>The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most equality in the workplace. Women in Korea are not treated poorly.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Korea most assuredly is not a country with "the most equality in the workplace". It routinely ranks as having the worst gender inequality of any developed nation, and one of the worst in the world generally. It came in 115th out of 149 countries in the World Economic Forum's 2018 Global Gender Gap Report* and has hovered around that number for years.

*http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2018.pdf

We have exchanged sources. Thank you.

Your assertion is that Japan and Korea are highly discriminatory against women? That's certainly interesting and I'm not sure I can defend against that position. Perhaps women in japan and korea are extremely oppressed. This is certainly not what I thought after reading for example or just seeing what's portrayed in the media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_South_Korea

Meanwhile your source has Rwanda as #6 most equal. I'm very confused about what the data is saying. It's certainly feeling more like a checkbox list.

So let's look at Canada. Both my data and your data have them with poor performance. Mind you my data is just looking at wage gap.

Women in Canada for ECONOMIC PARTICIPATION AND OPPORTUNITY is 27th place behind Brunai and Ghana. This seems quite incorrect. Women have completely the same economic opportunity as men in Canada. So this is a debateable number. Women are educated BETTER than men and certainly work. So I'm not sure how this data was determined. The actual number should be showing discrimination against me.

Women in Canada are 1.0 for education. That's good. Like I just said https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/81-004-x/2008001/article... Women outnumber men. So this is actually false information. They capped the number wrongly at 1.0.

Women in Canada for HEALTH AND SURVIVAL aren't in the list? USA is in 71st place. I happen to know this statistic. Women live longer than men. So they cherry picked and removed this data? https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-624-x/2011001/article... This another number completely false.

Women in Canada for POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT are 21st place behind india and nambia. Except we live in a democratic society with no barriers. Women can run for politics. So this should be a 1.0.

So I guess in conclusion I find your study to be biased, false, and wrong.

Let me explain to you what's happening. Women have the CHOICE. They choose careers that they get paid less in. This is a good thing. They have the freedom. The gap is not a problem.

De jure and de facto equality are different things. Do you honestly believe that African Americans faced no discrimination after July, 3 1964? Because at that point they lived in a democratic society with no barriers. They could run for political office. Under your definition, that's a 1.0.

I guess you could say they just didn't choose to run for office. Or to get educated. The cross burning was coincidental.

So lets say I have a new country. The laws are 100% equal and there's absolutely no discrimination against women.

But an election occurs and there's not a perfect representation of the people. Only 25% of the elected MPs are women. But there's no actual discrimination happening.

What's the fix? THERE IS NO FIX. It's exactly how it should be. We absolutely should not say 50% of MPs must be women. That is not how democracy works.

>Because at that point they lived in a democratic society with no barriers. They could run for political office. Under your definition, that's a 1.0.

Yes that is a 1.0. Was there discrimination? I'm sure there is still today. However there is no fix. That is a 1.0. We are equal.

We dont need to have a rule saying 50% of the elected positions must be black people. That would be discrimination and wrong.

>So lets say I have a new country. The laws are 100% equal and there's absolutely no discrimination against women. But an election occurs and there's not a perfect representation of the people. Only 25% of the elected MPs are women. But there's no actual discrimination happening.

Its very easy to think up improbable, and even impossible, hypothetical situations. This is one such hypothetical and it adds no value to this discussion. We live in a world with discrimination. What you're suggesting is as fantastical as imagining a country where everyone can fly and then asking what we would do for the car companies. It assumes so many unrealistic things that its not a good faith attempt at conversation.

Or another way of putting this is: I claim that your situation will occur with only some miniscule probability such that it is indistinguishable from impossible in practice. You're welcome to prove me wrong. But to be clear, I ask for a proof, and the burden is on you, to show that in a society truly free of discrimination, both de jure and de facto, that things would be as you claim with any regularity. Put plainly, such a feat isn't possible. So your hypothetical isn't worth spending time pondering.

>Was there discrimination? I'm sure there is still today.

Then it's not a 1.0. The WEF report is measuring discrimination, which you just said still exists. By your own admission, this shouldn't be a 1.0.

Japan is very well known for gender inequality in the workplace and Rwanda is also well known as an example of significant legal and social support for gender equality. If your intuition and awareness doesn't include either of these facts then you should not trust yourself on this area at all.

I'm not going to defend Japan. As I said I'm happy to believe they treat women worse than Saudi Arabia; which is what my source provided.

As for Rwanda, this is just plain absurd. This is at best a checkbox study where they are looking to confirm reverse sexism. Yes I did read Rwanda has significant reverse sexism. After the genocide their society was over 70% women and they elected leaders to provide sexist policies.

Reverse sexism is not an ideal to be aiming toward.

You are defining equality of participation as evidence of reverse sexism and you appear happy to believe whatever random things cross your screen that don't disagree with your core beliefs. I hope someone else has the patience to talk to you more.

