Is the gender pay gap a myth? | Richard Reeves
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- Опубликовано: 15 июн 2024
- Author Richard Reeves debunks multiple gender pay gap myths, on both sides of the debate.
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The gender pay gap has narrowed significantly over the last few decades, with 40% of women now earning more than the median man. But the gap still exists. Why?
The main driver is no longer discrimination but rather the different patterns of work between men and women, says Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Women's earnings decline significantly after having children, as they take more time out of the labor market or work part-time during critical career development years.
To further address the gender pay gap, Reeves argues that society should reduce the impact of time away from the labor market, redesign career ladders for more flexibility, and encourage shared parenting responsibilities. Policies such as paid leave for both parents and support for fathers' involvement in childcare are crucial to achieving true gender equality, says Reeve.
0:00 What is the gender pay gap?
1:13 Is it caused by discrimination?
2:01 Is it a myth?
3:07 “The economic equivalent of being hit by a meteorite”
4:20 How to fix the parent gap
6:14 The deep problems of equality
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About Richard Reeves:
Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he directs the Future of the Middle Class Initiative and co-directs the Center on Children and Families. His Brookings research focuses on the middle class, inequality and social mobility.
Richard writes for a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, Guardian, National Affairs, The Atlantic, Democracy Journal, and Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Dream Hoarders (Brookings Institution Press, 2017), and John Stuart Mill - Victorian Firebrand (Atlantic Books, 2007), an intellectual biography of the British liberal philosopher and politician.
Dream Hoarders was named a Book of the Year by The Economist, a Political Book of the Year by The Observer, and was shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice. In September 2017, Politico magazine named Richard one of the top 50 thinkers in the U.S. for his work on class and inequality.
A Brit-American, Richard was director of strategy to the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister from 2010 to 2012. Other previous roles include director of Demos, the London-based political think-tank; social affairs editor of the Observer; principal policy advisor to the Minister for Welfare Reform, and research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Richard is also a former European Business Speaker of the Year and has a BA from Oxford University and a PhD from Warwick University.
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What do you think of this explanation of the gender pay gap?
Honestly, at the point where it is at now, I do think it has no merit, at all.
Time and time again, we have seen women get paid more. One great example when Google audit the employees they have since women were saying that they’re getting paid leas than men, and it was the other around, where women get paid 50 cents more on the dollar, that is 50% increase!
Now, it is not like the other way around is good ether, because I wouldn’t like my sister for example, to get paid leas than me if we are both engineers as an example. Yet we have to account for men and women and what jobs they both do!
Also, the pay should be based on skill, the more skill and the higher education level you have, the better the pay.
But if it is all plain slate one pay, then there is no incentive to do better or seek higher education and so on.
I think Reeve’s take has a good value within…
Can not wait to go through the whole one hour take, because I’m sure I will learn a thing or two that could change my mind.
If I learned one thing following this channel for the past year… or through my ongoing academia, is to always keep an open mind.
My graduation paper was against Mr. Steve Pinker, and now I’m one of his biggest fans.
Initially the feminist pay gap lie was that if a man and a woman perform the same labor, the man gets paid more. Then it evolved into "well no, but women COLLECTIVELY make less money, which is a problem for some reason." Now the lie will continue to evolve, because feminists cannot under any circumstances stop being victims.
Correct and comprehensive explanation, but with an implicit assumption that it is the tax dollar and the businesses which must pony up to help women out with their family decisions because... equality?
What is equal about a man's tax dollars going to strangers having babies of their own volition? About a business having to pay for women employees having babies of their own volition?
If a single man decides to take a year off work to go find himself/ find God, should government and businesses pay for that too? Why are women supposed to be able to have her cake and eat yours too?
@@Mlai00 Think more broadly. If a society/country/government wants to increase its population for whatever reason (mostly economic, you now, future workers) then they will need to incentivize and support the making of those babies. If that burden falls more to women, which it will, then they need more support from the society as a whole. Now, the planet does not need more human beings, so does encouraging more humans make sense? Does it make sense economically? It's not that women or even men personally decide to make babies; many are deciding it's a burden unwanted and that's perfectly okay. Should the latter pay for the former to be supported? How would such an expense be a benefit to the latter? It's not about cake or eating cake.
Its an OK explanation but missing some more points explaining why men lead on average salaries. To put it simple, men can do everything women can but not the other way around. But the key thing to consider is why are we asking such a question? Is earning a bigger salary making someone, per se, more valuable? Does the father something wrong, or smth special, when bringing a bigger salary than the wife that is raising and caring the family? Should men and women swap natural roles just for the sake of dumb egalitarianism?
Didn’t Jordan Peterson get labelled a right wing hater because he said this same thing 5 years ago?
Yep. On this particular issue he was spot on.
@@jamesrutterford576 and the others as well, dont forget that minor point.
@@daniellassander Well I don’t agree with him on everything but definitely he says a lot of correct things that people don’t want to hear.
He did
I think what Richard is saying is different to Peterson if you listen carefully. He doesn’t deny that the pay gap exists. He says that controlling for variables doesn’t make it a myth it’s just math. He says the “driving” factors of the gap is no longer discrimination, as in there may still be discrimination but it just isn’t the wholly contributing factor on the macro-scale. I haven’t listened to Peterson in a while but my impression of his opinion on this topic was that for him the gap didn’t exist at all it was just “Marxist post modernist propaganda” that could be easily explained away with multi varied analysis. And then the idea of discrimination at any level just didn’t even exist for him either. There seemed very little balance in Peterson’s appraisal of data, he very much “took a side”.
It’s great to see someone discussing these topics of gender inequality without taking the stance of ‘one side against the other’ because cooperation and respect is the only way to reach equality
The name of the series is literally “devils advocate” …
Very well said
Equality is all or none, not one versus the other. Apparently it's hard for many people to see that.
this is what a discussion normally is... but time changed and now we have that whole fight of one side against the other
Cooperation and respect are very much NOT the only way to reach equality. Actually, most equality was reached by black people going in the streets, with no respect to the racist white majority, and the white majority uncooperatively shooting them to kill. Women didn't get where they are by cooperating with and respecting mygogynistic conservatives but by finding alies and ramming legislation up their asses.
We shouldn’t have a society that disincentivizes raising your own children
Well, it's what the feminists wanted so here we are.
Very true, but the problem also lies not just with the economic structure but with some parts of modern Western culture. The number of times I've seen people say they hate children is extremely worrying, and another problem is the people saying that we should have none or few children because of climate change.
Or taking care of your own parents.
@@lajhoncampbell8141 How is that what feminists wanted? Please explain.
@@burnyizland Sure (let me first apologize for the length of the comment), a big part of feminism is female empowerment, the nature of which moves people away from traditional family structures and the sense of importance and responsibility carried within.
Let's keep in mind that society was primarily agrarian and agricultural in nature with the occasional skilled worker (carpenter, cobbler, etc.). During that time, everyone as a part of the family unit and worked together (on a farm for example) for the good of the family. Then with the advent of the industrial era, the men went to work in the factories and other industrial complexes because they, on had greater physical capacity than women and they jobs required great physical force, all of course, for the sake of providing financially for their families.
Now, around the mid 1950s or there about a man could with his job provide for a family of seven solely off his salary. However, with the recently concluded world war, women were called upon to fill in many factory jobs with the men gone off to war. Seeing this, the second wave feminists wanted to continue to work in the workplace and they proved that they could do it. As such, with the Vietnam war in full swing in the 1960s, and men once again gone off to war they pushed for equality and to have equal standing in the workplace; thus the job market was flooded with women who wanted to work.
Now, the issue with having a sudden large influx of workers, is that it leads to economic stagnation as employers unfairly paid women less for their work as when supply of workers is great, they are incentivized to pay less are they can threaten replacement. However, as women began making more money it leads to inflation as now each household now has more money and whenever there is an influx of dollars into the economy the value of the dollar goes down and inflation takes place (of course this is not the only cause of inflation but this was a factor).
All this leads us to the present day where women perceive marriage and having children as not that important relative to their careers which is what feminists wanted. We see that women are getting married later because women are busy climbing the corporate ladder (of course the corporations are very happy to have more worker drones), and to keep them working you take away or lessen benefits regarding children or pregnancy. Society is only a reflection of an ideological shift, one that feminists wanted.
Single dad here, been raising my daughter solo for 14 years now. I gave up a 6 figure career so I could move across the country and raise my daughter around family. Been a lot of part time work and sometimes 2 jobs to make ends meet just so I could be home every night and raise her right but it has been worth it. Money ain’t everything.
Good on you, you sound like a great dad!
My patner is a single dad (I help out a little but really don't take on parenting responsibility). He works a part time job in a cafe and really lives month to month but his kid has an amazing life and never misses out on anything. Plus he's super loved and has a super relationship with his dad 🥺❤ love them both
Absolutely. Never interested in money, happy I could dedicate a huge chunk of my life to my children and it paid off.
That's cool and all ... but you're commenting this in a video that's exactly about money
@@MHNK77 Nope, he's commenting this in a video that is exactly about debunking leftist alarmist propaganda.
The lack of public investment in childcare is also a factor. Full-time Infant/toddler DayCare is easily $40,000 per year if a parent wants to continue working.
