Tyler Cowen reports via a Harvard study:
Even in a unionized environment, where work tasks are similar, hourly wages are identical, and tenure dictates promotions, female workers earn $0.89 on the male-worker dollar (weekly earnings). We use confidential administrative data on bus and train operators from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) to show that the weekly earnings gap can be explained entirely by the workplace choices that women and men make. Women value time and flexibility more than men. Women take more unpaid time off using the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and work fewer overtime hours than men. Men and women plan to work similar overtime hours when they are scheduled three months in advance, but men actually work nearly 50% more overtime hours than women. Women with dependents value time away from work more than do men with dependents. When selecting work schedules, women try to avoid weekend, holiday, and split shifts more than men. To avoid unfavorable work times, women prioritize their schedules over route safety and select routes with a higher probability of accidents. Women are less likely than men to game the scheduling system by trading off work hours at regular wages for overtime hours at premium wages. Conditional on seniority, which dictates choice sets, the weekly earnings gap can be explained entirely by differences in operator choices of hours, schedules, and routes.
This is true by observations in the real world. In general, women prefer more leisure than males. Women rather spend time with the family than work overtime. Whether this is a biological trait or a result of tradition and culture, I don’t know.
Further, there are many studies that discuss the pay gap between women and men. Many have sloppy methodologies (or intellectual dishonest). Some studies do not even bother to normalize the difference in hours worked. For instance, person A and person B both get paid 50K per year. However, person A sacrifices weekends and holidays to work overtime. The end salary for person A is 60K because of all the extra hours worked. Aggregating salaries, a false conclusion would be person A gets paid more than person B because of (fill in the blank- race, gender, attractiveness). The reality is person A just works more hours and is willing to sacrifice leisure. Males work more hours on average than females. Studies that do not take this into consideration are misleading. Statistics and facts are useless without the proper philosophy looking at them.