I don't think the pay gap stats really deal with the issues. There is a gap, but I do not think most of it is because women are women or men are men, necessarily.
Averages can hide the truth.
If job A pays progressively due to increasing experience, then people who stay in the job longest will end up with more pay. In such a case men might be more likely to achieve higher wages over the long term, but it would have nothing to do with then BEING men.
In such work environments women taking time off for pregnancy and child rearing would automatically be playing catch up for the rest of their career. This is about personal circumstances not sexism.
If job B requires strength and mechanical skill and pays higher than other jobs that do not, this also may lead to increasing the pay gap as, in general, women are less likely to do well in such jobs being on average of lower strength. Additionally women, for whatever reason, tend to have less mechanical skill - this might be a cultural thing, rather than a natural thing. But it would not be the fault of the employer necessarily - thought they might apply the same cultural bias and not consider a women.

However - in really high paid jobs there is a clear and obvious pay gap, such as we find in the BBC, and there is an obvious male club in the stock market, and the board room which skew the averages.

If this explains the gender pay gap then why is it that men bring more "value" than women?

Regardless, it's a gender pay gap all the same. — Michael

But if you think it has to be addressed, despite the reasons, then that would make you the sexist.
Let's say there are non sexist reason (say a gap in her work record due to motherhood) that woman X is paid less than man Y, but you insist she be paid then same that would make you the sexist.
But all things being equal, if a man and woman, or a black and a white are paid differently then there is a clear case of discrimination due to the factors not related to the ability to do the job.

I don't think the pay gap stats really deal with the issues. There is a gap, but I do not think most of it is because women are women or men are men, necessarily.
Averages can hide the truth.
If job A pays progressively due to increasing experience, then people who stay in the job longest will end up with more pay. In such a case men might be more likely to achieve higher wages over the long term, but it would have nothing to do with then BEING men.
In such work environments women taking time off for pregnancy and child rearing would automatically be playing catch up for the rest of their career. This is about personal circumstances not sexism.
If job B requires strength and mechanical skill and pays higher than other jobs that do not, this also may lead to increasing the pay gap as, in general, women are less likely to do well in such jobs being on average of lower strength. Additionally women, for whatever reason, tend to have less mechanical skill - this might be a cultural thing, rather than a natural thing. But it would not be the fault of the employer necessarily - thought they might apply the same cultural bias and not consider a women.

However - in really high paid jobs there is a clear and obvious pay gap, such as we find in the BBC, and there is an obvious male club in the stock market, and the board room which skew the averages. — charleton

That's why there's a distinction between an unadjusted and adjusted pay gap. The adjusted pay gap accounts for such things as which jobs men and women have, how much experience they have, etc.

See here, where these extra considerations reduce the gap from 22.9% to 5.5%.

I'm not a fan of Ben Shapiro but why wouldn't he be considered an intellectual? He has a very impressive academic background and also has connections with the Claremont Institute, which ipso facto makes him a legitimate scholar and thinker in my (biased) opinion since that's the most interesting source of conservative thought I've stumbled across as of yet.

Credibility by association, I guess, even though I don't particularly care for Shapiro's brand of libertarian nationalism or whatever he calls it.

There are a lot of ways to interpret the modelling results on page 1098, and is actually evidence for the claim that men and women in the same occupations in the same conditions of education and work hours still in the aggregate make less money. The last row of each coefficient batch: time,education,occupation in the modelling scenarios has a uniformly negative female coefficient (ignoring basic since it's essentially an 'intercept' to compute an adjusted rate).

That's to say: women with the same circumstances are payed less than men. The paper goes on to say:

The main takeaway (from the analysis discussed above) is that what is going on within occupations—even when there are 469 of them as in the case of the Census and ACS—is far more important to the gender gap in earnings than is the distribution of men and women by occupations. That is an extremely useful clue to what must be in the last chapter. If earnings gaps within occupations are more important than the distribution of individuals by occupations then looking at specific occupations should provide further evidence on how to equalize earnings by gender. Furthermore, it means that changing the gender mix of occupations will not do the trick.

My bolding.