What is the legend doing here?
I've never seen Tay in comments until yesterday in Dr. Tracey Marks' channel and now here, within 2 days of each other. Strange.
The last thing developing babies and toddlers need is to be abandoned on a daily basis in daycare center being “taken care of” by folks who by no fault of their own can not show a developing human being the attention and love an actual attachment figure (mothers or otherwise) should, and have shown, through our species history-along with all preceding species we have evolved from. Not to mention the complete lack of consistent community and environment (actual extended family survival and lifelong interpersonal relationships)!! It’s amazing how people can’t seem to see the connection to the mental health issues rampant in most “1st world countries”. Obviously there is numerous factors at play outside of this, but this is an overwhelming contributing factor.
No, we should be “publicly investing” in allowing families to actually be families. But, unfortunately, we will keep pressing forward with atomized, individualistic, materialistic, profile driven societies and people , that will pacify ourselves with technology and largely superficial endeavors……all of us, my self included are probably to far gone to do much about it at this point.
It costs the same if it is public or private. Probably more if it is public because people now take steps to minimize costs. If it is 'free' people will always use it more.
The question is do the parents pay or do you force your neighbors to pay for others childcare instead of using that money for what they may want. Like buying their wife a vacation or helping older parents...
As a converse to this video, I (a male) took over child care while my wife continued to work. I took the pay hit willingly. I had several wonderful years with my little one. But when (heartbreakingly) we divorced, I was the one who got hit with child support. Although, on average, women get the short end of the economic stick when raising little ones……. Ok, I’m not sure what my point is, but I’m just sad and annoyed and miss my little one.
Whoever has custody gets child support. Why don’t you seek custody? I’m sorry for your losses. Good luck.
It sucks that you were the one hit with child support! It makes no sense.
Sorry to hear that. And it's okay to rant, I agree it's bullshit you got hit with child support payments even though you were at home taking care of the baby
So sorry that you have to experience that. It is unfair. I hope that you are both able to come to an agreement that benefits everyone
Of course you got divorced. A woman cannot desire a man who is beneath her.
You were the homemaker(female job). She was the bread winner(male job).
She was out in the world, dealing with powerful men. You were a mommy.
Women are supposed to take care of kids, it's their job. It's not the short end of the stick.
Wow, I genuinely didn't expect a rational, reasonable explanation based on a fair appraisal of actual data. What a refreshing surprise. Thank you!
How do you get the father more involved in child rearing when the father is out of the picture? 38% of kids in U.S.-born families live in a single-parent household.
It was not a more rational argument. It is literally the same argument verbatim that people like Ben Shapiro have been making for years. He got it from Thomas sowle books from the 1980s. The left has been complaining about this for over 30 years, and the right has been using data to fight it for over 30 years. The right was correct all along.
I mean the narrator is not a feminist so…😂
Not every disparity must be equalized. In this instance, women aren’t getting paid less due to unfair reasons; they are choosing lower paying occupations much more frequently. Plus, raising children, rightfully so, takes time and resources which constitutes a large economic sacrifice in the name of building a family. I’m not against reforms though.
Is this your first time watching this channel?
Sounds to me the solution lies in equally sharing parenting between both parents.
“Enable fathers”, I love it.
More parental leave for men.
men have the same parental leave as women
Not in asia
@@scambammer6102 not really tbh
For the baby 1st year at least that isn't going to change matters greatly if the woman is breastfeeding though.
Women doesn’t want to give up leave, when having children…🤷♂️
One could argue that the time spent raising a child is more fulfilling than meaningful career developments.
True, but happiness can’t feed anyone
And it shouldn’t be a choice that you have to make
@@tartipouss So you think people should be paid for not working.
@@theman4884 If raising a kid that will end up (hopefully) contributing to society, isn't considered working, then what is ?!
Worst case scenario the kid dies before that point or become a crypto bro and thus serve nothing to society
That money """"lost"""" from the parent not working during a certain duration will be gained back by that kid, like it's just about helping people, the parents and the kids (because oddly enough, kids are affected by the parents)
You also go back to work when that kid can, you know, stay alive more than 10 minutes without you (the parent).
I simply fail to see why kids should be made a burden to parents's income, unless it's some weird way of making people not want kids because raising them is already hard enough but you also have to get a stable income.
It's literally a win-win and the same system the educational system is based on, aka, making long term bet on students to get job, get paid, pay tax which will pay teachers. Extending this system to maternity has nothing weird, especially considering it will likely improve the life of the kid so he'll hopefully have even more chance of getting a good job (which mean more tax being paid, which mean, best case scenario it even pays itself back)
No L, only W
@@tartipouss Key word is shouldn't. We live in a world where thing are unfortunately not perfect. That being said, yes happiness can't feed anyone. Not everyone needs a college degree; some are perfectly happy working blue collar jobs.
@@Ender8Official Yeah, things need to be better, change can be done and yet nothing happens
Also I don't really understand your point with "blue collar jobs". Police officier is a blue collar jobs. It can means many things, and for the worst of these jobs, it's not because some people like it that it means anything. It's not because a minority of people are happy with their condition that the majority is happy too.
We shouldn't try to keep trying to deal with the mediocrity of current societies designed to abuse us more and more every day, good change can and should be made
Ok... but what if the woman actually wants to have the kid and spend time with the child? Why is is almost compulsory to think that she HAS to go up the Corporate Ladder??
It's because the left in the United States have convinced women that it's their feminist Duty to pursue high-powered careers at the expense of family development. This doesn't jive well with women's natural biological clock, so by the time they realize that a family is what they wanted it's too late if they do choose to climb the ladder.
‘cause money exist and is an important thing to have in our society
But if society were to allow parents to raise their children full time without having to worry about money, without having to choose between kids and money, then that would be great !
But for now we’re stuck with this terrible system
After a certain point increase in pay has little impact on individual happiness. Most people are content with not climbing the corporate ladder.
A simple way to see it is, if companies could get away with paying women less for the exact same job, the exact same hours, the exact work rate and the exact output, then wouldn't the entire workforce be comprised of mostly women ? Exactly. And as this guy explained very well, " it doesn't mean there isn't a problem, it just means that it's a different kind of problem " . which I agree with
If that is the case why aren't these companies hiring only females.
stats based on median income levels are completely worthless on this issue. All it means is that many men have low paying jobs, and some women have higher paying jobs. But the 60% of women who are below median level for men could be way below OR not. Since the first words out of this guy's mouth are bullshit, I don't need to waste any more time on it. Thanks.
@@GoddDamn The companies don't care whom to hire, they care about efficiency, if turtles would do job better, they would hire them instead of humans.
@@scambammer6102 It's not that the analysis is worthless, it's just incomplete since a single number can´t be sufficient in characterizing this distribution. Additional measures such as variance or standard deviation can also be helpful in providing a more comprehensive understanding of the data.
However, it's important to note that just because we need more information, it doesn't necessarily mean that the original analysis was incorrect. Before making any conclusions, we need to carefully examine the data and consider all relevant factors.
@@scambammer6102 absolutely…statistics can create a false impression when only certain factors are used and contradictory info is ignored. Context and transparency on how they arrive at a conclusion is key but we are too often blinded by institutional and authority biases combined with cognitive laziness.
I don't agree with the premise that men and women should parent an equal amount of time so as to reduce some portion of pay gap statistics. You're going to need to go a step further and show how this benefits the total household income and the child to convince me. Econ 101 - specialization benefits the whole more than everyone being a generalist. Equity isn't necessarily the answer to every statistic.
I agree with you 100%
@@kris3451 I didn't set my measurement arbitrarily. I chose the family over female financial autonomy in a vacuum. In my mind the American family is the cornerstone of our (I'm American) values and social systems and any tradeoff for any sub-class is something to keep an eye on. There's a reason people refer to erosion of values.
Don't care about value, men should also have parental leave and it should be equal to women. Period...
@@elcaciquedev You are thinking of equity not equal opportunity
@@teledog77 What values? In the 50's women and children didn't have much value. I can give more details if you want them.
I like that the question of redefining career ladders was raised here. Given the aging and declining populations of the developed countries I think the question of life's purpose (however pretentious that might sound) has to become not just a question that people ask themselves but also a matter of broader societal interest. If the societal norm for the purpose of life is to have a career (or let's face it - a 9-5 job for most of the people) and it conflicts with actually procreating that society into the future than there is no future for that society. Integrating all sorts of things that constitute life into actual lives - is the challenge for the future.
The Death of a Salesman
I feel like corporations and shareholders are very shortsighted and do not care about this kind of thinking even though it is going to cost them more in the long run.
Employers need to chillout and stop being so nasty to people with employment gaps. Don’t judge someone for having an employment gap
Agree with this perspective.
Whenever this discussion comes up there is an assumption that equality is the end goal but as pointed out there are other life philosophies other than climbing the ladder that are just as valid.
Women also spend more time taking care of the elderly.
i took 18 month off to look after my daughter, missed out on a critical promotion. Not only that, the momentum I had achieved in my role, the network, relationships I had cultivated were all gone when i came back.
Coming back into the same role I had left almost 2 years prior.
That also hurts with the accumulative effect of experience and reputation.
edit:
Thanks for all the feedback.
