The Kenyan Scholar

Should women receive equal pay to that of men for the same work? Absolutely. However, the argument over the alleged "pay gap" is replete of sensationalist headlines and fabricated statistics.

All of the statistics are false or at the very least biased because they don’t take into account some important factors. For example, males tend to work longer hours and pick careers with greater responsibility simply because they can. More women than men are now enrolled in medical school, but they tend to choose less dangerous and less demanding specialties like pediatrics over cardiology and neurosurgery, which pay more but need more time and energy from their practitioners ⁷.

Therefore, to explain the gender pay-gap:

• First is the fact that much more men are employed in technical disciplines than women and are in occupations that pay more on average than institutions with women majority.
• Second, men are always willing to work in more complex, hard, or dangerous jobs, which pays better to gather for health hazards, more than women.
• Third, men choose or are able to work harder and for longer hours than women.

Nearly half of today's workers are women, but they make up an even smaller percentage of certain high-paying, high-qualifying occupations ⁸. They make up only 20% of the country's engineers, 30% of the chemists, and 25% of the mathematicians and computer scientists. But institutions have been striving to increase the number of women enrolled in these rigorous programs without success.

That's because more and more women are opting out. Countries where women possess the greatest freedom to choose their own careers also have the largest gender gap. In comparison to countries like Canada and Germany, both Russia and Turkey have a higher proportion of women working in STEM fields.

One research of IT workers corroborated this idea by finding that women's preferences are the primary cause of the striking lack of women in IT leadership roles ⁹. Another study that followed 5,000 students with exceptional mathematics abilities indicated that women were more inclined to forego careers in physics and other "hard" disciplines in favor of careers in medicine and other biosciences ¹⁰.

Longitudinal research show that women prefer emotionally satisfying employment that "conflict with generating large sums of money and getting to the top," as one psychologist puts it ¹¹. On average, women are driven by intrinsic benefits, such as making an impact or feeling like they belong in the workplace, rather than extrinsic rewards, like money or recognition.

With more education, women can exert more influence in their careers through the pursuit of intrinsic incentives and increased levels of autonomy. Women with advanced degrees are more likely to work part-time and to be interested in finding intrinsic meaning in their work, both of which contribute to the opt-out phenomena.

Alternatively, fathers are more likely to return to the workforce after raising a family, increasing their earnings potential.

On average, men need time apart from their families in order to grow to love them, whereas women benefit from being physically close to their family in order to develop this emotion. Women often debate whether to "lean in" or "lean out" of a situation, but men have never been given the choice. This benefits men economically but prevents them from loving and being loved.

Would more women be prepared to disclose their romantic advantages or financial difficulties with their husbands?

One point that is often overlooked in discussions about the gender pay gap is the possibility that women may pick higher-paying occupations if it were socially acceptable for males to labor less intensively. Only if women demanded true equality would men be respected for more than their financial contributions, which is something women already do. Women still prefer to marry men with higher incomes, which perpetuates the gender pay gap because she will have to take more time off work to care for the family ¹².

It is hypothesized that women will feel just as comfortable as men do regarding being absent from their children as provided their partner is home with them, and that this will allow women to have high-powered occupations provided males are prepared to divide the parenting load equally. More cultural pressure is placed on women than males to be caretakers, and particularly to be excellent caregivers. Even in the modern era, women who don't appear to choose motherhood over their careers are still viewed with suspicion in Western cultures.

But who, if anyone, is exerting pressure, and why?

When a man seems to prioritize work over spending time with his family, he is actually doing what is best for his loved ones. When a mother spends time away from her kids, she may feel guilty about being selfish, but a father may feel the opposite way if he is expected to provide financially for his family and feels that cutting back on his work hours to devote more time to his kids is selfish.

Consequently, men typically earn more than women, but men also typically work greater hours and are prepared to do so in the expectation of being rewarded with affection when they foot the bill. Meanwhile, women are applauded for reducing their job hours or leaving the workforce altogether after having children.

More women could remain in the workforce if they so choose if child care costs were lower. This would reduce the gender wage gap that exists because of a lack of experience. The problem is that there's evidence to suggest that this might not even be enough, let alone the best answer.

Some mothers who initially believed they wanted the father to assist raise the baby now encounter themselves "coveting more time at home". This is true even in Sweden, a nation with some of the most magnanimous parental leave benefits, where women still opt to take 4 times as much days off from work as men ¹³.

There is also worry that the blurring of gender roles would have unintended consequences for dating success and attraction between sexes. The question that remains is whether or not a housewife would find her husband just as attractive as if he were working full-time. So far, it seems that women are less likely to be interested in this type of male. For instance, one study revealed that divorce rates are lowest when men brought in 60% of the income and women did 60% of the housekeeping, and another found that women report better levels of sexual fulfillment whenever there is a more conventional distribution of labor ¹⁴.

In other words, economic changes and socially dictated alterations to relationships toward "sameness" do not automatically result in sexual interest and the success of relationships, which cannot be compelled. The “alpha male” conduct that many women find attractive is not demonstrated by guys who stay at home with their partners ¹⁵. Indeed, women still prefer older and wealthier men, even as they gain more economic independence ^12,16.

The women's movement has raised the stakes for men rather than leveling the playing field. Also, males will adopt the system that best benefits them, as evidenced by their willingness to carry whichever currency women are accepting.

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Sources: https://kimuzi.com/blog/all-that-is-wrong-with-the-feminist-rhetoric-the-fiction-the-fallacies-and-the-detrimental-implications