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American women are, on average, paid 84 cents for every dollar men make, according to the Department of Labor. This wage gap has persisted despite near-record rates of women’s participation in the labor market, with wage gaps even larger for women in minority populations, and it’s estimated that pay parity will not be achieved until 2052. Should policy interventions address these disparities, or is it more important to recognize and honor women’s personal decisions and find another way to look at the gap Those in favor of fixing the gap see it as a point of fairness and equity that would bring economic benefits, such as enhanced family incomes and increased productivity, and say that new policies are needed urgently to dismantle systemic barriers stopping women from earning more. Those who aren’t in favor argue wage disparities reflect individual choices regarding career paths, work-life balance, and tenure, rather than systemic discrimination. They also point out that when adjusted for factors like job type, hours worked, and career breaks, the gap significantly narrows.
Against this backdrop, we debate the question: Should We Address the Gender Wage Gap?
John Donvan
This is Open to Debate. I’m John Donvan. Today, in honor of Women’s History Month, we are taking on the gender wage gap, why it still exists, and whether there’s anything to do about it. It’s a question that has brought implications for our economy, and even men as well. For this one, I ask the fantastic Nayeema Raza to step in to moderate. Nayeema is a journalist with New York Magazine and Vox Media. Now, onto the show.
Nayeema Raza
One of the things I love about working with Open to Debate is that they don’t pay me any less than the men. And that’s relevant because according to research from the US Department of Labor, women are earning about 84 cents on the dollar to a man in the year 2021. And by that same measurement, it’s been in the 80-odd percent range for the last 20 years. Today we’re gonna be tackling this question of should we address the gender wage gap? I wanna zoom in on that question because it’s not really about whether there’s a gender wage gap to address. Our guests today actually agree on that fact. They might have some quibbles about whether it’s this big or that big, but the question is whether policymakers should actually try to address the gender wage gap. So let me introduce our debaters without further ado.
Nayeema Raza
And arguing no to the question, should we address the gender wage gap, is Allison Schrager. Allison’s work bridges many fields. She’s an economist, she’s a writer, she’s also worked in finance, and these days she’s a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing writer for Bloomberg Opinion. Welcome, Allison.
Nayeema Raza
Before we start, I just wanna set the stage a little bit and help our listeners understand you each a bit better and what brought you to the table for this debate. I’m curious if you’ve experienced the wage gap, the gender wage gap, uh, in your own career, and how that personal experience has shaped your argument here today. Maybe Kadie, I’ll ask you first.
Kadie Ward Philp
Sure. I mean, there’s a lot of things I could say about that, but the first thing I will say is one of my very first corporate jobs, my CEO introduced me to the board of directors, which was about 18 men and 1 woman by saying, “I’m gonna have this one’s knees zone shut so I don’t have to pay her maternity leave.” And at that moment, I realized having a fertile body at work was a detriment to my, my pay, my productivity, the amount of investment that my employer was going to make in me relative to my male peers. And so, it really shaped the way I thought about being a woman at work and the impact that biology has on pay on the prospect of career growth.
Allison Schrager
Yeah,
laughs) I mean, we were actually all paid the same because, you know, you just get your fellowship and that’s that. I, I actually did once have realization. I was always convinced I had a very hard time in graduate school because, uh, you know, I was one of very few women. Economics is known for having, being tough on women PhDs. But then, I remember a couple of years ago, I was having a, uh, drink with a friend from graduate school, and he was telling me how graduate school was the worst time of his life too. And it dawned on me, I’m sure maybe I did have a harder time than him from time to time, but I wasn’t able to control for what made that about being female, and what just made that about the fact that graduate school is kind of awful.
Kadie Ward Philp
I remember in 2001 reading Barbara Aaron Reich’s book, uh, Nickel and Dimmed on Not Getting By in America. And the book was about poverty in the, in the US. But the unstated subject was women. It was the women who were primarily in the poverty working class. And that really shaped my career in economic development, really focused on getting women’s participation in order to break those poverty cycles.
Nayeema Raza
I’m very excited for this debate and I think it’d be a great time to hear your opening arguments. So, Kadie, you’re answering yes to the question of should we address the gender wage gap? So I’m gonna let you go first. Please take a few minutes and outline your argument for us here today.
Kadie Ward Philp
Yes, I am arguing that the gender wage gap needs to be addressed because it can be addressed through decisive policy action. You know, the gender wage gap was once 59 cents on the male dollar in 1960, and it’s now about 84 cents. And this cannot be credited merely to the invisible hand of the market. Uh, this happened because of activism, changing social norms, changing labor dynamics, and through various forms of targeted proactive legislations. In fact, governments that have recognized that the gender pay gap is multifaceted and requires policy intervention are making huge strides in actually reducing its severity.
Kadie Ward Philp
My office did an analysis of OECD ILO Eurostat in World Economic Forum data, and we found some really consistent patterns. Government interventions tailored to specific local contexts work in closing gender wage gaps. And these interventions include a spectrum of measures from pay equity legislation, anti-discrimination, law pay transparency initiatives, universal childcare and parental leave policies.