You just ignored the study's definitions for all the terms and then claimed them false by supplying your own which is pretty classic confirmation bias. Just for "political empowerment" for example, the study did not define political empowerment as "can run for politics."

Lets say Canada passes legislation saying >50% of MPs must be women.

That would be an extreme abuse of democracy. If only 50% of ridings have a woman running. It would mean those riding automatically go to those women. Those ridings don't get to vote.

So yes, political empowerment only goes so in far as women having the right to run. Not confirmation bias; I simply believe in democracy.

I also note you never commented on the other points which were much more egregious and clearly make things appear much worse than it actually is.

I also go back and recalculate Canada's score. We are the MOST equal country surpassing Iceland and Rwanda by gigantic strides it also makes the study look pretty stupid because our equality is perfect and yet we have a large wage gap still.

This is because the gender wage gap isn't discrimination. It's entirely based on decisions made by women.

I'm trying to tell you that for each of your criticisms of the study you ignored their definitions and evidence and applied your own based on your feelings. For another example, 'Health and Survival' was not based on if women lived longer than men but "an estimate of the number of years that women and men can expect to live in good health by taking into account the years lost to violence, disease, malnutrition and other relevant factor." This was defined in the paper but you either chose to ignore it or didn't bother to read how they defined it.

> The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most equality in the workplace.

Yeah, I am not sure what to think of the data. It's not what I would expect.

How is US, Canada, Austria having such a large gender wage gap, followed by Canada.

Then Greece, Bulgaria and Romania are all the way on the left. Having lived in Eastern Europe, I would not consider it overall a bastion of women's equality and rights, not according to the West European standards at least. Granted though, during the Soviet times women and girls were studying math and science just as well as the boys even if not better and it was never specifically promoted or pushed via a "women in STEM" or such similar programs I have seen here, it just happened. Perhaps there is a remnant of that mentality and maybe there is something to be learned from there.

This horse has been beaten to death, beaten again, and is now resembling something less than horse-like, but women that are given equal opportunity to pursue any career path they want will choose paths they enjoy instead of paths that offer raw financial gain. Same is true for men too, actually. It just so happens that more women prefer socially oriented jobs like teaching and nursing than men do. It's not complicated. Freedom doesn't mean everyone is equal in every aspect, it just means that everyone can choose what to be instead of being told what to be and - shockingly - not everyone wants to be the same thing.

The explanation is simple.

When you provide women the opportunity to become anything they want. They choose the careers that they choose. Which tend to me more social related careers. Teaching or nursing for example does not scale well; therefore salaries are limited.

Whereas men pick more "stuff" categories. It's men who work in STEM creating things. A car or an iphone is going to be generally speaking men who design it. These scale very well and salaries can be larger.

By these modern approaches that allow women to go into whatever they want to do. This is what creates the gender wage gap.

The 'people just choosing different careers' throws a lot of inequality under a rug and calls the problem solved.

1) If we tell women their whole childhood that some jobs are for men and some are for women and vice versa for men then ask them when they turn 18 what job they want we'll get horrendously unequal outcomes even though people are completely free to choose.

2) Valuation of jobs is based partially on the view of the value of the work in addition to the actual value provided. e.g. there's huge amount of societal gain to be reaped by providing better education to our children but various forces keeps the wages to teachers depressed relative to the gains to be had from providing smaller classrooms. In a more solid sense it's much harder to evaluate the value provided by a better elementary school teacher because most of the metrics for success are either years in the future (wages, college graduation rates, etc) or tied up in a huge number of other influences.

These kinds of defuse benefit jobs are a lot of what have been traditionally gendered as women's jobs and in the past were just part of the huge unpaid work that women were expected to do and often are unfairly characterized as easier or less educated/lower skilled jobs. There's a whole gendered history tied up in just how we evaluate these jobs and their benefits.

1) Except that in the western world we do not tell people their whole childhood that they are to do X because of their gender. We actively tell people they can be whatever they want, and as far back I can remember in primary school (early 80s) that's been the case.

2) Valuation doesn't always equate to monetary remuneration. For example (at least in Australia), police, teachers etc get FAR more leave and holidays compared to the rest of the country. That needs to be taken into account as part of the valuation. Stress also factors into why certain professions are "worth" more than others. IT is highly stressful, in comparison to other social professions.

Not explicitly can't but there's a lot of 'boys work' and 'girls work' gendering around work and skills. Progress has been made sure but there'll be a lag of decades before changes at the childhood education level work their way through to employment stats.

> If we tell women their whole childhood that some jobs are for men and some are for women and vice versa for men then ask them when they turn 18 what job they want we'll get horrendously unequal outcomes even though people are completely free to choose.

