At the end of the day, the problem is that most people (voters) wouldn't even begin to understand or appreciate the distinction between demagoguery and intellectual integrity.
Of course it doesn't seem the government would be interested in having such an educated populace.
I agree completely, but would education really fix the 20% gender pay gap myth?
I find it very difficult to believe that most of the people who continually reinforce this myth actually believe it to be true. They simply can't all be that ill-educated and/or stupid. And yet the same articles appear in the media every single year. It's become one of those taboo subjects where dogma trumps facts.
The worst part is that it stifles discussion of the earnings gap that actually does exist, and stops us from having meaningful conversations about society's expectations of both men and women.
That is totally irrelevant to their decision process. People keep repeating these statistics because it's useful to make others believe that women are discriminated against in the workplace.
I have to admit, conversations about critical thought in society invariably make me depressed.
I've met several people who treat my tendency to value critical thought as if it's nothing more than a quirky personality trait, and acting based on emotions and feelings is just as valid. It's infuriating.
This analysis doesn't show us that woman make more given equal background/education/etc. However, it does provide the interesting information that women (of that age group) are generally better educated. If we take out of it the desire to find out why they're better educated (and ways we can balance it out), we're better off.
The same is true of studies that show women are paid less, but then the real reason (behind the results highlighted in that study) is that they tend to take lower paying jobs [1]. Sure, you can't take out of that "employers aren't paying them enough", but you can take out of it "why are women generally in the lower paying jobs?", and look for ways to change that fact.
[1] I'm not saying there is or is not a gender gap for equal jobs, just discussing the useful takeaways of studies that ignore the difference in jobs when analyzing the gender gap.
The latter is at least a possibility.
I would argue it is because female-dominated professions tend to have schooling requirements, by law. Male-dominated professions are less apt to.
Anecdotally speaking, I was able to start as a software developer, a male-dominated profession, when I was in high school and soon moved into doing it full time after that. As a result, I do not rank well when measured by my schooling. I later started farming and it did not require schooling either. Both jobs only required the desire to do them. In contrast, a female in my cohort interested in nursing, a female-dominated profession, would legally be prevented from doing so until completing many years of post-secondary schooling. And if that person wants to become a teacher, another female dominated career, later in life even more legal schooling requirements are necessary.
On the assumption that females have more schooling because they have to, in order to pursue the careers they want to do. Is the correction in easing the legal requirements for these jobs, or is the correction to enforce more stringent legal requirements on male-dominated jobs?
And you would base this off what data? Surely we shouldnt just be using our guts here.
The data that shows that female-dominated professions are more apt to have legal requirements.
> Surely we shouldnt just be using our guts here.
Well, why not? We're not writing formal research papers here. Only writing comments for personal pleasure in our spare time.