Nice way of glossing over that section.

At some point you just have to reject the argument that it was "best intentions" or "that's just evolutionary psychology". It was only 45 years ago that the "Equal Credit Opportunity Act" was passed. There are still tons of weird attitudes about women and their contributions to society. One that I see often is that "Women select lower paying jobs", but I rarely see the obvious counter argument "why in the hell doesn't our economy reward women for raising the next generation of workers?", as they do 80% of the house work. Women are often ignored in history books, Texas even made an attempt to have Hillary Clinton completely removed.

This discussion is just one such example. There are mounds of evidence of the sexism in our society. There might be scientific reasons that it exists, but there is no scientific or ethical defense of it's continued existence. Whether in the workplace or at home, women have been supplying half of economic output for the entirety of our history, and it's time to stop pretending that it isn't the case, or that historically those in power were powerless against some natural economic state.

I didn't say sexism didn't (or doesn't) exist, there's plenty of other evidence that it did/does. I'm just saying it doesn't follow.

And if I say something can be explained by evolutionary psychology that doesn't mean that therefore it's fine, or that it couldn't be changed given the right system of incentives.

Perhaps programming work is really well paid now because Nintendo of America decided to advertise to boys, and then those boys grew up to become men who were interested in programming, and because men pay other men more than they offer women. Or perhaps because, as the SV folks like to say "They aren't a good culture fit" when interviewing female candidates.

> We used wage data and productivity data from the whole of New Zealand to look at the reasons for the gender wage gap. We found that sexism (where employers prefer to hire men rather than women, are more likely to reject equally qualified women, or offer women less) is likely to be the most important driver of the gender wage gap. This is opposed to women working in low-paying industries or firms, being less productive, or being less successful at bargaining. [1]

Of course it follows. It is undeniable that many centuries of sexism are going to take a lot of work to undo, and it isn't exactly easy when most religions followed the world over, by huge swaths of humanity, also belittle their contributions to society, and actually devalue them to be below men. These beliefs and stories have a major impact on what we do.

So I'm going to stick with sexism because it is most likely the correct answer.

[1] - http://theconversation.com/women-paid-less-for-same-contribu...

> So I'm going to stick with sexism because it is most likely the correct answer.

Personally I am sticking to the incentive model. A woman who prioritize other aspect in their work and personal life over income does not have fewer children, has the same social network size as other women, and get similar respect in society at old age. For men the opposite is true, where a man who make the same choices would end up (statistically) at the bottom of society, alone, childless, with no respect in old age. As a result low income men also has a lower life expectancy. Pretty strong incentives if you ask me.

I thought the obvious answer to this is that the benefits women provide through parenthood are externalized. This is the case with education as well. Elon Musk's 9th grade science teacher doesn't get any shares in Space X.

And from what I can see, women overwhelmingly dominate careers that have a lot of positive externalities: teaching, (prenatal/neonatal) medicine, social work, philanthropy, environmentalism.

On the other hand, you don't see a whole lot of women hedge fund managers, oil and gas explorers, mechanical engineers, etc.

I've seen it argued endlessly that fields began paying less when women entered a field. Why isn't anyone asking if it's men exiting a field because it started paying less?

I have a question. ppl often say housework is "unpaid work" but how can that be since each spouse gets 50% of wealth accumulated by the family. For example spouse would get 50% of the family fortune in case of a divorce, if anything housework is overpaid not underpaid.

Ofcourse your future earning potential takes a hit the longer you just do "housework" prbly not very different than ppl doing menial jobs.

That's what I do. My salary goes into my wife's bank for her to dispose of as she sees fit. I figure I wouldn't be able to do my job without her help and she does take on most of the housework, so I figure she's entitled to the primary decisions on how money should be spent.

My argument is that our entire economy needs to reward this behavior, because the entire economy benefits from it.

Localizing the solution prevents those who gain the most from not having to pay for child care, education, food and shelter for a future workforce from helping to pay for this extremely important part of our economy.

The money that I earn at work is the money of my wife and I already. My point is that the economy should be rewarding the work that she does during the day while I'm doing my office work.

Legally, your premise is correct in most states. Practically it tends to play out differently in a divorce situation.