> why wouldn't you do it in order to have a more profitable business?
> ethics aside
You wouldn't do it because it would be unethical. That's like saying "besides the fact that eating a cheese burger is terrible for you, why wouldn't you eat a cheese burger?"
Sigh. Is it really hard to try to see the point, instead of just arguing from the default position? This makes for a really boring discussion forum...
Let's try again. The argument here is, basically: if it's true that men and women are interchangeable as resources of labor, then the wage gap can be seen as an opportunity for arbitrage. Any capitalist would just hire women (because the information the market has is based on the assumption that a woman can provide the same work as a man for a lesser cost), market forces would bring women's pay up, the wage gap would diminish until we reached an equilibrium.
The argument is far from perfect (it ignores social and cultural aspects), but it is pretty reasonable as a way to see that if there is a difference in pay, there is a difference in aggregate output. What are the causes of this difference in output is subject to another topic, one I can't say I have an explanation or consolidated opinion.
About the ethics of it: there is nothing unethical about choosing who to hire based on cost, if the quality of the final product is the same (and if the contracted parties are not doing anything unethical themselves). Let's remove the sex factor out of the equation... if a woman living in NY asks for $100k for some work, and another woman with "comparable education and experience" living in Poland asks for $30k, is it unethical to hire the Polish one?
Businesses do things that are unethical to gain a competitive advantage all the time. Constantly. Every day. The fact that none of them are exploiting this "wage gap" is pretty strong support for the fact that the gap isn't actually real.
See my post to mike_ash. It's hard to say that it's "pretty strong support for the fact that the age gap isn't actually real" without also noting that there's a lack of confidence in female workers' performance (so they wouldn't be hired in the first place).
But that is just an assumption, and a rather bold one at that. If there were evidence that there is a prevailing assumption that women are 18% less capable then you would have a point. But just making a baseless assertion like that doesn't work.
If there is such assumption, it would be either correct or incorrect. If it is incorrect, there would be at least some businesses trying to challenge this assumption - it's pretty hard to imagine why in hundreds of years of doing business and pretty much every assumption in there about doing business being challenged nobody would ever think about trying to test this particular one. There are lot of businesses that would give everything for 18% chance over the competition - and among all crazy ideas some would definitely try this one and say "why don't we just hire only women and get 18% edge?" Once they did it, they'd discover they get the same output for 18% cheaper and would have considerable success. Heck, they'd go as far as pay 8% more than competitors to attract only the best and still have 10% edge! Once they had it somebody would think to ask how they did it and discover they did it by challenging this particular assumption and finding it wrong. So the assumption eventually would be widely known to be if not totally wrong than at least questionable and having very strong evidence against it. Has it ever happened? If not, then why not?
Yes, the market is so huge someone would have tried this approach. You would at least expect a few case studies showing increased cost efficiency in mostly women work forces. That none exist, is pretty damning.
Women are definitely assumed less capable, or at the very least, unhirable for some reason. See this link ("http://qz.com/103453/i-understood-gender-discrimination-afte...). I might not have a link to a study for you, but it's certainly not a baseless assertion.
Yes, that is a baseless assertion. I saw that when it was posted. I even commented on it. About how my wife had the exact same experience in reverse. A single personal anecdote is entirely meaningless.
Happy? Besides, you've made quite a baseless assertion when assuming that there exist employers willing to exploit the fact that women are paid 18% less.
No. Even if that were real instead of a link to a tabloid I wouldn't be happy, because that isn't relevant. We're not talking about leaders, we're talking about building a company with a massive advantage over the competition by hiring women as workers.
You wouldn't do it because it would be unethical. That's like saying "besides the fact that eating a cheese burger is terrible for you, why wouldn't you eat a cheese burger?"