Women earn less than Men

[Redbeard The Pink]

Even if that's the case, what you're describing is an earnings gap, not a wage gap. If there were a wage gap, then we would be able to look at the actual, by-the-hour wages and very directly see a disparity between what men make and what women make. Instead, you have people looking at earnings for various periods of time, accounting for as many non-discrimination-related factors as they can, then naming discrimination as the "most plausible" cause for the gap they can't explain. To me, that seems to be an argument from ignorance, once it all shakes out.

It's called Occam's razor. But it isn't even based on just guessing. There is empirical evidence for gender bias/discrimination in work-related settings.

As for wages vs. earnings, that's just red herring.

Besides, if men and women's wages are the same for the same jobs, but women's average earnings are less, and the reason for that is discrimination, that means the men are paying the women the same wage and then finding some sneaky way to somehow make sure they still don't make as much money in the long run. That is some conspiracy-theory-level illogic right there, not to mention the "how would that even work?" part.

It's not a conspiracy theory because there is no conscious conspiring going on. This is mainly due to gender bias in the context of work performance and quality.

OK...so if there's a wage gap, why aren't we seeing it in people's actual rates of pay? Why do we always have to do all this voodoo with the earnings gap to make the wage gap manifest? Why don't we simply look at the wages people are actually paid to find the disparity?


While I'm asking interesting questions, did you know that if you look at only the group of women who make identical business and lifestyle choices to the men in their field, they make the same money? Consistently. All women have to do if they want to make what men make is forsake childbearing, take a high-stakes job, then stress about it so much that it shortens their lives by several years.


Sooo...there's an unconscious bias that causes men to unconsciously pay women the same rates and then find covert ways to sneak money away from them so they'll earn less? How does an entire half of the population (or anyone, for that matter) unconsciously do something that pointed and insidious, and why has nobody figured out that they're doing it or how? You probably would have actually been better off trying to defend a conspiracy theory.


Also, that's a bit of an abuse of Occam's Razor. The Razor is not for parsing out which claim is true or even most likely true. Occam's Razor is actually for deciding which order to investigate answers in. When considering multiple possible solutions/explanations, Occam's Razor demands that we test and rule out simple claims before moving on to more complex ones, and the reason for this is time efficiency. If I am weighing two positions, and one would take an hour to test, and the other would only take minutes, It is markedly inefficient to tackle the hour-long test first.


What you CAN'T do with Occam's Razor is claim that the simplest solution is correct just because it's simple, especially in the absence of adequate evidence for that solution. Simplicity is not a measure of truth. Simpler claims are just generally faster and easier to investigate, meaning you can rule out more items in less time.