Kadie Ward Philp
So, you know, consider the case of the United States, where there is a really interesting patchwork of state level initiatives that offer valuable insight here. So states like California and Massachusetts with longstanding equal pay laws and measures to address discrimination are showing tangible progress, which with wage gaps lower than the national average. Or conversely, you can take a state like Mississippi with belated legislative action only adopting equal pay laws in 2022, lagging behind with far greater gaps in the national average. So this underscores a crucial role that policy intervention can play in addressing the gaps. You know, the economic imperative also cannot be overstated.
Kadie Ward Philp
A McKinsey Global Institute report estimates that narrowing the gap could add trillions to the global GDP underscoring the immense potential of gender equality as an engine of economic prosperity. And moreover, you know, the gender wage gap is reflected, I would say, in how the market values and rewards certain types of work over others. Women’s work has been erroneously categorized as merely an extension of their unpaid domestic roles inherently tied to, you know, caregiving, and household management, and less deserving of esteem and by extension, less compensation. So the devaluation of female-dominated industries reflects the systemic failure of the market to actually recognize the value of women’s labor.
Kadie Ward Philp
Historical precedents such as protective laws, actually illustrate these entrenched biases that have marginalized women’s contributions in the workforce. So we need to address the gap because the market is unable to untangle societal ideas about women’s value from the value of the work that they actually perform. Related to this, we have to confront the fallacy of individual choice in actually shaping career trajectories while personal preference and undoubtedly influences occupational paths. You gotta consider that societal norms, discriminatory practices, and legislative frameworks actually exert profound influence.
Kadie Ward Philp
Gender stereotypes, ingrained from childhood, steer individuals towards certain occupations while creating barriers to entry in others. Finally, the burden of unpaid care work disproportionately falls on women constraining their ability to participate in the paid labor market. The absence of universal childcare and paid family leave exasperates these disparities with the effect of actually hindering women’s professional advancement and perpetuating the motherhood penalty. The gender wage gap is not merely a statistical artifact, but a symptom of entrenched inequalities that demand urgent policy interventions. And by embracing proactive measures to address discrimination and promote pay equity, we can finally level the paying field for women.
Allison Schrager
Well, I agree that there is definitely a gender wage gap. I mean, that is undeniable. As you said, it’s 82, 81 cents on the dollar, 83 that women get paid for men. And that is after years of progress in the last couple of decades, this convergence has stalled. I know we’re not gonna debate the data, but I think it’s important to take a hard look at the data because as an economist, I feel like when you come up with a policy prescription, you have to be very precise in the exact nature of the problem that you’re addressing and, uh, make sure that you’re addressing the underlying problem.
Allison Schrager
And if this difference is all due to discrimination, then there’s more need for policy. But if it’s due to, say, various choices, or just sort of actual market signals, then it actually could be counterproductive. So what is driving this? Now, as Kadie pointed out, some of it is the choices or, say, social norms that drive women into certain careers. Social workers get paid less than engineers. That is for a lot of reasons, but you know, that is the market wage of social workers versus engineers. That drives some of it. But let’s be honest, even we control for occupation, there’s still gender wage gap.
Allison Schrager
So we have to dig even a little bit deeper. Some of it is hours worked, women do work fewer hours largely ’cause of childcare. For instance, OB-GYNs. Now here’s a job where you would think women would have a huge advantage. Women prefer women doctors, but even male OB-GYNs get paid more than females. Why? Because they are more likely to get up in the middle of the night and deliver a baby. And that makes a big difference on your wages, is that ability and desire to work a lot of hours. And even then, even when you account for different hours, you still have a bit of a gap.
Allison Schrager
I mean, we’re now less than 10%, but that’s not nothing, and, you know, it’s not fair. So let’s look even a little deeper. So then, what we also see is the gender wage gap narrowing to almost nothing earlier in your career, and it widens throughout the course of your career, which is the motherhood penalty that Kadie just mentioned. Once women have children, they, their wages do fall relative to men. Educated women tend to end up with a bigger penalty. And you know, Claudia Golden, who just won the Nobel Prize, her work finds that that’s because certain jobs really, uh, she calls them greedy, want you to be there at their beck and call. Like said, the biggest wage gaps tend to be things like corporate law, banking, places where they want you to be there all the time available to your client.
Allison Schrager
And this is really drives a lot of this gender wage gap, particularly for that segment of the labor market, and the studies that she has done and others have done on, um, on law students and MBAs find that when women have children, they really crave and need a lot more flexibility. And flexibility? You know, employers don’t like to give it to people and not just because they’re greedy, but because it’s valuable having employees who are available. We’ve all had jobs, and we all know that, you know, being there when your employer wants you to is really valuable to them, and it’s a trade off. As an economist, I like to think about compensation more holistically than just salary. There’s also benefits, there’s health benefits, there’s vacations.
Allison Schrager
Flexibility is also a benefit, and it’s a trade off. W- a lot of women, you know, some of it is societal norms, but it’s also some women genuinely desire to be there and be present for their children’s childhood. There’s nothing wrong with that. And in fact, we see the biggest pay disparities under very educated women who have rich husbands. So they even have access to childcare, they just want to be there with their kids. I think that’s why policy has less of a role to play because what that does is it makes these decisions that are very personal, very unique to the woman, her job, her family, her needs much more rigid.