Later on:

What, then, is the cause of the remaining pay gap? Quite simply the gap exists
because hours of work in many occupations are worth more when given at particular
moments and when the hours are more continuous. That is, in many occupations earnings have a nonlinear relationship with respect to hours. A flexible schedule often comes at a high price, particularly in the corporate, financial, and legal worlds

Summary: people who work more hours in general earn more than expected - long hours -> higher earning job, that kind of thing. Will post the rest later.

Here's the Dutch 2 cents from our Central Bureau of Statistics: Gender pay gap: fact or fiction?

If job A pays progressively due to increasing experience, then people who stay in the job longest will end up with more pay. In such a case men might be more likely to achieve higher wages over the long term, but it would have nothing to do with then BEING men.
In such work environments women taking time off for pregnancy and child rearing would automatically be playing catch up for the rest of their career. This is about personal circumstances not sexism. — charleton

This is unfortunately true. You can question whether it's appropriate though. It assumes experience is a good indicator for performance, which it isn't and that managing a household does not instill a person with (management) skills they can apply to a job (which it does) that more than makes up for the "lack of experience" people claim. An untalented hack can have as much experience he wants, he's not going to be a better performer than any other person with potential.

Generally, most hiring policies and systems have an ingrained bias against women as the measurements applied favour men. For example, the sociable female lawyer that takes the time out to educate juniors and paralegals has less billable hours than the "busy" egotistical male lawyer, who thinks he's too good to help others reach their potential. The guy gets the partnership even though the whole department probably ran better thanks to that one woman. If you can't measure it, it is generally discounted. Which, by the way, also promotes billing inflated hours and face time. As a company lawyer myself, I don't hire external lawyers who brag to work more than 50 hours a week. They're not rested, less effective, it indicates bad time management and I worry how they will make time for me.

It assumes experience is a good indicator for performance, which it isn't and that managing a household does not instil a person with (management) skills they can apply to a job — Benkei

That is a matter for the employer and the market. The assumption does not have to have a bearing; the performance which is usually better due to experience deserves more pay, as it attracts more competitive pay. Employers have a great interest in keeping more experienced staff in that they tend to improve the performance of others around them.

Generally, most hiring policies and systems have an ingrained bias against women as the measurements applied favour men. For example, the sociable female lawyer that takes the time out to educate juniors and paralegals has less billable hours than the... — Benkei

Are you in the US or UK? Traditional professions tend to keep ossified ideas OR Maybe you are just not that good a lawyer?

That is a matter for the employer and the market. The assumption does not have to have a bearing; the performance which is usually better due to experience deserves more pay, as it attracts more competitive pay. Employers have a great interest in keeping more experienced staff in that they tend to improve the performance of others around them. — charleton

Except that the "market" has, like all systems, an impetus in maintaining the status quo and the reality is that most companies "get by" with bad hiring practices and bad management for a variety of reasons.

Are you in the US or UK? Traditional professions tend to keep ossified ideas OR Maybe you are just not that good a lawyer? — charleton

In the Netherlands. What does "being a good lawyer" (whatever that is) have to do with the issue of billable hours?

Following up to @VagabondSpectre's study post.

Imo the best part of the analysis is on P1109, where it actually looks at a log(hours):occupation interaction effect. Summary for those who don't want to go through the effort of reading the paper:

The disparity between men and women is higher in jobs where the amount payed per hour scales with the amount of hours worked. As @Benkei and @charleton and @Agustino have alluded to, this may be attributable to a preference for women to work part time or alternatively factors that make women more likely to do so. The study is concordant with this:

Another important result is that the impact of a birth on labor supply grows over time in an individual, fixed-effects estimation. A year after a first birth, women’s hours, conditional on working, are reduced by 17 percent and their participation by 13 percentage points. But three to four years later, hours decline by 24 percent and participation by 18 percentage points. Some MBA moms try to stay in the fast lane but ultimately find it is unworkable. The increased impact years after the first birth, moreover, is not due to the effect of additional births.

Part-time work in the corporate sector is uncommon and part-timers are often self-employed (more than half are at 10 to 16 years out). Differences in career interruptions and hours worked by sex are not large, but the corporate and financial sectors impose heavy penalties on deviation from the norm. Some female MBAs with children, especially those with high earning husbands, find the trade-offs too steep and leave or engage in self-employment.

