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fauxmaha's avatar

This issue is one of the best examples of a culture that preaches "follow the science" with religious fervor, but doesn't really want to look into the dark places that science inevitably points.

I don't know if it was factored into the study (I only had time for a few quick keyword searches, and didn't see it) but I frequently hear commentators making the point that men's personalities (general interest bias toward "things") vs women's personalities (general interest bias toward "people") results in an imbalance as well. One woman, working as a nurse, can only do so much nursing. In that way, her ability to generate economic value is inherently capped. Conversely, one man, who let's say invents a widget that increases nursing efficiency by 1%, can have that improvement propagated globally, resulting in the generation of vastly more economic value.

In that sense, there is a Marx-ish assumption lying at the bottom of the "20% wage gap" argument. That being that all units of labor are of equal value.

Oh, and a nit: Sometime mid-20th century, there was a language shift that we should undo. We replaced "sex" with "gender", presumably because of middle-American squeamishness over the word "sex".

I think it is past time to un-do that damage.

IMHO, the word "sex" should be preferred in the context of this article. "Gender" has become infinitely fluid, and more or less stripped of all meaning.

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Zach Derrick's avatar

Would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in some of the meetings after this study was published.

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