So, let’s force women to take subjects that they don’t want to do! That’s because everyone else knows better and women can’t decide for themselves. Do we see what’s wrong with this thinking? Men and women are different. Men have a tendency to go towards the STEM related fields and women go towards the social or liberal art majors. The careers pay scales are higher in STEM vice liberal art majors. For example, teaching does not pay as well as electrical engineering. There is a tendency for women to go towards teaching and other social service careers. There is also a tendency for males to go for careers that are more dangerous and unstable ie police, fire, military, oil fields, crab fishermen, etc where since it’s more high risk, it can be more high paying. If you look at the statistics of work place fatalities, it is overwhelmingly male. Should there be protests to equalize that statistic?
The fallacy of the female wage gap is due to this issue of women going for jobs that tend to pay low but maybe more fulfilling personally. Also, if employers could pay women less than a man and get the same results, what would be the point of hiring men anymore? If employers and companies were the greedy free market capitalists that they are portrayed as, then the workforce would be overwhelmingly female. The best thing to do to solve the issue of females going into low paying careers is for guidance counselors and advisors to do their job and actually let them know what the real pay scales are and compare them to other fields so they can make that well informed decision. When there are instances of real gender discrimination in wages, there should be an outcry and action taking instead of talking about it in generalizations.

Erick Bruno
Junior
Political Science