Regardless of whether people think the remaining pay gap is entirely attributable to discrimination, or they do something stupid like say the entire thing is attributable to discrimination, I think it's very likely that promoting joint, paid, parental leave and paid paternity leave would reduce the worst excesses of this effect. At the very least it would remove some cases where people's careers will be stymied for the sin of wanting to start and take care of a family.

Edit: could potentially be studied by looking at gender disparities in aforementioned target jobs in countries that have paid joint/paternity leave vs those who don't. Something to do if bored.

In the Netherlands. What does "being a good lawyer" (whatever that is) have to do with the issue of billable hours? — Benkei

Clearly being able to attract those hours to fall into your lap relates to people's perception of you as a lawyer?

No.

My thoughts as well. I would say Shapiro is better read in philosophy than Peterson, especially political philosophy. I like them both in certain doses and on certain topics.

Shapiro is better read in philosophy than Peterson — Thorongil

Impossible. Peterson has a good understanding of everything after Nietzsche, and there are some important philosophical traditions there - existentialism, phenomenology, pragmatism, postmodernism.

especially political philosophy. — Thorongil

That's likely here.

You mean in Holland you get work as a lawyer regardless of your ability?

maybe you can stop insinuating things and jumping to conclusions and get back to the issue on billable hours, which point you missed our misunderstood trying to pin me on someting that's rather obviously besides the point. I'll wait until you're actually interested in a conversation instead of weak attempts at scoring points.

Regardless of whether people think the remaining pay gap is entirely attributable to discrimination, or they do something stupid like say the entire thing is attributable to discrimination, I think it's very likely that promoting joint, paid, parental leave and paid paternity leave would reduce the worst excesses of this effect. At the very least it would remove some cases where people's careers will be stymied for the sin of wanting to start and take care of a family. — fdrake

We can try to encourage men to take time off when their wives get pregnant, but there will always be some men who refuse. Exact equality of outcome seems unreachable unless we were to actually start arbitrarily paying some men less and start paying some women more (generally, for the same work) or more directly start meddling in the career choices of free individuals.

I just don't see how someone can choose to start/care for a family and not have their careers somehow stymied. Or likewise how we can force women and men into career paths that they tend not to choose of their own free will (example: we're desperately encouraging women to enter STEM fields or men to enter nursing positions, but the gender disparity is still quite massive despite concerted effort).

If we really expected parity of outcomes, we might also be complaining that men are 10 times more likely to die on the job than women, or that less than one percent of garbage collectors and sewer/septic technicians are women.

Despite gender differences in career choices and entailed obstacles (i.e: pregnancy) the actual pay gap is quite low (nearly marginal in my opinion), and I'm not sure that any broad or systematic approach to eliminating the impact of these differences can be done without trampling on the freedom of individuals and the market itself.

Point out a specific instance of unfair discrimination though (of any kind) and I will wholeheartedly support legal recourse.

weak attempts at scoring points. — Benkei

You said "no"; "no" to WHAT?

You mean in Holland you get work as a lawyer regardless of your ability? — charleton

The answer is yes. You just write on a piece of cardboard "Lawyer", stick it on your door, invite people in, and start charging them! I once spoke to a Macedonian lawyer and he told me the right motto in business is "work less, charge more!" >:O

grow up.

weak attempts at scoring points.
— Benkei

You said "no"; "no" to WHAT? — charleton

Just answer the question and stop being such a queen.

stop being such a queen — charleton

I resemble that comment.

At the very least it would remove some cases where people's careers will be stymied for the sin of wanting to start and take care of a family. — fdrake

Yes, that is what I have noticed about all of the politics of identify: it seems to always be people living privileged lives saying that they are victims of flagrant, systematic unjust discrimination because their personal wishes, such as starting a family, are not subsidized by the system.

Guess who has to make up for it when those people have to miss work because of their personal wish to have a family? Workers who do not have families. Consumers who the cost of maternity/paternity leave is passed on to, including consumers who do not have families.

It is wrong, we are told, if a woman has to choose between work and her wish to have a family, but it is not wrong if a childless person has to choose between work and his/her non-family life. Go figure.

And just because a person is not part of a nuclear family does not mean that he/she is not contributing to family life. You don't hear any complaints about discrimination there. Maybe it is because the unmarried and the childless are not an identify group--not yet, anyway.