Nayeema Raza
Welcome back to Open to Debate. I’m your moderator, Nayeema Raza, and we’re debating the question, should we address the gender wage gap? We’ve just heard opening statements from our two debaters, Kadie Ward Philp from the Pay Equity Commission of Ontario, and Allison Schrager, who’s a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. So Kadie, you were saying, look, there hasn’t been a lot of progress in the last 20 years. We’re still at this 82, 84 cent divide and the market alone has not fixed this, and it won’t fix this. And your argument was kind of laying out the fact that policies do work. We’ve seen this empirically in the experience of states like California who are early on legislation and regulation around gender equity versus states like Mississippi, who were late in that regard.
Nayeema Raza
Um, so the policies work, that the policies in fact can do even more work because there’s economic value that’s being left on the table when policy makers aren’t actually trying to close this divide between women and men when it comes to earning. And then you also made the point that ultimately, the gender wage gap is a symptom of, as you put it, societal kind of inequities and, um, miscalculations about the value of work. And that as long as we don’t address this, this is gonna be a perpetuating failure of the market for time to come. And you pointed specifically to a policy like universal childcare, also paternity or maternity cover as important issues in kind of addressing this gender wage gap.
Nayeema Raza
And Allison, you’re actually taking the argument that Kadie was so, uh, forcefully, you know, arguing against, which is you, you say, look, the market’s working, people are making choices and the market is valuing those choices. And you spoke, you know, about the way that work and compensation is structured these days, that the value is on being a beck and call. And that women are empirically less willing to be at the beck and call. They crave more flexibility. And that craving, that desire not to work that extra hour of overtime or whatever the case may be, is a choice that women are making to balance.
Nayeema Raza
No, we’re not stuck at this point. But I, I wanna start with this very fundamental thing that you two are disagreeing about, which is choice. So really wanna understand, you know, it’s almost like Allison you’re saying, look, women are making some choices here. They’re making choices that are reflected in the market value of that work, and those choices around kind of work-life balance. Um, you know, I think Kadie is kind of arguing it’s, it’s almost like a choice between not work-life balance, but paid work and unpaid work balance or, um, you know, valued work, an unvalued work balance. Uh, I would be curious how Allison you would respond to that.
Allison Schrager
Well, I mean, it’s obviously, as I said, it’s different for different, for every woman. As I said, for higher income women, this is a choice. They can afford all the childcare they want, but obviously, a lot of women don’t have that choice or have that luxury. I think the question is though, should we put that on employers or the government to compensate? And I’m not sure that that’s necessarily true, um, particularly for employers because then they have to pay extra for workers when they’re not there, and that would make them less inclined to hire women.
Kadie Ward Philp
So a couple of things. One, I think to, you know, make an argument that women prioritize work-life balance or family life, um, priorities, uh, oversimplifies a really complex issue and kind of ignores the fact that there’s a lack of infrastructure or support, to support her otherwise. And this goes back to the sort of, um, the, the sort of crafting of gender norms and gender roles or traditional gender norms and gender roles that we talk about. And we even use this word, traditional, uh, because, you know, that gives a sense of, it’s, it’s not, uh, valuable anymore in today’s labor market. We have to re- think the, the structures and infrastructure that women need to actually participate in the labor markets, the level they do, ’cause there’s equally compelling research that shows that women, when they have access to childcare, be it, uh, highly subsidized or universal, uh, they’re participating in greater, in greater numbers.
Kadie Ward Philp
That is a participation gap, though I wouldn’t call that a, a, a pay equity gap. And part of the argument I’m making is that participation is not always a choice. If there’s no infrastructure available for you, if there are social, cultural, religious norms or expectations that women are coded to respond to, they don’t have the level of choice.
Nayeema Raza
I think part of what Kadie’s saying, is saying, Allison, is that these entire job categories might be less valued because they’re dominated by women, and they have been undervalued over time. Um, I mean, maybe an example of that is, you know, talked about OB-GYNs in your opening statement, but nursing or teaching, these are sectors dominated by women. Um, they tend to be, I think in the pandemic we look at these jobs and say, “Oh, they’re super essential,” and yet, the pay in these careers is not reflective of necessarily the essentiality.
Nayeema Raza
The essence of that work is, is the market getting this wrong? Is the value… Is the market valuing work less because it’s done by a woman? And even work that’s done at home, which is important work, which is valued less that because it’s done by women, it’s seen as traditional as Kadie’s saying. How would you respond to that?
Allison Schrager
Well, I mean, we might not give a lot of teachers and nurses their society do, but I’m not sure if that means they need to also be paid more. Um, as I said, like, it, you know, obviously, it depends on the school district, but um, a lot of teachers are paid better than it appears partially through other forms of compensation such as longer vacations and pensions. They’re also, um, working largely by the government as opposed to men who work, say as in for engineering firm working for the private sector. And that is based generally on, you know, wages are based on, you know, how productive you are and the scarcity of your labor.