I should point out 2 things:
I do not regret taking the time off, nor do i expect anything to be done about it, or complaining about.
My daughter is/was older - she was going through a poor mental health episode.
Again, I ask for nothing. Simply was what I chose/had to do.
My point more was about the fact, that if you take yourself out of the workforce - there are consequences, irrespective of who/what you are.
Unfortunately this impacts women more, perhaps we should have the men share the workload of looking after the children?
Remember you made a conscious trade off. You chose something more important than getting promotion, properly nurturing and raising your child in early stages. You should be proud of your choice, because that’s more important than any promotion you could ever get.
I hate when people make women feel bad, like they chose wrong while they literally chose the best choice in the world.
yeah but what could've been done?
Imagine how it for the women who have more than one child in succession and take 5+ years from the workplace. Ooof. Definitely a setback. But I guess there’s no way around it.
@@LoneWulf278 “Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options” Thomas Sowell
@@cnasir3475 K…
Hmm I took two years off to earn a masters degree and recently inquired about returning to my previous position-available. I was told I would now be considered “inexperienced” and my pay would be considerably lower. I’m a man - it works both ways. Taking time off hurts your career. Period.
It’s much more acceptable to take time off for education than it is for parenting.
@@DeeWeber maybe in America, but not in the rest of the developed world.
@@DeeWeber acceptable by whose standards? There are women who love parenting their children, just like those who prefer their career.
@@cantgame4now152 I'm one of them. I'm a (is this still the term?) SAHM. Housewife, home maker, SAHM... Our society doesn't value this role anymore. That was my point.
@@cantgame4now152 Also by the standard that through education you work for yourself and for a better qualification which is basically an investment in yourself and childcare is investment in others. Children are separate people and won't weight in your CV if you apply for a new job.
Time is considered an investment and you have successfully invested in yourself. Which is great but can be by no means compared to a maternity leave.
The problem of the parenting gap, is that parenting is more important than any conceivable (pun intended) career.
In fact, economically speaking, it's probable in my mind, that good parenting can improve the economy and society.
True, but our society acts like caring for a child is worth nothing.
@@johnnyearp52 no, you just don't get paid for it. You get paid when you do something for someone else. When your raising YOUR kids, that's for you and your partner, so why would anyone pay you to raise your kids?
@@markp8263 I am not talking about money. My mother was treated badly for staying at home with us. Many people in this culture value only paid work. Raising the next generation is unimportant to them.
@@markp8263 Depends how you look at it. Raising good kids who become good, productive members of society, benefits everyone. The opposite is also true. So an argument could be made that society would be better off incentivizing the former, perhaps with money.
@@Springheel01
In that case the mother should have no say over the child upbringing if financed.
I think the idea that career development is the highest form of achievement is itself a questionable assumption.
Bingo!
With capitalism, making money is the main goal...and it's not a choice, it's a matter of survival. And what do you call it when you're forced to work under threat to your survival? Isn't that slavery?
@@chihirostargazer6573 It's not slavery. But if you want to look at it that way, then so is life in general. You are literally a slave to the requirement of staying alive every day, as life is literally about survival; survival of yourself and, by extension, you species. Capitalism, its flaws notwithstanding, is the only tried and tested system that allows us to survive, on our own terms, for the most part. No other system has come close to allowing us to do that, especially at scale. Another misconception is that you're being forced to work. You literally aren't. Just don't work. There's your choice. Something that plenty of people actually practice. They go by names like homeless or moochers. In capitalism, you are responsible for how you want to survive. In any other system, someone else gets that privilege, and it never ends well.
@@prabhatdreamz Capitalism runs on stolen labour and exploited workers while profits are syphoned upwards. The "moochers" are at the top, not on the streets. It also creates an insane wealth inequality, with the hardest workers in society often not being fairly rewarded for their efforts. Everything you accuse other economic systems of doing wrong... capitalism is doing. More people have died under capitalism than any other economic system...it is feudalism, it is Imperialism (with a new name). You should question the propaganda you have been fed. Capitalism will cause the destruction of our environment and our civilization. It is not sustainable.
Especially if women are doing it. If men are doing it, that’s just normal.
Another assumption to question is that moms taking time off to raise children to the detriment of career advancement/higher pay is ONLY bad. This line of reasoning IMO deeply undervalues parenting and child raising as an existential good in a persons life, with positive and affirming effects on both parent and child. We all know people who are wealthy and miserable (we also know miserable parents lol) so there’s room for discussion about quality of life, getting what you want out of life, happiness, etc. not simply tracking tightly with pay.
In graduate school 30 years ago, I wrote a paper arguing that people who took sabbaticals to raise their families would be superior leaders and that companies should do more to utilize this resource. When I became an executive, several top performers were mid-career women. I made numerous healthy financial offers to them to return to work. Not one offer was accepted. The pay gap reflects the reality that many women chose to leave their careers, driving down average wages. The pay gap accurately reflects the career choices that FAMILIES make to raise children. We should stop trying to fix the pay differential and emphasize getting more parents home with their children. I am a man who gave up his executive consulting career to raise my children.
@@MrTodayistheday I'm also in the academic field in Japan, and I agree this observation is indeed true. Asking why they chose to not come back, many of them answer that they "lost interest" or "the priority changed" or "my husband was more suited to purse his career", etc. Although I had some rare occasion where some told me that "my husband doesn't take care of the kids so I ended up having to have to do it", vast majority of the cases were not because they were "forced" into such situation.
@@ifluxion Thank you for the feedback. I stayed in touch with several of these ladies. They were, and still are the best-adjusted people that I know. Maybe the less emotionally mature women are staying in the workforce. I do not know.
I had time out after the Y2K bust and my salary never recovered because I started lower down the ladder 18 months later. I guess this is the equivalent of having a baby so I see how it happens.
I had the same thing happen to me due to a significant health issue. I was never able to catch up with my peers.
I'll like to see how this plays out with the declining birth rate in the next couple of years.
I think that’s a good point, and if we consider the gap reduction, it might be contributed by less births and women waiting longer to have children. Closing the gap even more may really mean we’re having less children, which still means we have a problem and not solving the gap the way he suggested.
Imagine exchanging the miracles of life to chase after some material like money.
Whats the problem if the population declines?
@@rollerblader5350 Immigrants would be needed to fill jobs and lots of Americans hate immigration.
I think the video is really positive because if we solve the issue of making work more flexible and including more fathers in the childrearing that would address why some couples delay having children. I think one thing that's not mentioned here is also government help with childcare. Raising children in this economy is really expensive so couples might have less children (1 instead of 3) if they think they cannot afford. To address the birth rate issue, governments should take the cost of raising children seriously and help families by introducing more flexible work options, parental leave for both spouses (so they don't lose their jobs, and therefore income) and help with childcare. Childcare is not just about others 'raising your kids' but it's an important developmental time for children to socialise with other children and become engaged with activities.
We're pretty traditional - when we had children, I needed to find work that made enough to support us, and my wife stayed home to look after the kids. As a result, I worked much harder to get better work than I would have chosen otherwise, while my wife doesn't draw a wage but does most of the really important work. To an economist, there's a huge gender pay gap in our household - but as a unit, there is no de facto pay gap because once inside the family unit, all the money is used collectively.
I feel that economists, and especially polemicists, need to leave functional arrangements like ours outside of gender pay calculations. I make more money than my wife. I make more money than most of my unmarried college friends. I make the same money as a woman in my position would (and we're hardly wealthy). I don't think discrimination really comes into play there, unless you think we're discriminating against ourselves.
@Chuck McKinnon The difficulty comes in when one or both partners want quality time raising the kids AND rewarding careers.
@@chuckmckinnon2379 Yes, but in both your cases, your wives are dependent on you economically. You both seem to have good marriages, but if you hadn't, the wife would be in a way worse situation financially if you were to divorce -dependent on the state giving her rights. Which, historically, has made a lot of women be somewhat coerced to stay in marriages they don't like because they have no carreers.
@@chuckmckinnon2379 Also, it isn't "revealed preferences" which needs correcting. Girls and boys like maths equally up to a certain point (and have equally good results). Then socialization kicks in and boys "like" math more.
I personally don't think that men and women naturally wanting to pursue roughly the same careers is unresonable. That seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to expect for me.
The problem Is that divorce law, in some country, has pushed things tò the point of overcorrection. In some First world nation, It Is actually more economically convenient for a woman with child to separate.
In a traditional couple, where the male provides financial security and the female household, maternal and familiar care, ailmony and childcare made It so that in a separation scenario, the woman can still benefit from the ex-partner's financial security; on the other hand, the man doesn't get anything . She got an income - albeit reduced - totally under her control, a total control in how to raise their children, plus the freedom to pursue a new partner, with the added financial benefits he May provide. Today divorce Is a Net Benefit for the woman. No, i m not saying that women deliberately marries affluent man tò later divorce them. I m.saying that a meccanism brougt about tò end bad or abusive marriages Is now corroding the unsatisfactory, or his the boring ones. And that has a big costi for societies.