This would make some sense if women had been in the workforce for centuries and were well-established in particular fields, but women have only been in the workforce for a relatively short period of time and the cultural influences that might direct them into one job over another are not even remotely strong enough to play the role you think they do. There is almost nothing except the non-stop message of "you can do anything you want to do" given to little girls today and they are electing to do what they want to do. To assume they are trapped by some sort of cultural force that prefers them to do medicine instead of engineering (neither of which existed as a female field prior to the 20th century) is nonsense. Today, most medical school and law school graduates are women. Most engineering graduates are men. Unless men are fiercely protecting engineering for some weird, inexplicable reason, it would seem like women have had their say and chosen what they want to do.

> Valuation of jobs is based partially on the view of the value of the work

This is false on multiple levels. Functional water treatment have a much bigger effect on health then functional health care, but water treatment employees are paid far less than doctors. We can likely make a similar argument for sewer treatment, garbage collection and mortuaries. We can see similar disconnect between teachers and veterinarians, where those that work with our children are paid less than those working with our pets.

A large part of Marxism is the disconnection between pay and value. There is no easy answers and bias is a poor explanation in order to understand the issue.

1. Could you provide a source showing this discrimination in school? I went to school, men and women were definitely told they could be anything. Also the schools are extremely left-wing SJW(Canadian schools teach children that the right-wing are all racists) so I find this assertion to be immensely unlikely.

2. Teachers in Ontario receive ~$140,000/year for 8 months of work, 5 hours a day. This is publicly available via the sunshine list. If you're using teachers as an example of bias. You're barking up the wrong tree here these inflated teacher wages raise the wages of women on average.

Furthermore, teachers are outside the standard capitalist system. If you want to use them as an example of valuation of you must support the privatization of teachers. I would support that idea. Might not end up well for those $140,000 teachers.

The point is though, women are not 100% teachers and the teacher unions are extremely strong; women and men are being paid the same as teachers.

> 2. Teachers in Ontario receive ~$140,000/year for 8 months of work, 5 hours a day. This is publicly available via the sunshine list. If you're using teachers as an example of bias. You're barking up the wrong tree here these inflated teacher wages raise the wages of women on average.

"5 hours a day" because all the material and lesson plans just appears out of nowhere along with all the graded work and administrative work...

Also I'm very happy that Ontario seems to have a good grasp on the value of teaching but that REALLY isn't true in the US where our average salary in 2016-17 was ~$38k [0].

Also my point wasn't that women are being paid less as teacher but the kind of 'social jobs' typically filled by women that the OP was talking about are valued less. Gender equality within that job isn't particularly relevant there I was talking about the profession as a whole vs other professions.

[0] http://www.nea.org/home/2016-2017-average-starting-teacher-s...

>> average salary in 2016-17 was ~$38k [0]

average STARTING salary -- I think you knew that and "conveniently" left out that one important word. Big difference.

A very brief look at your NEA source (i.e. the lobbying org for teachers, so of course it is biased) reveals that it is obviously flawed. $38+change is the average of each state's average salary -- like the Senate, it gives equal representation to California and to Wyoming. It's pretty easy to see that the most populous states tend to have averages above $38k, in fact many well above $40 (Cali, Texas, NY, PA) while many of the lowest salaries are from much smaller states (W.Va, Montana, Idaho). There is no way, if the state averages are accurate, that the national average is only $38+change. I think you know this too but choose to quote these stats verbatim anyway.

I will also note public school teachers have almost zero chance of getting fired, no worries about their "company" going out of business or bought out or taken over, and become eligible for generous pensions.

I think it is worth noting that the quality of the data can vary a lot from country to country. On average, governments in countries such as Germany and Norway tend to be more critical and transparent of their own actions while others may try to swipe the issue under the rug of inflate numbers when they deem appropriate. Of course, it doesn't mean there are no truths to the data, it just needs to be taken with a grain of salt even if it is the OECD.

> On average, governments in countries such as Germany and Norway tend to be more critical and transparent of their own actions while others may try to swipe the issue under the rug of inflate numbers when they deem appropriate.

Great point. Yeah I can see that happening.

> The important thing though is the people proposing that the wage gap is a problem has a solution. They are pushing equality of outcome.

That's not a solution, that's another problem.

Exactly my point.

The mcdonalds cashier should not be compensated the same as someone like a neuroscientist.

If we get replicators invented and everyone can have whatever they please like in star trek. We still don't need communism. Capitalism will still work, stuff will just be free but if you want a PERSON to do something you still would need to pay.

Actually I find that table a bit suspicious. The sequence of countries ordered by pay gap (lowest to highest) is the following:

Romania, Costa Rica, Luxembourg, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Slovenia, Italy, Denmark, Turkey, Norway, New Zealand, Colombia, Malta, Hungary, Poland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Mexico, Spain, Lithuania, Cyprus, Netherlands, Portugal, Australia, Switzerland, Slovak Republic, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Finland, United Kingdom, Canada, United States, Chile, Latvia, Israel, Japan, Estonia, Korea.

