Chamber of Commerse is Full of Idiots

At least that's the rough reading of this post.

The very frustrating aspect of reading through is that he isn't entirely wrong, but he fails to address the latent bias that produces the various choices men and women make differently. It is stated as though it is just the status quo and tough shit.

First, while it is not entirely clear, it does not seem the post is talking about women choosing low paying fields (like elementary school teacher) while men choose high paying ones (like rocket scientist) which would be a really bad argument, and is the tack taken by some of the critics I read. Rather, it is alluding to women making "life choices" that reduce their pay--like fewer working hours due to children.

I'll admit I mostly agree with that sentiment, particularly as someone who has made job choices not designed to maximize my earning potential. I think that men are more fixated on making money than are women. I think that fixation (or "fetish") does lead to making more money. I also think that we live in a society that discourages women from fixating on making more money. There are a whole slew of ways to look at this and to approach it.

The Chamber Post is essentially saying that the choice is wholly owned by women and men and that if women make less it is the fault of the women. I think that the choice is foisted on women (and men) by societal norms and that women make less because our society has deemed that women shouldn't be the moneymakers.

So long as all people are happy with whatever result may be I don't see as how it matters much. But some people are really unhappy with the status quo. Others don't care so much. My problem is that it becomes extraordinarily difficult to price out the type of choice I am referring to, and, even more difficult to figure out how to price that out in such a way that we can still factor in women and men whose choices are in larger part owned by societal norms.

The closest I've seen was something I discussed a while back. The paper concluded (among other things) that the "real" pay gap was ~$0.05. That is women make $0.95 for every $1.00 men make if the playing field is completely leveled--including choices like who works more hours and first choice spouse...at least as I understand it.

So there is only one pay number that can be generated without much extra effort (the 77 cents on the dollar one) and without charging into controversy headlong. The problem is that the controversy avoided still exists and is real.

I do not believe that a woman's pay aggregate number will ever be equal to a man's for the simple reason that women and men will never have identical roles in society. I could be wrong, I would like to be, but I don't see the perception of women having a more important role in the family and household going away any time soon.

To restate: it doesn't matter if men and women have full equality, and are perceived entirely as equals in the workplace, women will not ever make as much as men if women are yet perceived as more important than men at home.