@@giacomobandini969 It's true there are cases were the woman ends up more well off, but it depends so much on the situation. And the women is still dependent on the court being on her favor, which is mostly out of her control; it is a vulnerable situation I would never want to be in. In my country also often times the fathers don't pay child support, and they get sh*t for it, but the mothers still have a hard time getting the money. A lot of recent couples do prenups, which separates estates. But of course, it should be fair.
But it is genuinely a complex problem: if someone in the relationship doesn't develop their careers because they stay at home, then they lost a significant opportunity of making more income. So I do think it's fair they get some money. How much, I guess, would be highly dependent on how expensive living costs are, and how much the the other person makes -if they're having trouble making ends meet, it changes things.
They act like the man is out there living the good life with his higher salary. But al that money goes into the family.
Richard is correct that the gender gap is essentially a parenting gap, but what I disagree with is this framing that mother's spending more time with their family is a problem that needs to be solved. Why is the fact that more mothers prefer to prioritize child-raising over career a bad thing exactly? To most people, including fathers, family is your greatest accomplishment. Why is it better to value a person's well-being by their income?
They're not as easy to control, same reason these academics clamor for the W.H.O. to have more control over international affairs without regulations or democratic voting, why you need to kneel to their ideology without dialectic, and why they want to destroy the family unit under "empowerment." The soviet union had a similar strategy of turning everyone into a spy against their neighbor. If you have no real close connections, you're less likely to stand up and defend them. This way you can separate the chain of parental imprinting and then use a state system (child care) to indoctrinate them and shape them to your specifications without the input of the parents. Repeat this 5 to ten generations and bam, ala pavlovian conditioning you've essentially domesticated the entire general population and they even consented to it!
Thank you! I completely agree. I chose to redirect my efforts from career to focus on family and everyone in my family (including myself) benefits from this choice. Our way of life isn’t superior, but it does work best for us. I don’t think we should discourage people from choosing a family oriented pathway simply to close the “pay gap.” Why is that so important?
That’s not what he said. He said we should find ways to make the labor market more inclusive to mothers and that involve both structural changes in career paths and fatherhood.
In the developing world, women are having fewer children, which is both troubling and understandable: why would women give up their freedom and become financially dependent on men after all the effort they put in towards their careers? And if they don’t have children, who will work and pay taxes in the future?
On the other hand, inflation and cost of living practically demands that both parents work, even if one of them does ir part time, to provide all a medium size family needs. More and more mothers are going to join the labor market, whether they want it or not.
So we should find ways to make sure that motherhood doesn’t kill a woman’s ability to work in her chosen field and provide for herself while still caring for her kids. For that we need a structural change in our workplaces and more involvement from fathers, family members and affordable childcare.
Because raising a poor family sucks… it’s a constant anxiety even with endless love. You still need a roof too.
@@DeeWeber Not that long ago a family could be raised on one income, now it requires two. The proposed solution by people like Richard is that women need to be working more and others suggest more affordable daycare. My suggestion would be that we should be aiming to make one income families viable again.
What do you think of this way of addressing the gender pay gap?
Great points. However If you do a survey of how many women across all socioeconomic levels *want* to return to active full time work after having a child the numbers don't add up. One of the benefits of marriage is division of labour. The middle class has always survived by coming together and sharing resources. The bourgeoisie, ambitious, upper middle, laptop-class women have convinced their lower socioeconomic sisters that being a wage slave is the only path to happiness.
For lower socioeconomic women who still subscribe to this myth no amount of cooperate restructuring will ever compensate for the experience gap and the brutality of capitalism. The line of men and women prepared to work 90 hours a week to "get ahead" is truly shocking. And if you describe having children and raising a family with resentful statements like a meteorite to your career, then a family was never your priority to begin with. Bow out and live out the rest of your life in a cubicle working from W2 to W2. "No amount of money ever bought a second of time" - Howard Stark
This idea cutthroat individualism is corrosive. Child rearing is either a blessing or an inconvenience. If you want to "have it all" and lone wolf all of life's problems your disagreement isn't with the wage gap, it's with reality
its so small at this point in time it doesn't matter
@@LaitoChen Very much agree, there's only so many hours in a day and no everyone can't have it all. I do wonder what effect AI is going to have in this discussion.
You make a point that the U.S. is the only country without federal paid leave. But 3:03 seems to imply that the gender pay gap exists in those nations that do have paid leave. So it would appear that that is not the solution.
Also, QZ posted a similar graph including single women and single men. Married men out earn those groups as well. It maybe that women are not held back but married men are pushed to excel. Coincidentally, married women out earn single man and single women.
He purposefully mischaracterizes the argument to make it appear as if though both sides have been incorrect. The gender pay Gap is an absolute myth relative to what the left has been saying about it. It is insanely dishonest to take that out of context.
A Centrist makes the exact same argument and "SudDeNLY iT's a rEaSoNaBLE ArGUMent". And the only way we can get people to accept the conclusion is if we tell everyone that "BoTh
sIdeS wErE wRoNg". Give me a break.
This is the exact same argument verbatim that has been made by both Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro in contemporary times.
- ben Shapiro made this argument before Jordan Peterson
- Jordan Peterson made the argument after Ben Shapiro but offered unique insight as a clinical psychologist
- Thomas Sowell has written books on this topic since before the 1980s because it's a basic economic fact that the left has repeatedly ignored in favor of the tried and true political benefits that come with being viewed as an oppressed victim
The only way this guy was ever going to get left to digest such a lethal dose of cognitive dissonance was to frame it as if "BoTh sIdeS wErE wRoNg". Precisely because of adults that are incapable of rationally weighing arguments based on their Merit instead of attaching their identity to their political beliefs;)
One possible factor driving the parenting gap could be the age gap within a couple. Even with all other things being equal, if the male partner in a couple is a few years older, then he likely earns more than the female. That then gives an economic incentive for the couple to have the female partner to focus on domestic work.
I have a part-time job in a retail establishment. The labor of men is simply worth more than that of a woman. There is a fair amount of heavy lifting that smaller women simply can't do. The business must schedule men to be around to do the heavy work. Because a pay differential is not legal. Men only stay on the job for a few weeks, get worked to death, and leave. The women are wonderful people. But, they simply cannot do a lot of the work.
@@MrTodayisthedaywell then they should hire more women..if one woman can’t lift..two or three can! And get women who are taller and stronger than the ones currently working..of the don’t hire smaller women for that reason..chances are they’re not hiring smaller guys either…
@@Iamhere829 Small guys do complain. They do the work. Women disappear when the work must be done. My last boss, a woman, refused to hire women because they complained and didn't do the work. It is time that we stop giving women preferential treatment and let the market forces determine who gets hired.
@@Iamhere829so what you mean is that it’s expectable for a employer to choose to have a long and tenuous job of finding the specific kind of women that can do the job when most man are already proficient in it ? It should be expected that a business goes to great lengths to change something that needs not changing ? Did I misinterpret?
Why should your salary determine if you make dinner or not, or do the laundry? Presumably men were doing those things before they started a family…I’m assuming we’re talking about fully functioning adults here.
I come here again to ask a favor of my friends at @BigThink to give us an hour version of Richard Reeves!
You made it happen with Steve Pinker, please make it happen here!
And you have my thanks, and the thanks of many young men like me.
I've watched all the videos they put out of this guy. I would love a longer version too
Sit tight 😉
@@bigthink awesome 👏🏾
@@bigthink Heya. I still don't see the point in comparing MEDIAN pay of ALL women and men.
Feminists go even further and call it a "male privilege" (among other things).
So let's imagine this:
We have a room with 20 people, of which 10 are women and 10 are men.
All 10 of these women are warehouse workers, and 9 men are warehouse workers as well. The 10th man is a millionaire. All 10 women and 9 men have identical wages. The 1 millionaire earns much more than them. You decide to lump earnings of all these 20 people together, including the millionaire, and then only split them by gender and calculate their AVERAGE earning. So now the average earnings seem much higher for men because there's the one millionaire in their group, but not in women's group. What is the "privilege" that the 9 men have over women? Their earning are identical to the 10 women, but "on average" they earn more than women. How do the 9 men benefit from the 10th man being a millionaire? They don't!
This is how "pay gap" is calculated on a large scale too. And this is the "privilege" that men have. Why do certain groups keep calculating "pay gap" as an average? Who cares what the average is? And who said it should be exactly 50/50 if you lump all men and all women of the world together?
I disagree with the undertone that children are somehow less important and more of a problem to a career pursuit.
It's seems to assume that a high octane/intensity career will be the most important part of the lives of most people. Which is not the case.
Even if we adjust for all these corrections, the men and women are fundamentally different and will choose different paths when it comes to career. Women are nurturers by nature and we need to stop misinforming them that a high intensity career will bring fulfilment. Even among the men, only a select few will sacrifice their family for their career.
I observe more and more bias towards men in discussing issues like this. Men don't have it easy as well yet we make so much provision to accommodate women in the work place. You can't eat your cake and have it.
What about who work these jobs and have these careers, do we make provision for them to be with their families instead having 70-80hr workweeks?
You want the position/job of a man without any of the sacrifice. The same man who is still wants to balance his work life and time spent with his family. Such positions come with high demands and responsibilities.
People aren't able to have their cake and eat it to
Why are you trying keeping up the bullshit about women being the natural caregivers? Its just not true... Have you met people?
