i thought the "gender pay gap" was due to different jobs and amount of time worked - otherwise companies would hire only women and have to pay out way less in wages.
Market forces, spread over long enough time, are usually a strong force of rationality. So on average, across long time, yes. At least according to the level of contemporary wisdom.
That assumes that there aren't strong psychological/cultural forces acting against rationality.
Like not wanting to hire non-white people.
Like not wanting to hire people who are "too old"/"too young" for the field.
Like not wanting to punish men who harass women.
Like not wanting to make sure that your employees are well-treated, satisfied with their jobs, and healthy enough mentally and physically to concentrate on the job regularly.
The idea that The Almighty Market will solve all problems and be perfectly rational is notably unsupported by evidence.
Huh. It's almost like these bigotries are structural, embedded throughout the system and making it much harder for anyone subject to them to get into the "owner class"...
Begging you to stop holding onto your thought experiment and look at the actual data. There’s a lot of it. There’s literally an academic consensus on the question. They’re not all wrong because it never occurred to them to apply an arbitrage argument.
It doesn't "only take one person" to try something like that. It takes one person who is already part of the capital class—ie, someone who is already wealthy, a category correlated, if somewhat loosely, with the exact bigotries listed here. It takes someone who has, statistically speaking, made their money by being ruthless about it deciding they want to take a huge risk with it rather than do the sure thing (hire from the privileged classes). It also takes them having an idea for an actual business that's not merely viable, but highly lucrative. It also takes enough people in the marginalized classes who are within the target industry, who actually hear about the business, who are looking for a job, who are qualified, who can prove to the hirers' satisfaction that they are qualified.
This is not an exhaustive list.
You are oversimplifying in service of justifying an irrational ideology.
> It also takes enough people in the marginalized classes who are within the target industry, who actually hear about the business, who are looking for a job, who are qualified, who can prove to the hirers' satisfaction that they are qualified.
I thought the assumption was that they were already present in order to get a lower wage. if they are just not present, then I don't understand the argument. your belief that there is absolutely nobody greedy enough to make it happen seems unrealistic.
* Women can be hired for a discount relative to hiring men
* Women are just as good at those jobs as men are, i.e. the lower wages are not due to worse job performance
Then it follows that some company or other would be going out of its way to hire women in preference to men. Yes, not everyone is a rational actor - but even if many companies are run by raging misogynists, not all are. And the companies who are willing to get a cheaper (but just as effective) workforce will have a significant advantage, and over time outcompete the other firms.
The fact that this hasn't happened is very strong evidence that one of those two premises is false.
I think people underestimate how powerful market forces are. Bear in mind that they do not apply within a firm, except in fairly extreme circumstances. Instead most things are done on the basis of perception, which is where racism and patriarchy thrive.
but firms live and die based on how profitable they are. if employing all women teams to do the hard work would cost less, firms who did so would thrive at the expense of the sexist ones who value penises. the lack of such firms suggests a conspiracy on a society scale, where not only will women be penalised within companies by getting paid less, but companies that employ all women and therefore cost much less to run would have to be shunned by every customer out there to make sure they don't succeed and take over the business of the more expensive ones!
Take a look at the gender pay gap reports large companies produce. It’s very much a problem even with people sat next to one another doing the same job.
As I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, people take it as axiomatic that markets would react to this, but the evidence is strong that they don’t.
It could be, but is that really an excuse? I mean, one couldn't really justify the pay gap in slavery by saying the slaves were working different jobs to the free people, either.
Yes, of course it is. If people choose different careers, it is perfectly reasonable that their pay will be different. Paying a woman less for the same job is wrong, but there's no problem if women in aggregate are making career choices that mean they have lower average income as a group.