Kadie Ward Philp
I’d like to respond to that, Nayeema. A couple of things. You know, from the onset of participation in the labor market, there was legislation that essentially said these are the types of work women can do. I mean, you look at protective laws, these were enacted in several states across the US, where Ill- Illinois, Pennsylvania, West Virginia did not allow women to work in mines. Um, Oregon pro- like, prohibited women from working more than 10 hours a week to keep the women, the work for men. These laws were dismissed. Um, also, don’t forget up until like, you know, early 20th century we had marrying, state marrying laws, where teachers had to leave the labor force, the teaching, once they wed. Um, you know, so that we had to have a legislation to remind women their place. Really, from the onset of the Industrial Revolution, work was coded male or female, and they were, they were paid differently because of that, because of this undervaluation, we believe certain women’s work was an extension of her unpaid work.
Kadie Ward Philp
And if it’s unpaid, it’s unvaluable, it’s not deserving of the same esteem and compensation. But really, it’s only been about 70 or 80 years since men and women have been mixing in the labor market. And there’s this incredible US-based longitudinal study that actually looked at occupational feminization from 1950 to the 2000. So 50 year study, showing that when women actually moved into occupations in large numbers, those jobs began paying less even after controlling for education, work experience, skills, race and geography. So there’s substantial evidence that shows that when employers place less value on a job, if it can be done by women.
Kadie Ward Philp
And so I can give you some examples of designers. When women became designers, wages fell by 34%. Biologists wages fell by 18%. And the actual reverse is true. When men go into the space, if it becomes attractive to men, computer programming for instance, if you recall, it was a relatively menial role done by, by women in, in these big computer call center rooms. Uh, but when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige. So it’s not that women pick low and paid jobs, it’s, it’s liter in terms of skill. Um, it’s that the employers and the market devalue them because women are doing them.
Allison Schrager
Well, I think it’s more of a correlation than a causation. First of all, when it comes to programmers, I mean, programming also became a lot more computationally demanding and required different skills, and skills that honestly became a lot more scarce. So that’s one of the reasons why that pay gap opened up. And in some of the women’s professions, there was also just a larger pool of labor available. So it’s not sim- you can’t just say, well, more women are in it. There’s other confounding variables and structures that changed in these jobs. Although, I think Kadie is right, that policy did do a lot to get us to where we are now. And it did close the gap quite a bit. I just don’t think policy is the right answer to go this last mile, especially ’cause there are market forces. Like, uh, Kadie is talking a lot about participation, and that women have lower participation rates.
Allison Schrager
But you know what? Like, we’re seeing that gap close, especially ’cause I was talking earlier about how valuable flexibility is to women, but also employers don’t wanna give it. Well, that’s changing too, because of remote work, because of gig work, what we’re seeing now is flexibility is less valuable to employers. They’re more willing to give it. And so what we’re seeing is post pandemic when the work from home revolution happened is that women’s labor force participation is higher than it was pre-pandemic. Whereas men’s had been falling over the years is pretty much at the same levels that was pre-pandemic.
Nayeema Raza
There is. When you look at the data about the gender wage gap, there is this tightening that’s happening between the ’60, and the ’80s, and then it gets to the aughts and it kind of pauses. And I guess the question is, have we hit a ceiling? And I, I was looking at the data from Ontario, even Kadie, where you are, and there pay equity legislation was introduced I think in the 1980s, 1987. But it hasn’t evened the gap. I think there’s still an 11% gap today. So do you, do you find that there’s just this intractable layer to it?
Kadie Ward Philp
You know, when I look at, uh, a global data, there’s other type forms of addressing the problem. So when I look at a country like Belgium, which has a 1.2% gender wage gap, highly subsidized, widely available childcare, very robust parental leave policies, this obviously fixes the participation gap. This obviously creates the flexibility that Allison mentioned, uh, that if that parents both want, um, we use the language… we talk about parental leave because it should not be maternity leave, it should be on mothers. And we have robust policy programs to promote parental leave. But when you look at even, you know-
Nayeema Raza
Sorry, I actually wanna pau- pause for a second, ’cause I would love to hear from Allison on this particular policy, on a policy lever of universal childcare. There are places, I mean, Kadie’s talking about the research over, you know, outside of, um, just the US, and looking at Scandinavia, for example, in Norway, there are stipends for parents who are at home or for, you know, for the child- for childcare effectively. Would you be… do you think that we should not address the wage gap with, uh, universal childcare as policy, for example?
Allison Schrager
Well, I’m all for universal or more affordable childcare. I mean, who isn’t? I mean, it is… you know, we should do everything we can to make, you know, motherhood and parenthood in general more accessible. Um, I just don’t think the evidence shows that that goes a long way to addressing the gender pay gap. Because this sa- women still want the flexibility to be there, uh, for sort of those moments for, um, to, and to be engaged in their children’s lives. And I said, I think, I said one of the studies shows that the, some of the women who take the biggest wage penalty are high income women who can afford all the childcare they want.
Kadie Ward Philp
… about that though? Part of the research also shows that the way that we think about maternity cover is six weeks or six months is actually insufficient for the bonding period of time versus places like the UK, where they have a year of cover. Um, so is it possible that the policy is just like a blunt hammer rather than a nuanced instrument? Uh, but policy could work.