Nobody is talking about high intensity careers by the way. Almost all careers have this trajectory sadly.
@@olympiaelda1121 . You would prefer a female caregiver to a male one, true or false?
This is not an opinion. Women are more sensitive to negative emotions being that they are responsible for the earliest stages of childcare. They sense danger and are bolder in the pursuit of nourishment.
This is why they are very selective when it comes to sexual partners.
You may be right that many women careers drop off when they take time off to have children. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
I don't think you should expect to be at the same career stage with someone(man or woman) who has been at the job over the period you were absent from the work force.
Where you are going to be in your career is dependent on the time and skill you put in.
Why y’all talking as if women were a completly different species ? What is wrong with y’all ??
A girl is just a human being like you and I who has a different sexual organs and different hormones level (or/and identify as a girl, but here y’all talking biologically female)
Do y’all seriously think because a person don’t have a dick they suddenly become something you can animalize ?!
That’s messed up, it’s such a vile behavior to have
Women can determine what they want just fine. Everything else is your own opinion.
By this argument parents who decie that one parent will stay home to be there for the kids are a "problem" . The argument he makes only works if parents all want a full career. I know many who don't and are glad to trade away the stress for less or no hours even with the lower pay. Not everyone wants the stress of a full career.
While it is true that there is a difference in the average pay between men and women, and that since the mother is more likely to raise the kids at a young age, mother's income will significantly decrease for quite a long period of time, we also have to consider other very strong factors, such as the average work hours of men vs avg work hours of women, jobs chosen by women vs jobs chosen by men, the psychological differences between both genders, when we consider these factors, the gap is pretty much gone.
The wage gap only exists among employed people. Wage stats never include the unemployed or homeless (vast majority being men). When women lose their job, there are still much more likely to atleast have a home. Historically, women have had the options of working or being a SAHM, where men HAD to work or be homeless, outcasted and die at any age. This basically renders the whole wage "struggle" as pointless since when women they lose their income entirely, the end results is much more forgiving then how men have it (SAHM and homeless resources being prioritized for women).
Except when women lose their income they are more likely to have to stay with abusive men. Often better than being on the streets but hardly enjoyable.
Women can also be homeless, wtf? And be single (so no SAHM option). Also, men also have parents with whom they can stay?
Actually I don't know why I am answering this frog. I think it is a white supremacist symbol.
@@altertopias Not to the same extent that men are. Women are prioritised when it comes to housing even though men are far more at risk being homeless than women are and there are far more transient and homeless men than there are women. Women have far more social nets available to them when they fall by the wayside that men are not afforded.
@@riven4121 Hey. I wasn't aware of that. That sucks. While I do think as a homeless woman you have to worry about some things homeless men don't have to worry about so much (sexual violence, which can happen to men but is less common), if as you say men are far more at risk of being homeless, then of course the policies should take that into account. Ultimately I don't think it's an either or situation though, you can give resources to both. And in general creating a culture where man can also have secure social nets would be one of the many ways you can help fix this problem.
This is the conversation that is supposed to follow after mentioning that...
- 1: The pay gap is when you sum all male income, and compare it to all female income. Which is the opposite of what you do with a scientific analysis. You're supposed to have one variable not one control.
- 2: The next thing that should be mentioned is that when you control all variables apart from pay when you end up with (not a 3% discrepancy like he mentioned) a >1% discrepancy.
Then and only then can you even start asking the right questions as to why is this the case. Oxford, Stanford and other ivy leagues have done independent studies on this, please take a look at them yourselves.
Can you please provide any links to prove you point?
It’s nice to see that even some of the issues raised here are already being addressed. My wife took a 12 month parental leave and returned to a promotion and large pay increase. One she had very much earned, but still good to see her employer recognizing that.
More like required to recognize it. Governmental action forcing companies to pay for female employees' family decisions. Imagine a single man taking a 1-year sabbatical from a job, then calling up his old boss again fully expecting a promotion and raise upon return.
@@Mlai00 Childcare is not a sabbatical. Stay at home raising your own kid for once before opening your mouth.
How on Earth do you get promoted after taking time off!? Sounds like the previous position holder abruptly left. I would be worried.
@@Mlai00 you think the government required a company to give someone a promotion after a mat leave? I’m not sure what dream world you live in but it’s not the real one.
@@thrilla72 it wasn’t filling a position that was left by someone else. It was a new position that was created.
Perhaps it should be called the “child gap” rather than gender gap, as it now has nothing to do with gender per se, but all to do with who raises the child, especially in the early years? 🤔
But that's not true, it also has to do with gendered decisions in a big way. Women choose to work less hours, choose less demanding jobs. Overall women choose quality of life over grueling labor, that's the biggest reason for the pay gap, and he never mentioned it in the video because he is scared of getting cancelled.
Mens ability to sexually reproduce with quality women is literally tied to how hard they work, aka status and resources.
This gap will never close completely unless you completely destroy mens ability to gain status and sexual value through work.
Well then you just look back at what is influencing that and its just.....a gender gap again.....at least in the US. The rest of the world knows to give the fathers time off to raise the child too, not just the mother.
@@ACertainGuy0 I agree with you in the sense that gender is a social construct and societal pressures are a big factor in deciding who stays home.
Hopefully we’re moving towards a model of society where both parents have the option and financial ability to contribute to child raising 🤞
Not at all. I have am a woman with no children and have long dealt with not making the same as my male counterparts. In fact, I had to train a guy with less experience than me who was making MORE than me for the same position. When I asked our boss about the discrepancy, he said Well, he just got engaged and he needs to be able to take care of his family. I pointed out that I was married, and he said, Exactly, that's why you don't need to make as much.
Men should be allowed equal opportunity to be home with their kids when it comes parental leave. In Quebec, Canada women receive about one year as the men receive 6 weeks ... The women can give some of their time allowed to their partner if they choose to extend the men's time at home... Ideally the women should not have to cut on their time allowed and men should be able to have access to equal opportunity.
I've seen the main talking point for this topic happened right before my eyes. Two of my co-workers, one male the other female, ( _Not a couple_ ) both working on a special project. The female is the more experienced of the two. She got pregnant and took a year off. During that time an opportunity for promotion came up ( _The company needed someone right away_ ) and it was given to the guy. We all know she would be the one to get that promotion if she was still working.
Who has the more fulfilling life?
Correct. But the question should be is this a problem or a choice, and should we try to force people to make other choices or companies to ignore the fact that the women is not there and may not return. Ever.
@@nole74 In this specific situation it's not easy to find a clear cut answer. Her decision to have a child while not knowing when a career growth opportunity will occur such as this promotion, is a challenge women will face. It's a case of colliding interests between her life goals and the company's needs. I suppose what they, the company, could do is still interview her and anyone else for the role during her time off and if she is the successful candidate they could arrange for an acting personnel to temporarily assume the role until she returns. The acting member in that promoted role gets experience and a temporary pay bump and the woman doesn't lose any ground towards her career growth and income once she returns.
@@budo4 promotions have nothing to do with how deserving you are, in well-run companies promotions have to do with how much you produced for the company and how much they can't risk losing you. All well-run companies by default want to pay you as little as they can afford to. Notice I didn't say as little as possible, if you are in demand they can't afford to pay you poorly.
That's why this is a life choice, companies aren't interested in what you're theoretically capable of, they're interested in what you actually delivered.
Now if this woman comes back to work, tears it up by producing huge results in fact and she still isn't promoted, then that is a problem. But the story as told isn't really that outrageous.
@@nole74 Her choice was to take a year off to take care for a child. Not to derail her career. You can change the systems in place at a workplace so that taking time off for a few years does not lead to the negative career outcomes described in the video.
in singapore. all men go to mandatory 2.5 years national service before entering private sector. women do earn more at the start, but gets hard to distinguish later in life - perhaps balanced with childbirth role of women.
How about we send women to do national service as well?
Is childbearing also mandatory?
@@user-lh2ty4uw2u In Israel women serve also.
@@user-lh2ty4uw2u How about we send men instead of national service to care for their own child?
Yeah, grow up, women choose military a lot, although I cant comprehend why, Im a pacifist.
@@olympiaelda1121 Would be much better than all time spent in courts trying to get to see your child after divorce.
but that's not a problem! the number of marriages and the birth of children has been reduced uninterruptedly, if it continues like this, there will be no more marriages or children, therefore there will be no wage gap either
Good explanation. I think the bigger question now is, is it actually a problem? If women are "expected" to leave the labor market to be the primary caregiver for their babies that's an issue. If they WANT to then it's not. Let's not find an issue that isn't really there.
"I think the bigger question now is, is it actually a problem?" Great question. The entire issue is presented as this big problem that needs "solving", which seems to be built around an underlying assumption that your salary is the most important thing about you, which is absolutely false.
I don’t get it. No one is forcing women to stay at home.
“Yes but they’re expected to”
Then have clear communication with your partner about your needs. You can’t blame peer pressure for your choices.
Something that's interesting here is that wages are the only consideration made in this video. It would be interesting to see a comparative analysis on whether or not father's with careers report greater satisfaction and more of a sense of purpose in life vs women who have decided to deprioritize career for the sake of family and children. Otherwise, I dare say: measuring all of life in terms of what it should be or shouldn't be seems to be a deadly error - especially if we are to reduce it all down to "what's your paycheck?"
