[f17]

> Just to be clear - the pay gap mostly disappears once you control for field, position, and experience.

That doesn't mean anything, because controlling for position means you're factoring out huge disparities--although I will not argue that they necessarily benefit men over women; it is more complex than that--in terms of how performance is evaluated, who gets promoted, and who is offered opportunities for high-quality work experience.

The problem in today's corporate America isn't that people deliberately offer better opportunities and favorable treatment to preferred racial or gender categories (although sometimes they do) but that all this happens subconsciously the whole system is set up so that only a small set of people (the generationally well-connected) have a serious chance of getting a fair shake. The system simultaneously has 85% of its decision makers believing they are executing a meritocracy while, in fact, working to drive predetermined and usually anti-meritocratic results.

> Whereas men will plough through and do it anyway. (Mainly because they have no other choice - men would choose otherwise if women would let them)

Sadly, those men who bear down and suffer because women won't "let them" choose other careers are going to end up ill-treated no matter what they do. The winning strategy for them would be to go overseas, but that's another topic.

[bradlys]

You're trying to argue that pay gap exists due to societal issues which push women into lower paying professions. I'm not arguing against that. I'm saying that men and women who push against norms will not experience a pay gap.

The pay gap mostly does not exist if you're willing to go against societal norms - e.g. women should be nurses, men should be surgeons, etc. If you are willing to break societal norms - there is no pay gap.

Which is not something the media is publicizing because it doesn't fit well within our identity politics bullshit.