Here is an example why the gender pay gap doesn't exist in the same sense that you think it does.
2 school districts: Everyone in district A earns a salary of 40,000 a year. Everyone in district B Earn 75,000 a year.
District A Has 200 teachers, 159 females, 43 males
District B has 200 teachers, 41 females, 157 males
By the method that many of these gender pay gab analysis would use they would find that women make less and I will show you how.
15940,000 + 4175,000 = 9,435,000
divide by 200
Mean pay of $47,175 for a female
43 * 40,000 + 157 * 75,000 =13,495,000
divide by 200
Mean pay of $67,475 for males
That means females earn roughly $0.69 for every $1.00 that a man makes... That is incorrect.
It is a pure logical fallacy that causes you to get that and its caused by a poor analysis. It gets worse
Many of these analysis of the gender pay gap include people that earn commission, ergo they do not have a fixed rate of pay. Lets take 2 sales people: Sally and Dave
Sally sells 3 cars a month
Dave sells 22
Since they make money off of how much they sell, should Dave and Sally make the same amount of money? No. No they should not, maybe if Sally was a better salesperson she would sell more cars but maybe she is shit.
Now lets look at another case of people included: CEO's
A CEO makes a living67,475 that is usually somewhat proportional to that of the company (like usually a %, sometimes it is a fixed salary though)
Anyone can start a company, so now lets say there are 2 companies: cleanqueens (run by abby) and software inc (rn by jimmy)
Abby's company makes $36,000 net profit in her first year
Jimmies makes $22,000 first year
Second Year Abby's gets up to $48,000
Jimmies company made a software that is super popular and jumped to $487,000 net profit
Third year Abby dropped to $46,000
Jimmies company rose to $512,000
Should Abby make the same amount as Jimmy? Neither company has gone public (earning less than 1 million per year)
No, Abby shouldn't because her company isn't doing as well.
This isn't to say that women always make cleaning companies or whatever, hell they could both be software companies idc. In an open market, the market decides what content is good and bad, someone shouldn't get fucking handouts because of a gender. And someone shouldn't be taxed extra becase of their gender either
And before someone complains about the fucking pink tax, I have gone to every grocery store nearby and looked at feminine hygiene products compared to male hygiene products, most cost the exact same but then you get into the anti persperant section and suddenly the female stuff all costs $5 and the male stuff all costs $12 or greater. The gender neutral stuff, $4
Shampoos, we pretty much the same across the board until you went to the high end salon shit (which is targeted at both males and females) and that is where you start seeing the $60 a bottle.
So is there a gender pay gap?
Yes there sure as shit is. Some places do blatantly pay women less than men but it isn't systematic. You cannot take everyone in the system and average them out to calculate it otherwise you will get extremely vast pay gaps. Like lets take the school example at the top:
What if district B contained fewer schools than district A and contained specialized private schools (like all boys etc) where there is an honest reason to have preferential hiring of a specific gender. Think about it, you wouldn't really want a bunch of male teachers at an all girls school...
Another thing to take into account is that the fields like the trades (welding, plumbing, electricians, etc) are mostly male dominant and they are high paying jobs, the oilfield is mostly males (high paying) politics, which anyone can get into, is high paying jobs, STEM fields are getting more females but some jobs are high paying (more in the T and E part of STEM, no offense S and M) but even then there are high paying jobs in all the fields. Now some people say that media influences females to stray away from STEM fields and stuff which very well may be true but what you also need to realize is media does not speak on behalf of an entire society.
If you spend your time paying attention to Kylie Jenner or the fucking kardashians, then that is your own fucking fault, not society.
I grew up poor and guess what? I had to fucking work for everything I own,
I didn't get any fucking handouts. I applied to multiple jobs in high school before getting one at Mcdonalds where I worked. I volunteered a lot for scholarships and even those I didn't get a lot of.
On the subject of scholarships, my schools career center had over 400 potential scholarships that you could apply for, only 95 were for males or males and females. 95
Where are the fucking male domestic abuse centers? Did you know a study in canada found that males were what was it? 3 times more likely to be in an abusive relationship but 30 times less likely to report it.
roughly 1 in 3 females gets sexually assaulted
and its estimated that 1 in 4 males do
but the rate for males reporting is exponentially lower than females.
like you cannot just say "oh you are a male, hows your privelage?" because it DOESN'T FUCKING WORK THAT WAY
The people whom are privileged are the fuckers whom have rigged the system in their favor and are earning fucking bank off of it.
Yes there are gender disparities, but its a fucking 2 way street, not 1 way.