Interesting video! Particularly appreciate this takes a look at the actual numbers, and asks meaningful questions about them. With topics as emotive/loaded as gender pay gaps, there's definitely a tendency to not want to address inconvenient statistics, inconvenient facts.
I truly believe that progress can only come from asking hard questions and facing them head on. It's rational framing from experts, like this, that allows us to focus on collectively solving problems.
Correction. It's rational framing from experts like economists who found this information in the first place except it's been 30 to 40 years since then. This man is useless and has done absolutely nothing. This is the exact same argument verbatim that Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Thomas Soul have been making for years.
When you take out factors like job selection and "danger in the work force", you see that the gender pay gap is about 3-5 cents on the dollar, and it is closing quickly. There is a reason men are paid more on a median level: we do more dangerous jobs on average. If you look at "what is this midlevel manager paid vs. this midlevel manager", i.e. people doing the exact same job with the same education and same experience, working the same number of hours, there really IS no gender pay gap.
Richard Reeves is the ONLY person I've seen speak about these topics from a balanced, unbiased position, and with a view to make changes that ought to bring about the equality that many of us say we want. Thank you @bigthink for this series.
All of what he has said has been in the manosphere for a decade.
Jordan Peterson has been discussing these ideas for years.
It is not WRONG for someone to prioritize children over making more money. Quite frankly just because there IS an earning gap doesn't mean it's a problem. The fact that two incomes is the norm is the problem.
@@EmpressAdelaide yes JP has... although I wouldn't charactize his discussion as "balanced, unbiased, and with a view to make changes..." I agree that there's nothing inherently wrong with prioritizing children over a career. And I also agree that the important problem is that double income families are now absolutely necessary.
@@loganblackwood2922 sure, you're not wrong. However central to my point is the fact that his approach is much different from typical manosphere talking points.
@@yuriajones It's funny because I read your response to Heidi in JP's voice because your wording and diction kind of resemble his
I thought it was interesting he didn't dive into why the kinds of careers that attract more women are valued less by society. Like why is child care, teaching, nursing, etc not as highly valued as accounting?
Because selfless jobs will automatically mean you will earn less.
In order to earn more money you need to have the ego to either demand it or get someone to demand it for you. That is not the personality type of the people working in these jobs, which is why they get less of the cake because someone else who is selfish will claim that money for themselves.
It's the nature of things, you don't work in a selfless job if you are selfish and you don't work in a selfish job if you are selfless.
Very true, but I’m sure we all know the answer to that.
@@Are_WeThereYet that's because men and women have different values and therefore express what they value differently.
Men value respect more than women do. And any respect that is valued needs to be earned and money is an expression of that. It is a masculine ideal that you earn more money because you earned that, because you pushed through all the others who wanted it and rose above them. Not all men earn equal, only those few at the top earn the most and they try to keep the men at the bottom from earning more, which in turn try to push back and get to the top (or at least not fall of the cliff). It's competition, it's fighting. Of course the moment they start to compete with women they will easily outcompete them for that reason.
Women value competition less and are therefore less able to compete and less equipped to compete (on average).
So in any field of competition they will loose against men. And men will make it into a competition because that is what they know.
@@Are_WeThereYet i didn't reduce them to their gender. The identity of a person is going to be influenced by their gender and that gender has average trait's which are generalized correctly on average.
Not all the time, on average.
Teaching and nursing is as highly valued in my hometown (Hong Kong), so I think it's a cultural thing.
Instead of looking at who is making more money, why not look at who is actually spending the money?.... "Women drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing decisions."...... "Women control or influence 85% of consumer spending".... In other words, men mostly make money in order to give it to women who will then spend it.
The gender pay gap is based on seeing men and women as competitors. However, if we see families as units, we can see the combined income of both parents as a single family income with both parents and their children sharing the same resources, regardless of what each one makes.
And so she looks out for a man who has higher pay than her .
Talk about hippocracy
why are you starting your argument using families as a springboard though, particularly nuclear families? many men, women and others do not constitute family nor wish to and the gender-gap persists, even for those.
well no it's based on seeing them as individuals, especially in a world where divorce is more common and more and more people are parents outside of marriage. and gasp, some people don't have kids or don't get married. the horror.
This is definitely true for how Black womens’ success is pitted against Black mens
Exactly what I thought
I think that it isn’t that women are going into professions that are paid less but rather that women predominated careers are paid less than male predominant careers. For example construction workers salary start from $31,420 and go up to $97,730. Health care aide workers salary is between $29,684 and $36,114. I would say that the jobs are both difficult with HCAs seeing some really grotesque things and having to do very grotesque labor but getting paid less than male predominant fields such as construction.
I think a big difference between those two careers is construction is a high risk job where it is relatively easy to become seriously injured or die due to an accident. High risk jobs generally pay well because of the inherent danger involved. On the other hand, being a health care worker doesn't have that same risk of bodily harm.
Market forces determine the majority of the difference. Its about supply and demand, not only on the job market but how much the field itself is able to earn. Men's and women's soccer is a good recent example. There really isn't any difference in the effort or difficulty in the two divisions, and the women are more successful, but men's sports draw a much larger audience and take in way more revenue.
Salary is not solely determined by difficulty of the work, but supply and demand. Difficulty only affects one side of the equation.
@Antares I know a woman construction worker. She said that the sexual harassment was worse than the work.
@Antares Also in India women do a fair amount of construction work. They often carry rocks and bricks on their heads.
I wish all legislation should be gender neutral. With all laws sided towards women, men are left open for exploitation. I saw a vedio from the same speaker where he talked about how men are getting treated subpar of women of today. There are only very few handful of men which holds power and money, but on the opposite end of spectrum there are many men who are not even getting opportunity of any kind and yet are overburdened with lots of expectations. I wish more intellectuals come out and debunk the myths of the utopia which pseudo feminism promises. Over the period of time we have continously deprived men of so called priveleges (which only few wealthy men had) but at the same time we did not relieve men from their duties. We need to strike this balance.
Men still have more power in the USA. We have never had a woman president. Most of the government is still men. Most judges are still men. Most CEOs are still men. Most housework is still done by women who often work the same hours as her man. Sure, women have a few advantages but not like you claim.
@@johnnyearp52 For every CEO, Judge, President there are 1000s of men which are barely meeting their ends. Men are also majority in higher risky jobs. Bar for a man to be successful was always higher. And the opportunity ground for men is shrinking by day. An unsuccessful woman can always get at least an average man. But an unsuccessful man is nobody. Let alone opportunities, men do not have even basic human support. The favors should be given to someone who really needs them rather than on the basis of gender.
@@Aditya-wj5gy I know women who want a man and can't find one. Especially as women get older there are fewer men compared to women. As long as men run things they make the rules. That doesn't usually favor women.
I agree that men are supposed to support themselves more. Society has some harsh views of men.
On the other hand most rapis never even get charged. Many men who beat the hell out of women never get charged. Many more men murder women than vice versa. Even many perverts who abuse children don't go to jail.
So both men and women have their problems. It is not easy.
@@johnnyearp52 That's right. But still making laws and benefits gender-biased is not the solution. You can not make a wrong right by doing another wrong. I know many women who use these biased laws just to harass and extort men. Men suicide rates is 3 times more then women and getting raised by day. If a woman does crime whole judicial system and media tries to justify it. By giving injustice and unfair treatment to men at this massive scale, we are creating more unrest in society. We are silencing and punishing innocents just because they are men. And in my observation all these laws and legislation has mostly benefitted greedy and independent women more then helping actual victim women. We never appreciate sacrifice a man does for his family. And if you really remove the gender lens and see things like actually they are, you will see many men are there who are victim of violence and abuse from their woman partner too. What we are doing to protect all these men, NOTHING. Definitely we can and should improve from the current situation.
All the men in congress making our laws but not enough balance!! Grrr 🐯
Having children is not a compromise to a high intensity career.
Family is still more important. One of the 2 parents must be more available at home that at work.
They both have to decide who is better where and women after childbirth choose to spend time building their families because it is more important.
Hence they choose men who are capable of handling most of the provision front.
These men still try really hard to spend time with families and raising their kids too.
How does dangerous jobs factor in to the paygap, like working on an oil rig for example, or being a firefighter
But more women have college degrees which also pay more.
@Antares Yes.
@Antares Not all women get those degrees. But some do. Two of my aunts have PHDs and did well. My sister has a degree in Environmental Science. She gets paid ok. My cousin went to MIT and she is a computer programmer. My friend is a teacher but doesn't complain about the pay. My other friend is a speech therapist. My mom has a generic liberal arts degree which was useless.
My friend from India studied dance but she knew she probably would not make a lot of money.
My sister's friend studied something useless and is struggling. Men can also study useless things. My friend's husband studied Archeology and has worked at a pizza place for ten years. Another guy I know studied dance and art but I haven't seen him for a few years. I doubt that he is using his degree. I never finished my degree. I got sick.
So maybe more women get useless degrees.
Edit: But I would like to see statistics.
@Antares But what is the percentage?
