The Gender Pay Gap Isn’t Caused by Sexism. It’s the Result of Women’s Choices

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Last week, U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh traveled to the annual gathering of elites in Davos, Switzerland, to call for American businesses to add women to their leadership teams in order to close the gender pay gap.

Get more girlbosses into the C-suite, the thinking goes, and they’ll ensure women’s work is recognized and rewarded. But reality is much more complicated.

American women today earn, on average, 83 cents for every dollar a man makes. The gender pay gap shrank by about a percentage point a year during the 1980s. But progress stalled in the 1990s, and the gap declined by just two percentage points over the next two decades. Why is that?

Nothing contained in this blog is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Pacific Research Institute or as an attempt to thwart or aid the passage of any legislation.

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