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.