@@johnnyearp52 so college degree gap needs to be fixed?
Goddamnit I can't believe how incredible and refreshing these videos are. In an age of tribalization over cooperation and rationality, it is wonderful to hear such a coherent, logical, and easily understandable and respectful argument for what causes the gender pay gap, and how we can fix that by WORKING TOGETHER. Thank you for producing these videos, please keep doing so. The world is in an ever increasing need of rationality and sound conversations/strings of thought.
You can find the gender pay gap in other places as well: for the same salary a man have less to eat on average, for the same qualification, manual labour performed by man require generally more calorie intake as well .. If women are more successful at reaching higher education then there is a gender pay gap affecting man whose education system is bias against..
Money is not the only thing of value. What is the value of parental bonding with children? Could it not be argued that men have been deprived of something more valuable than money? At life's end, is it better to have more money or more love from your children?
True
The hit is worth it. Family is more rewarding in the long run. Men have to be more supportive.
Not necessarily. Every situ is different.
Retire high school math teacher. I made lots of extra money teaching Driver's Ed after school and working in the after school tutoring center. We could not get women to teach Driver's Ed and the only women who would work in the tutoring center did not have any kids. The women loved to complain about low pay, but they were unwilling to work extra to bring their salaries up.
Good information. But I didn’t like the underlying assumption that career is so important that we as a society are saying it’s a problem that women (in general) take time away from work to have and care for children, while the man continues to work. Sacrificing money to be there for your children is more important and noble than climbing the corporate ladder.
Id say having children actually makesmen want to earn even more then the average man. Having children would light a fire for sure
I think 60% of women will earn more than the median man VERY soon. From what I've seen women tend to aim for higher education compared to men getting them into more white collar jobs. Whereas a lot of men are still going into manual jobs such as construction
if it's only 60%, then it's too much to say "very" soon. It's hard to say which side of the spectrum will earn more in the following years, especially due to AI. There are findings that AI will replace a lot of white collar jobs, and blue collar jobs will be more and more important soon due to lack of supply.
My hypothesis about the gender gap matter is that, women tend to go into liberal degrees, which usually have low demand or saturated field, that they ended up getting negotiated to be paid less. I think it's more of a matter about finding the right field to work in, and adjusting to the rapid changing nature of jobs.
@@aether3697 Yeah thats true. Thinking about what you said about women going into liberal fields more often, there was a recent video on Big Think about how successful the women in stem program has been, that there's now a greater absence of men in liberal degrees than women in STEM one's. I think AI will definitely increase this gap further as more women are being presented the opportunity to get into STEM fields and AI is definitely going to be a bit selling point of doing so. As a coder myself, AI isn't going to replace white collar jobs that require actual thinking as much as it will replace office secretaries, receptionists, etc. I would go as far as to say that it's going to boost jobs such as SWE and other STEM fields by a lot before AGI takes over everything
Manual labor and trades are doing very well.
@@aether3697 Robots will do more blue collar jobs as well. It has already happened in a lot of factories.
There is more to work than pay…there are working conditions, number of hours, the type of work, tradeoffs re: job security & perks etc.
We also need to factor in commission based work. If the average salesman sells 10 and the average saleswoman sells 7, it would be fair that they were paid 70%…but that contributes to the ‘gender pay gap’.
I get it that pay is the easiest thing to quantify, but without accounting for all these factors we cannot properly understand the issue.
Let's say that men and women both shared the responsibilities, especially immediately following the birth of a child. Both mother and father would have to work less and their career progression would slow.
Would the overall economic impact of two careers being affected be greater than only one career taking a bigger hit? 🤔
the real pay gap we need to be discussing is the everybody pay gap because we all gettin F'd
Hahah word!
If a family is in a position where one parent can stay at home, that's always going to be better for the child. The question of rethinking career ladders is interesting because that may help address the reality of having a stay at home parent: with our current approach to career progression and the average age at which couples begin their families, the father is almost always going to have the higher income potential when it comes time to make that decision. It almost always makes more sense for them to be the working parent as a result. If average career opportunities and outcomes for folks in their late twenties and early thirties allowed for higher income potential, and better aligned income potential between men and women at that stage in their lives/careers, that gives families more options about who would be the stay at home parent and for how long.
However, permanent distributed workforces and the rise of remote work have created many more feasible opportunities to mothers who would otherwise be out of the labor market for extended periods of time. It doesn't mean it's easy, but good employers are capable of accommodating new mothers' needs. My company has been fantastic with this since 2020. It's something that has especially given more opportunities to single mothers, I think.
I don't see a pay gap in my world. My younger, female colleague, over whom I have seniority, who does the same work I do, gets paid more than I do. She has taken time out for child birth without loss of pay.
As a man, if I have a family I'd be glad to be the stay at home parent
This video completely ignores the significant rates of single motherhood, especially in communities of poverty. You can't "enable fathers" when fatherhood itself, and the traditional 'nuclear' family unit in general, has been culturally relegated. Way too late to start preaching about the importance of "fathers" now.
Fathers now spend a lot more time with their children than in the past. In the USA at least.
It is very hard to split child care evenly between parents. Most jobs in modern society are all or nothing or as economist label "greedy" jobs. This ends up with one person stepping away from the workforce or trying to find less demanding / greedy work, but as I said, it is all or nothing even in lower paying jobs. We have created a very un child friendly economy, and now we are paying the price.
This is true, it's not a single factor there are many overlapping factors that are now low-key irreversible.
Could it be that while there has been great progress in closing the gap and the main reason here we discuss about having children.. may be the lowering birthrates indicate the price women chose to pay to continue to have economic independence and development
Does the 82% gap exclude the top 5% percent earners? If not, I would suggest that the numbers may get skewed by the earnings of hyper successful individuals (overwhelmingly men). Overall a great video.
This man apparently thinks the only thing that has value is money.
Some people are so poor all they have is money.
Bob Marley (I think)
@@antares3317 ~ you completely misunderstood the quote.
I think we should also talk about the prison sentencing gap when it comes to men. That actually is a "different time for the same crime" inequality. I 100% agree with his debunking of the pay gap myths and showing it's not "unequal pay for equal work" but that it's actually more complicated than that.
58% longer time and 3.4 times more likely to get sent to prison for the same time if I remember correctly
What I've seen recently about having kids is that women either have them when they're younger or they don't have them at all. A lot of these professional women with careers are 40 years old saying they want kids but they cant find a man to settle down with.
And I agree. Fathers should get the same leave offered to them to not only bond with their new child but to also help support and take care of their wife because she has to recover from giving birth.
I'd also say a reason for this oay gap is that maybe most fathers start working more overtime considering that children are expensive, doctor's appointmens, daycare, diapers, etc. That stuff adds up fast especially if mom can't work cause she's on maternity leave.
It's like he's saying that working for a company is way more important than having a family
Speaking as a grandfather seeing my children grow up to be responsible people is better then a pat on the back from the boss
"For women, having a child is the economic equivalent of being hit by a meteorite." That says it all.
Woman that think having better finance than a child is more important in life are mental, just to let you know , also the same for men of course 😄
I honestly thought it was misleading... for a normal family, sure... but if you factor in divorce, a father can lose 60% gross pay in child support and 40% in Alimony... that alone is 100% of his check, then they take taxes, and Healthcare... most divorced fathers can easily work a full-time career and still bring home a negative paycheck, go to prison, and also lose their children. Single fathers also do not get an income tax since the courts garnish it and give it to the mother's, even though she would be allowed to claim the child on her taxes
@@danielbeaird6264 So if the kid stays with the mother, she should pay everything alone for the kid? And if the tables turn...? Women shouldnt pay their exes alimony for the kids the guy raises? Hypocrite.
@Olympia Elda
It's called 50/50 parenting time, and no, nobody should be paying alimony. The only time I could see that is if there was cheating or abuse involved... but let's be real, that massive majority of people paying child support or alimony are men. Try living on a negative paycheck🤔🤷♂️
@@Mansory811 You can blame capitalism for that.
Wages aren't the only issue. Being left out of important meetings, skipped over for promotions, first to be laid off/fired/downsized, not being given chances to prove yourself, not being approved for overtime, not being invited to networking events, being fired for rejecting your boss's advancements, being fired because your boss's or co-worker's wife is worried they'll cheat on her with you, your suggestions being shot down but the same suggestion being praised if a man says it...there are just so many other factors that play into it that aren't child related. Even if you make the same dollar amount it doesn't mean anything if you're still treated like a lesser incompetant human or as a threat to to the men around you and given less opportunity and less over all hours, being systemically bullied into leaving. Eventually you end up just deciding you'd rather go into a female dominated field (or as you call them, lower paid jobs) where you'll be treated better for basically the same amount of pay at the end of the year.
Very enlightning on the actual situation, thank you for this precise argumentation.
It's literally a copy-paste argument that's been around since before the 1980s. Ben Shapiro, jordan Peterson, and many others have made this exact argument verbatim.
This channel has really started to step up. Real journalism without being too triggering for anyone.
Next do the alimony gap
As long as the discrimination is essentially eliminated, the rest seems to be market forces and personal preferences and I don’t believe it’s the role of government to change those.
