So I am getting a little sick and tired about hearing about the wages/earnings gap so I think I’ve come up with a solution to the gap. Don’t worry; it’s not that feminist method so relax. Feminists have this brilliant idea of shoehorning women into fields that don't really interest them “we need more women in stem type stuff). That might seem noble on the surface but what it's actually doing is ignoring women's choices telling them that their interests aren't good enough, telling women that the playing field isn't equal and that in order to compete, we need things like affirmative action, essentially a life handicap, to get ahead. I think it’s infantilizing and degrading for a woman (or anyone for that matter) to never know whether they’ve been hired based on their merits or if they’re just there to fill a quota.
Here’s my idea. How about instead of pushing women into fields they don’t have preference for, we pay more money to the fields women are interested in. There are several occupations where women are superior in that I think are grossly underpaid. Take for example teachers. Teachers are working to raise the next generation and children's education is easily one of the most important things for our future. They often work 12-hour days coming up with lesson plans and pay out of pocket for supplies. A good teacher can inspire hundreds of children over the course of their career and most of them make fewer than sixty thousand dollars a year and they definitely deserve more.
I think by re-evaluating how much we pay certain fields we can almost entirely close that gap without invalidating women's choices to seek out different fields.