"Equal pay" statistics here purposefully ignore choice of occupation. Also the equal pay stats show (or did last year, they're put out monthly) that even ignoring occupational variations women under 30 got almost the same pay as men, and indeed that men lag behind women in wages for part-time work. I strongly suspect of you discount upper management that you'd find wages very equal -- in which case it's primarily an issue of wealth gap, so not really about sexual disparities in the general population but about sexual disparities in the C-suite (still an issue if there are artificial barriers there based on sex) but it might be busy as hard to break in for someone of the wrong class as anything else.
Which might make harping on "equal pay" (which we have) move focus away from the primary factor of income disparity.
Education and experience bring it to 98% parity overall, with asian women getting to 102% parity. https://www.payscale.com/data/gender-pay-gap
"job market forces and gender preferences in relation to marital status and parenthood could explain almost all of the pay gap. Most of the gap is not the result of gender discrimination" https://towardsdatascience.com/is-the-difference-in-work-hou...
"Because men tend to work more hours than women, especially if they are married, and even more if they are married parents, this could explain a large portion of the pay gap."
"As years pass, men accumulate more practice and training than women. The job market pays more if the worker has more experience. In other words, the gap widens as men acquire more experience than women."
The “multi-variable” is no answer at all. Each of those variables is part of the discussion.
Seems like everybody has a comical view of the pay gap: a big fat cigar chomping man conspiring with his cronies to set low wages for women. It’s far more broad than that, so please get serious about those variables before trying to blow the whole thing off.
Starting point: how do we better make care work less gendered and pay appropriately?
The data says otherwise. Countries that are more egalitarian and have more equal gender roles (e.g. men doing more childcare and housework) actually see lower rates of women in fields like tech as compared to places like the Middle East and Indonesia with very strict gender roles.
This also plays out internally within countries. The United States had larger rates of women in tech during the 70s and early 80s, which saw stricter gender roles as compared to today. These rates of women in tech dropped during the 90s and 2000s during which time fields like law and medicine saw substantial growth in women's representation.
Making work less gendered and making pay non-discriminatory are two different discussions. The solution to the latter is straightforward: stop discriminating.
Saying the wage gap is because of "gender roles" is no answer at all - it suggests you should target the pay scale.
Multi-variable analysis is an attempt to piece out the answer. If the wage gap is $10, and the multi-variable analysis shows it is $2 education, $3 experience, and $5 career choice, then you can investigate why those factors differ, including possible effects of gender roles, without the specter of "gender discrimination in pay".
> Starting point: how do we better make care work less gendered and pay appropriately?
As with everything, either reduce the supply or increase the demand. As long as there is a sufficient supply of people willing and able to provide the service for a low price, the price will be low.
Remember that "price" is not a direct measure of "value". Air, water, and the first 1000 calories per day are incredibly valuable, but they are very inexpensive because there is excess supply.
For what it's worth, limiting supply and providing government subsidies is a great way to make things cost more - health care and the university education are prime examples. Note that these should be viewed as cautionary examples, not recommendations.
My feeling is even bringing it up for discussion could be an automatic DQ, sadly.
I’m for pay equality, we all benefit, but I’m also for finding out what’s what.
Admittedly, I don't have a big world-shattering new point to add or logical argument to segue to based on the results of the question, I'm just curious.
When actually talking to people that is, but if I instead looked at social media, tabloids and tv-talkshows, I would only find extremes.