we do about that? A generous government child-care policy, modeled on those of Europe, would be a start. But we also have to raise boys who do not believe the entirety of their identity and self-worth is rooted in their work.

Finally, there's the fact that women don't jockey for advantage in the workplace with the same aggression in men, in part because we raise girls to value compromise and "being liked" while we raise boys to value winning. What can we do about that? Speaking from experience as a dad of a daughter, we can raise girls to have sharper elbows. Morally, we raised our daughter with the values more often imparted to boys: do what's right -- but if you're sure you're right, don't apologize, don't back down, and don't take "no" for an answer. I'm heartened to see that there's a whole world of millennial feminist reinforcement for this attitude, in places like Jezebel, Wonkette, Feministing and elsewhere. I was also heartened when recently at work my daughter's bosses offered her a new position and title (she's only 23), and her first response was "fine; now talk to me about money"; she ended up with a 20% raise, but her bosses freely confessed that she wouldn't have gotten it if she hadn't asked.

So just some thoughts; it's a tremendously interesting topic.