Allison Schrager
Yeah. Well, I mean, it also depends on, on what our objective is. I mean, I, you know, I think we also all agree that we should have longer maternity leaves, but that’s not good from the point of view of closing the gender wage gap because that means more time outta the labor force. So I mean, I, I, and I think this is my point generally is like the needs of every family is really different. And I think that flexibility is really critical into helping women make the right choices for them and their families. And that’s why policy just becomes far too blunt a tool. And sort of there are scope for policies, certainly, to make having children, um, a better experience, a more rewarding experience, but they won’t necessarily address the gender wage gap, but they do fix other problems.
Kadie Ward Philp
Yeah, we… And we both hit on the motherhood penalty, which, which is a well-documented phenomenon, but we didn’t talk about the fatherhood boost, which is the opposite effect when men become fathers, they’re not leaving the workforce, but they’re um, getting it roughly about a 7% raise because they’re now seen as more responsible, uh, and committed to work because they have a family to care for. So interesting phenomenon, you know, on the flexibility piece, yes, women want it, that’s why we have to advocate for parental leave and get more fathers to participate in leaving the the workforce.
Kadie Ward Philp
Men don’t, this is also well documented because they’re afraid of career setbacks because they look at women and they go, “Oh, they’re gonna get a career setback, so I won’t do it.” Um, and we have to change that. You know, in one of our provinces in Ontario, 84% of fathers actually take parental leave and this is the province that has the lowest gender wage gap in the country.
Nayeema Raza
Well, I feel like we’ve actually passed the Bechtel test with flying colors ’cause we haven’t talked about men a lot in this, but actually, one of the things that I found so fascinating in preparing for this debate was, Allison, a piece you’d written in 2023 in Bloomberg. Um, and it was looking at the decline of what you called prime age men. And I, I think you were, you were showing data that it’s now around, post pandemic, it’s about 88.5% of prime age men are participating in the workforce. And while that’s higher than the circa 70, 70% of women, prime age women who are working in the workforce, that’s much lower than the 96, 97% that we used to see in the 1960s or the 1970s.
Nayeema Raza
I’m curious how you, Allison, look at that data and, and the corollary data that women are primary breadwinners in… It’s gone up from 5% of families in 1972 to about 16% today. It’s, I think, one in five for college educated women. I’m just curious how you look at this data and how men factor into all of this besides their premium.
Allison Schrager
Yeah, actually from a policy perspective, I’m actually more concerned and think we need more to help men because I’m very concerned about their future in the labor market. I mean, Kadie’s talking a lot about getting more women to the labor force and feminization of industries. And that has been great for women. It’s been great for me personally, not against that, but I think it also is that we are seeing the economy evolve and probably with AI even further to sort of jobs with better interpersonal skills being more valued. I think the outlook for women’s work actually looks fantastic, but I am actually very concerned about more men leaving the labor force, which can have a lot of bad social, um, knock on effects. And I think the column you’re referring to is, it’s sort of been a mystery why so many prime age men aren’t working.
Allison Schrager
I, I sort of came up with this theory when I was spending time in a brothel, uh, for research and, um, I was surprised that all the women I spoke to there, all the men in their world were not working at all. Uh, whether it was their brother, whether or not it was their partner, whether or not it was their father, and they were all there effectively supporting, like, this whole group of men. I mean, there’s a lot of reasons why they didn’t work and it, you know, it was different for everyone. And so when I did that story, I was looking and seeing that, you know, if men aren’t working, we don’t know how they’re getting money. I mean, they’re not… There’s no evidence that disability rules have gone up significantly in, in or at least been a cause of this.
Allison Schrager
And it does look that women earning more and being more active in the labor force might be to some degree, I don’t wanna say enabling, ’cause you know, you know, men worked for years and women didn’t work, and no one thought there was anything wrong with that. Uh, although arguably, there’s more social, um, knock on effects for men being outta the labor force. So it might just be that women ha- men having women in their lives working is also contributing to them not working just because it raises overall household income and they’re making sort of that choice, which is probably say not for the best. Also, they’re also facing, I think, trends in the labor force that make it harder for men.
Kadie Ward Philp
No, because hiring salaries are a problem. Employers are still hiring white men and paying them more. But I just wanna say the point that Allison’s making about, um, you know, men working at home and women working at home and how this is shifting, uh, and this is, this is sort of the crux of the problem is that we do not value women’s unpaid care work, unpaid domestic work. And, you know, actually, after World War II, Finland started tracking women’s, um, unpaid work as part- it was primarily women in the ’50s still staying home, um, unpaid work in their GDP, and the League of Nations asked them to stop because it was skewing their GDP numbers so much.
Kadie Ward Philp
And what if we had actually said, “No, this is a wonderful trend. Why don’t we actually count the, the number of hours that contributes to our economic growth because it’s the unpaid care that’s primarily done by women that holds up this economy.” And if moving into that space is is men, that’s great, but really, this is what enables the economy to run.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you, Kadie. I’m gonna ask you one last question and we’re gonna… Before we wrap this part of the discussion, and that is around a curious statistic I saw where I think it was a Center for American Progress report, said that Asian women actually out earned white non-Hispanic men by a cent on the dollar. But I guess the question I’m asking is then, are there other actual inequities that we’re not looking at racial inequities because we’re so focused on this gender question?