I remember speaking with the payroll officer at my work once, , as we chatted they bought up the fact that they often get sent a questionnaire from various governmental agencies.
It is often like: "How many of your staff are residents/citizens and how many are working there on a working visa?"
However, once every couple years the question will be: "Every 3rd staff member, gender and annual income".
Going down the list it will be "M. $500,000" "F. $24,000" "M.$70,000" "F. $45,000".
The problem is, too many people will point at that and say "Ha see! Proof of Pay gap!"
But what you aren't seeing is the first person is the CEO of the company, the 3rd on the list is an Electrician by trade doing 55-60 hours a week, while the 2nd person on the list is working part time as they put themselves through university, and the 4th is working as Data Entry.
Thank you for this great video!! Spot on.
I've always seen the childcare issue as being the main reason there was a pay gap. I'm glad the data has finally caught up to the reality on the ground.
I think this data has always been there, but sounding anti women is just too big of a risk to say it. I've heard this argument many many times. The only ppl saying this are ppl who don't care about looking misogynists, are misogynists, or thrive of controversy. Fox taught me one thing, in this climate the truth doesn't really pay that much.
@@nubiancaynes2128 That’s ridiculous. Fox lied and continues to lie.
You must not work in tech.
Such data is available for years...
I think what people forget is that civilization, labor markets, and careers, are all man-made constructs that nature simply doesn't slow down for. Pregnancy and child rearing aren't a "hit" on a woman's career, but rather the opposite. It's nature that must be accommodated for, not careers. The universe is mercilessly indifferent to our desires and ambitions.
We spend 12 years educating girls in school, then most go on and do another 4 years at university, then they go and pump out kids at 25 and barely use the skills they have acquired.
Seems like a totally nonsensical undertaking (pouring in the resources to educate them) all for the sake of equality rather than for any particular benefit to society.
Not to mention the whole thing lessens economic activity.
If everyone is working a job who's actually buying stuff and consuming goods and services that create those jobs?
The fact that people discuss the "Gender pay gap" with such strong emotions is quite interesting. Because our emotional reactions have nothing to do with the state of things themselves, but everything to do with the story we tell ourselves about those things. So, what is the story here? "We live in a patriarchal society where women, as a group, are oppressed, and men, as a group, are privileged. The level of oppression can be measured by differences in average earnings." Of course, every part of this story is debated. Where I think too little debate is taking place is: 1. Why do we use gender as the dividing variable and not something else (working sector, SES, Education, Age, geographic location) ? 2. Why do we use average earnings as the outcome variable and not life/job satisfaction, work-life balance, health outcomes? Gender and earnings may be the easiest to measure, but are they even meaningful outside of a sexist and materialistic perspective on the world?
This brings up a touchy subject - maternal instincts. If you accept the fact that women, like the females of other mammal species, have maternal instincts that give them more interest in raising children than their male counterparts, this distinction will always be there to some extent. It will be hard to navigate around obvious gender differences, even if we have total equality of opportunity.
Not to mention the very tangible reality of mother baby triad and breastfeeding which has a huge impact on the physical and emotional wellbeing of both baby AND mother.
This 100% women and men are not the same a male is different from a female as in other species
Yes. And women should be given more respect for giving birth and nurturing children. That is the future of our nation. My mother was disrespected for staying home with us.
@@johnnyearp52Yes. Motherhood needs to be respected more.
fathers also like to spend time with their kids, and it not about making a lot of money but living a happy balanced family life weather its a man or woman, finding self satisfaction
Which does require money though. And that is the problem. Someone needs to earn that money.
@1:45 You say that women tend to be in occupations that are lower paid. Well why is work done by women valued less? If muscle work and human care work were equally valued by society, they would earn similar wages, and that would close the gap.
Very detailed dive into the current cenário. However, one thing that economics simply fail to grasp (precisely because this does not fall under its purview) it the fact that this parenting gap exists because of the historical and current sociopolitical factors that define gender roles in culture, these are also the most relevant variables that condition career choices. Promoting equality (which is a constitutional goal of all truly democratic nations) is about understanding which social determinants are merely arbitrary as to their gender expectations and promoting efforts to move away from them, while promoting homogeneous and fair opportunities for people to choose how to live their lives.
you cant move away from gender roles without forming a solution first. it will lead to popu;lation colapse.. besides gender roles are rooted in biology too. in an egalitarian society women opt for CARE fields and men opt for STEM fields. i see 2 possible methods to move forward..
1) one women raising 1 child takes same time as 1 women raising 7 children. this frees up 6 women for career while 1 women have 7 babies and continue population..
2) use AI or immigrant nannies,.
If the relatively fewer women active in the workforce at any given time are beginning to earn more than male counterparts it’s because there are so few of them getting through and excelling in those areas of the workforce, primarily due to this parenting gap
Those girls making $350,000mo on OnlyFans are helping to close that gap quick.
And?
@@johnnyearp52 Do you have something you’re about to virtue signal about because my statement was just that an objective statement based on a fact. So take your little “and” and go argue with someone else. Clown.
The problem is also that mothers prefer to spend more time with their children than the fathers. So the reason why they take more time of work is not only because they have to take care of their children, but also because they want to be with them. A lot of mothers even leave work when they have a child because they want to see them grow up, if the husband of course has a high enough salary. So even if fathers would take more leave to take care of the children, it doesn't mean mothers would work more hours at work. Another interesting thing i see is that men once they become fathers, they prefer to work longer hours at work so they can give their children a better life.
So simply stating if both parents did the same amount of child care in my opinion it might lower the pay gap, but it's not going to make it equal.
This assumes that the #1 priority is achieving career and pay parity. Many parents gladly accept a pay gap in their home, even a reduced overall income, because their #1 priority is the development of the kids and family. Structuring solutions around the former risks harm to the latter, but discussions like this totally ignore that.
So good to see content like this.
We seem to inhabit a world these days where the facts don't seem to matter to people, if they don't fit their particular bias.
In fact many people don't seem to feel they need any facts at all to confirm their views.
So tired of people banging on about certain issues because it fits their bias, even though their particular bias is not in line with the facts of the matter.
Here's yet another.
I believe in equal opportunity. End of.
But I, like many other reasonable guys are tired of being shouted down, because we dare to have a differing opinion.
I love the way this guy tries to encourage the conversation so people can find what they're comfortable with and what fits. This is how it should be in a grown up society.
Does the gender pay gap include men in prison and men who are not in the work force? I was hoping for more insight from Richard Reeves. Since both (1) inmates and (2) nonworking people are disproportionately men, then ignoring those classes of people help women obtain that coveted status of victim. I'm pretty sure the gender wage gap just compares working men and working women. And that's a problem.
On top of everything that was said. Women generally date men smarter than or as smart as themselves. Which will add to the fact they will be most likely be the one taking care of the children.
In Australia the average full time (>35 hrs) working woman works 4 hours less than the average man. That's ~10%.
You can account for this by comparing hourly rates of pay rather than annual incomes. This reduces the gap from 17% to 7%.
I can't believe you're unaware of this, but like everyone else you choose to ignore it.
Forcing women to go into careers that make more so u dont have a " pay gap" is discrimination and hurtfull. Women r more agreeable and nurturing. This leads them away from dangerous jobs that pay more and into fields like teaching and nursing. Its unfair to force them into higher paying jobs that they dont want so u get. 50/50. 😂 Unreal. And paying women more for a job cause they may leave for having children, will just make corporations and small businesses not higher women. 😂😂 gotta love these fools.
I had a great career in my 20s but in my early 30s I intentionally chose to redirect my life to be family oriented. This decision has had huge benefits on the health and wellbeing of my family, including myself. I don’t think we should encourage people to choose career over family just to improve the pay gap. Who cares about the pay gap? Our way of life isn’t for everyone but it works for us. This should not be frowned upon.
If women are being paid less for the same job I have a problem. But this not so much.
Traditionally female jobs (care work like aged care, child care, teaching, nursing etc) are paid less than traditionally male jobs/male dominated.
When women were first allowed to enter the paid work force last century in large numbers, they monetized the work that women already did on an industrial scale.
Those jobs pay less because they are 'women's work'. The low pay is because women's work is not valued. Those industries emerged in a historical context.
A hundred years ago there were no aged care or child care centres--. Women just did that work in their homes unpaid. When those industries emerged women were still paid less than men doing the same job, about 2/3 of a man's pay, so naturally these entire 'new' industries system by women were only deemed worthy of low rates of pay.
So yeah, it's not just current sexism, which exists in some jobs, but the non-valuing of women's labour historically. There's a reason you earn more as as bricklayer than a child care worker, and it's not because laying bricks is more difficult or valuable to society or important.
- Not just childcare. Any care of relatives is more expected from women and (much) more often taken up by women.
- The female optimal fertility window is shorter than the male. Her physical investment in a baby is much greater. And pregnancy and birth still take a toll that may diminish the ability to pick up with the same energy and abilities she left before.
- The thinking must stop that taking care of children or other relatives is "not working". It can be just as many or more hours than a regular job: it's "working for free" or "voluntary work", "unpaid work for society" - whatever. But it's most definitely work.
And it should be valued more. The future depends upon children. In the past so many children were born that society did not value them. Now that is not the case.