[faceplanted]

> When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

Very simply, the measure of women being paid less is useful on wide scale in demonstrating women's position in society, but it doesn't go into the complexities of the issue, so aiming to get your company more equal on that measure can mean so many things as to make it a useless target unless you understand the situation.

[mcv]

Excellent point. Reminds me of the Bechdel Test, a simple test to show how poorly women are treated in movies. To pass the test, the movie has to have at least two named women talking to each other about something other than a man. It should be trivial to pass, yet a surprising number of movies don't.

But that test doesn't mean that movies that pass the test are better or more feminist than movies that don't. Terribly sexist/misogynist movies can still easy pass it, whereas Gravity, a movie starring only Sandra Bullock for most of its duration, doesn't pass it because there's nobody else in the movie to talk to.

Similarly, the point of calling attention to the gender wage gap should be to pay women better and give them better access to higher paying jobs, not to deny men raises.

Equality should lift people up, not push them down.