Nayeema Raza
Welcome back to Open to Debate. I’m your guest moderator, Nayeema Raza. And today we’re tackling the question of should we address the gendered wage gap. I’m joined by our debaters here today, Kadie Ward Philp of the Equal Pay Commission of Ontario Canada, and Allison Schrager of the Manhattan Institute. We’re gonna bring in some other voices now, members of the audience who’ve been following along and I’m sure are itching to ask them questions. Up first, I’d like to invite in Stacey Vanek Smith. Stacey is a hosting correspondent of the Indicator from Planet Money on NPR. She’s also the author of the book, which is fabulously titled Machiavelli for Women. Stacey, excited to hear your question.
Stacey Vanek Smith
I guess I have a slightly different question for Kadie and for Allison. For Kadie, I would love to know what you think the most effective policy solution would be in closing the wage gap? And for Allison, you mentioned that there is… Uh, when you control for everything, there is still a wage gap that’s there. I think it’s about 9%. I’m wondering what you think a good response to that wage gap would be? Do you think the free market is gonna close it on its own? Is there a policy solution that would help that, or a company solution, or how you think we could go about addressing that as a society, maybe not just strictly policy?
Allison Schrager
Yeah, so, um, as I mentioned earlier, Claudia Golden’s work has shown that that remaining bit is largely that flexibility premium, that women, uh, really do crave or need flexibility, particularly if they become mothers. She argues that this isn’t necessarily something that the policy can change, but she argues social norms. But I actually think the market is changing this already. And I mentioned earlier largely because that premium on flexibility is getting cheaper for employers to offer through, as I said, remote work, through gig work, that’s making work a lot more flexible. We’re already seeing huge increases in participation for women. So I think that’s gonna go a long way of closing the gap because being a flexible worker is all of a sudden becoming a lot less costly to employers. And that is really, I think, what’s really been the stubborn bit.
Kadie Ward Philp
Thank you for your question, Stacey. You know, it’s really hard to say what is the most effective policy in closing the gender wage gaps because context really, really matters in terms of the way that the division of power is divided between maybe state and nation, um, and the local, the local laws. All of these things really play a part, but one thing that we’ve seen really interesting conversation is this concept of comparable worth. So a lot of equal pay laws look at exactly that, equal pay for equal work. And there’s emerging trend on equal pay for work of equal value. And, uh, it’s actually Massachusetts is the only state that has comparable worth built into their law, um, that says men and women do different jobs in the job market, and those have been valued differently for all these historical stereotypical bias reasons.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you so much, Stacey, for your question. Up next I’d like to bring on Stephanie O’Connell Rodriguez. Uh, Stephanie is a journalist, she pens the two ambitious newsletter, uh, which is aimed at women. It covers ambition, money, power. Uh, Stephanie, welcome. What’s your question for our debaters?
Stephanie O’Connell Rodriguez
So assuming you accept the argument that the gender wage gap is simply a reflection of the conditions of the workplace, greedy work, long hours, and flexible schedules, my question would have to be, are those the ideal conditions of work for women or for men or for individuals across gender identity, or even for employers or the economy as a whole? Or are the current conditions of work actually not conducive to maximizing productivity or wellbeing for most of us? And so, maybe could addressing gender wage inequality also improve productivity and wellbeing and outcomes more broadly for everyone?
Kadie Ward Philp
Sure. I think that’s a really important question because it brings up the fact that, you know, workplaces were essentially constructed for the male bread-winning model. Um, and that’s not what we see in today’s workforce. So the workplace model has to, has to change. And we go back to the pandemic. This, this sort of work-from-home forced us to think through what the new workplace could look for and how workplaces could work for women, how workplaces could work for men, how workplaces could work for all the intersectional identities you raised, Stephanie. Um, I think that that’s a huge part in figuring out how to close gender wage gaps by working with women and with others to figure out what is the ideal space and time for them to work in. And, and keeping in mind that the current structure was designed for the male breadwinner model, which is no longer the model in North America.
Allison Schrager
Yeah, I think Kadie brows up a good point that the market is already doing this through technology of allowing more sort of creative ways around work and helping employers rethink this. But I think that’s the way to do it, ’cause I think policy to impose this, we sort of get into sort of very unproductive ways of, of this. For instance, I, I mean, if we wanna make sure people put limits on how many hours people work, I think we find that that that, like for instance, the 35-hour work week in France, um, ends up lowering output. Um, it sort of shrinks GDP, it lowers income or you find all these sort of creative ways to get around it, which end up sort of as, as well sort of benefiting some workers as not the other. So I, I agree that maybe, you know, the original way was not the best way, but I don’t think it’s the scope of a sort of blunt policy instruments to change that when technology is already doing that job.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you so much for your question, Stephanie. Next up, I’m gonna invite onto the stage Lyz Lenz. She has a new book out, which is gonna, uh, rival Stacey’s for, uh, best titles. Uh, This American Ex-Wife. It’s yes about divorce, and she also has a substack called Men Yell at Me, another incredible title. It describes itself as being quote, “at the intersection of patriarchy and politics in red state America.” Lyz, come on with your question.
Lyz Lenz
We’re talking a lot about work flexibility, but a lot of my research, especially for my book, indicates that there’s a flexibility myth out there, specifically the research done by Eve Rodsky’s Fairplay institute, where um, she found that women, even if they are in high-powered jobs, tend to see their jobs as less flexible, as more flexible because they ha- they are required to be more flexible by our society and their work is valued less. So she compared women who were doctors, women who were lawyers, and without fail it was always women who were saying their jobs were more flexible because they had to be because the burden of childcare always fell on them.
Allison Schrager
So, um, I’m not sure there’s… it’s a myth of flexibility. I mean, what we do see is that, as I said, women who don’t have children or are married to lower income spouses tend to still work those hours, so they don’t feel the flexibility imposed on them, um, to some degree. I mean, every family, I guess does have to make a choice and in some choice and, and it’s less common for men to sort of be in that role. That could be because I said they tend to, um, be in higher earning professions, often, as I said with the same study I’m thinking about from the University of Chicago, it was… It looked at people who sort of paired off when they were MBA students and the men tended to pursue higher earning jobs.
Allison Schrager
Um, so I- I’m not really sure if it’s a, a myth, but I mean, I think certainly, as society’s evolving as I said, technology is evolving, I mean, we might sort of rethinking these sort of very long entrenched societal norms, but there is also evidence that a lot of women in there is, I think we should celebrate this and not look at this as a problem to be solved, enjoy the time with their children, and enjoy being mothers, and really do wanna be there during those years.
Allison Schrager
I mean, what they… That study found is the women who could afford to do so did take the most time off because it said they wanted to be mothers and they did work still, they did keep their toe in the labor market, but they also really relish that flexibility and women who can afford to tend to want to.
Kadie Ward Philp
Yeah, I’ll just sit on the point that Lyz was making and asking, are we devaluing father’s roles in, in parenthood? And I think that’s an important piece of this conversation because if we still continue this to play a narrative that women want to be present, women want to be with the children, these are moments they don’t wanna miss. That’s all absolutely true, and I think motherhood is a noble, beautiful high calling, but I also think so is fatherhood. And so I think part of the conversation is saying
laughs) men have to be present too, except we still continue to put the burden on women to take this on because it’s innate to her.
Kadie Ward Philp
It’s part of, you know, her, her biology and all of these things. So we know that where there’s shared parental leave options, men are taking them. We, we see that. So when men are given the choice and the opportunities, they also want to be active in parenthood and fatherhood when, when the structures and the policy systems enable them and when also the social stigma doesn’t make that an uncomfortable choice for them.
Nayeema Raza
All right, thank you so much for your question, Lyz. Uh, we have one more questioner here today. I’d like to welcome in Emma Hinchliffe. She’s a senior writer at Fortune. She writes the Broadsheet newsletter and which focuses on women in the workplace. And she also has her own substack, which is called, You’ve Got Emmail not email, but Emma I-L. Welcome, Emma, what’s your question today?
Emma Hinchliffe
Thank you so much. You know, um, hearing about the ways that policy could maybe be the answer and could not be the answer, I’m curious what you think about what businesses can do and will do, kind of two separate questions to address the gender wage gap. When you look at something like the salary transparency law here in New York, you know, businesses threw a fit before it went into effect, but it’s been pretty, pretty successful for a year. Or, you know, work from home was, um, beneficial for businesses until it wasn’t. So what do you think businesses should do, and what are they willing to do without regulatory motivation?
Allison Schrager
Well, as I said, they have… Before, I mean, I think there was a reason why, um, they didn’t wanna give their workers flexibility. It was very expensive. But I think as we, as we said with technology that is becoming less dear to employers, I think the pay transparency laws, um, have had kind of a mixed bag when it comes to, um, closing the pay gap. So far, the evidence suggests that it does close the pay gap, but it pretty much just means that it gives employers an excuse to pay men less, but not women more. So, um, I’m not sure if, if that’s the objective, um, or how we wanna close the pay gap.
Kadie Ward Philp
You know, I, I work for a regulatory body that has the power to sort of enforce first labor laws and we… I, I take a page out of, out of Roosevelt that says, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” We like, we like it when business does the right thing, and we do not have to enforce. That’s a really wonderful thing. And so, we see that happening. I think by and large, companies, um, generally want to do the right thing. They don’t… When we do pay equity audits, they’re generally shocked when they see gender wage gaps because they don’t believe that’s part of their philosophy or their approach and they’re willing to correct it.
Kadie Ward Philp
Um, I think on pay transparency, I was gonna bring that up as well because a lot of companies are doing it proactively without being in a state, uh, that’s legislating it because they see that it’s helpful, um, in terms of even just getting more higher quality candidates because people are participating at a rate that’s commensurable with the actual salary that’s being offered. So, you know, there’s opportunities. I think companies, there’s a big de- and I push, there’s more conversations, diversity, equity, inclusion, sorry, push. And there’s more conversations about this in the marketplace and companies who have a, are putting a premium on this for, as part of their brand strategy are doing really well in actually doing this.
Kadie Ward Philp
So we like to see that. We like to see companies taking the initiative, and we shall see if things like pay transparency or salary disclosure laws is another really new one emerging in the US banning companies from asking for previous disclosure, um, previous salary disclosure, how that’s gonna have an impact. And a lot of that is actually company-driven. Uh, so it’s, it… I think private sector has a, a significant role to play as well, um, and being leaders in this and committed to closing gaps.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you, Kadie. Thank you Emma for that question. We’ll move on to closing statements shortly. Before we do, I have one final question I have for both of you. I’m curious, was there any point in this debate where you were compelled by an argument that your, uh, opponent made? Maybe Allison, I’ll start with you.
Allison Schrager
Um, yeah, I mean I, I share Kadie’s passion to get more women in the labor force. Um, and certainly, ways that they can feel like they can do that with more flexibility and not feel like they have to take a big hit for it. Um, as I said, I- I’m just more attuned to that happening through more m- market based forces ’cause I fear that a lot of the policy prescription she has will ultimately be counterproductive.
Kadie Ward Philp
I think she raised some really strong points about, um, changing working conditions and, you know, flexibility being a high value to women and the way that workplaces need to shift to address that. And I think that’s af- absolutely gonna be part of closing gender wage gaps for women.
Kadie Ward Philp
Well, you know, I’m gonna say that if we start with the premise that women are just as capable as men, that they too desire financial stability, choice, housing, food security, and a comfortable retirement, it can’t be true that the gender wage gap exists because women reject wealth and success on mass. Instead, I’ve been arguing that we need to examine the social norms and policy failures that funnel women into lower paid work, and which cultural ideas lead us to devalue work that is primarily done by women.
Kadie Ward Philp
I’ve argued that the gender wage gap did not actually appear organically. It was constructed intentionally to secure men’s dominance in the paid workforce and to actually dissuade women from pursuing economic opportunities outside the home. The gender wage gap we see today is of similar human design, but through complacency and sort of a familiar reluctance to define how we value labor and productivity. Critics will often say it’s complicated, or too expensive to close a gender wage gap, but in a rapidly aging society with similarly rapid declining birth rates, I say it’s risky to let the free market dictate what care work and child-rearing are actually worth.
Kadie Ward Philp
Nurse and teacher shortage across the US are really just two examples of how an entire nation suffers when female-dominated professions are not valued. So it costs us all when women’s economic and productive potential is not fully realized. It costs us all when fair compensation is left up to bias markets and it costs us when we allow inertia to continue to constrain the potential of young women and girls. So policy tools can help us right old wrongs and what remains is actually finding the political will. We cannot expect women to be able to compete in an economy designed to exclude them. If we truly value equal opportunity, we need to level the paying field for women.
Allison Schrager
So, I don’t know if anyone remembers it… I can’t believe it was 12 years ago now, there was an cover story on The Atlantic from Anne-Marie Slaughter called You Can’t Have it all. And it was all anyone talked about for at least a month. And here was this woman, the star Princeton professor with this high-flying government job, had a lot of power, a lot of prestige, and she realized she needed to take a step back and be home with her teenage children. And she was like, “You know what? You can’t have it all. I can’t have this level of career that involves all of me and be the mother I wanna be.” And, you know, at the time, there was obviously rightly calling it out for being, you know, this is an incredibly privileged woman. She made a lot of money. Not only that, she had a husband who was willing to be there for the kids.
Allison Schrager
I mean, she and it… She still just felt like it wasn’t enough for her. So most women, overwhelming majority, do not have all those things going for them. But I think that story still really struck a chord with America and a lot of countries because mothers all over the world do feel that. They feel that at various times in their children’s lives and their work lives, they need that flexibility. They need to be there. And that’s why, one, we have this gender pay gap because that flexibility ultimately is expensive. It’s expensive to employers and it’s expensive to women, but also it’s incredibly idiosyncratic. I don’t want the message to be you can’t be an executive and a mother. Of course you can be.
Allison Schrager
Some women can. Some women can, at different times in their life, there are different needs. But that’s exactly why policy is too blunt a tool to do this, especially with all the technology we have in the pipeline. Making work so much more flexible. We don’t need to be told how much women need to be paid. We don’t need some central planner deciding which jobs are worth more than the other. The market is already doing a good job and is much better suited to provide sort of women the idiosyncratic flexibility they need.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you Allison. And that concludes our debate. I’d like to thank our debaters, Kadie Ward Philp, and Allison Schrager. We so appreciate you showing up, you’re approaching this debate with an open mind and you’re bringing thoughtful disagreement to the table. So in short, you’re being open to debate. I’d also like to thank my fellow journalists and interrogators for bringing their provocative questions to the table. I think it added a lot. So thank you, Stacy, Stephanie, Lyz, and Emma. And finally, a big thank you to you, our audience for tuning in to this episode of Open To Debate.
Nayeema Raza
As a nonprofit working to combat extreme polarization through civil debate, our work is made possible by listeners like you, the Rosenkranz Foundation and supporters of Open to Debate. Robert Rosenkranz is our chairman. Our CEO is Clea Conner. And Lia Matthow is our chief content Officer. This episode was produced by Alexis Pancrazi and Marlette Sandoval. Editorial and research by Gabriella Mayer and Andrew Foote. Andrew Lipson and Max Fulton provided production support. Mili Shah is the director of audience development. And the Open to Debate team also includes Gabrielle Iannucelli, Rachel Kemp, Linda Lee, and Devin Shermer. Damon Whittemore mixed this episode. Our theme music is by Alex Clement. And I’m Nayeema Raza, we’ll see you next time on Open To Debate.
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