See the pattern there? Neither do I. Usually there is some correlation by continent, cultural area, GDP, HDI, etc. In this case there seems to be nothing. Romania and Costa Rica and Luxembourg are the countries with the smallest wage gap; Netherlands, UK and US are way up there, in company of Chile, Canada and Estonia. Turkey is wedged right in between Denmark and Norway. Netherlands' pay gap is 4 times that of neighbouring Belgium. Mexico and Ireland are the same. Lithuania's gap is half that of Estonia and Latvia. Strange.

> Women in Korea are not treated poorly.

Do you know this for sure? Developed East Asian countries are some of the worst in terms of work equality for women, particularly if they want to have children. Not a good example to use.

Japan and Korea are 'very gendered' countries.

Technically, everything could be equal, but men and women have much stronger gender roles there, it's very deeply ingrained into culture.

I admittedly do not know this. I just replied to another person who provided a source which asserts that Korea is the worst country for equality. Which if true would explain why Korea has a large wage gap.

I'm not defending this at all however. I'm perfectly happy to believe that South Korea is worse than Saudi Arabia toward treatment of women.

It's only "apples to oranges" if you're willing to beg the entire question. Why is elementary teaching less highly paid than university teaching? Why is nurse practitioning less highly paid than anaesthesiologizing?

Let's not act as though those are in any ways similar. Elementary school teaching does require less academic rigor than a university professor. Same applies to RNs vs an anesthesiologist.

I do not mean to belittle those career choices (if anything, I myself want to become a k12 school teacher at some point in life). But, there are a certain set of traits that are needed to excel at the 'prestigious' careers. Disposition towards hard work beyond the standard 9-5, an acumen for logical reasoning, ability to retain large quantities of information are all more rare than social skills and empathy, which take precedence in elementary teaching or nursing.

Our culture idolizes the hard working, career oriented person, that sacrifice other things in life to singularly chase this money and fame driven idea of success. This is irrespective of how physically/mentally healthy it is, or if it positively correlates to long term happiness.

IMO, it leads to an obsession to prove that men and women being equal, would have equal outcomes on this narrow benchmark for success. It both neglects the fact that that social norms haven't changed as much and that equal outcome is meaningless without context.

p.s: nice to see someone use 'beg the question' in the correct context.

> Elementary school teaching does require less academic rigor than a university professor.

But you replace that with a need for a lot more knowledge of teaching and child psychology, so I'd say doing a good job is significantly harder even in the sense of requiring a lot of education.

> a lot more knowledge of teaching and child psychology

Do they really though? In my experience, school teachers don't really have either and both are either learned on the job or academically taught when pursuing the major. Being a great teacher is tough, but very few teachers are actually great.

Being a university professor is IMO, among the hardest positions to get. In my experience, the smartest people I know are university professors.

If anything, many university professors are grossly underpaid (for what they offer) in exchange for job security and complete freedom to pursue what they love.

Well there's a reason I said 'need' not 'reliably get'.

Also the original quote was university teaching. The whole professorship and tenure thing is a separate giant ball of complication, and you're right that all that non-teaching stuff is extremely difficult.

There is a relative recent (<10 years) government study in Sweden that looked at gender segregation of the teaching profession, and one suggestion they made to make the profession more gender equal and bring more men into the profession was to focus the program to include more academic studies.

> so I'd say doing a good job is significantly harder

Maybe, but this highlights another problem in "soft" careers (social, marketing, teaching etc). It's very hard to objectively qualify candidates. In programming, it's easy: you can program, or not. If you can, the question is likely how fast can you learn new things, and how complex programs you can design & write. Good lawyers win cases. Good traders make money. And so on... How do you compare teachers, marketers (except bullshit "increased engagement by 1600%" claims on their CVs), etc?

In case anyone isn't aware of the obvious answer it is at least partially because of supply and demand.

More people are considered qualified as elementary school teachers than those qualified for university teaching. Same with nurses and doctors.

Is this really a question? It takes more dedicated study to become an anesthesiologist than an elementary school teacher.

Does it? Both require professional degrees and a practical internship.

I know of no jurisdiction where becoming an elementary school teacher requires a professional degree or practical internship.

Amount of training required.

I'd be fine with a random anesthesiologist teaching my grade schooler, but I'd hesitate to have a random elementary school teacher giving him anesthesia.

Elementary school teaching: a teaching certificate.

University professor: PhD, pre-tenure work & published research (Note that there are less-qualified people teaching in universities that are compensated much less.)

Nurse practitioner: Master's degree (undergraduate plus 2 years)

Anesthesiologist: Undergraduate + medical degree (4 years) + residency (4 years) + possible specialty training.

How do software developers fare under that regime? I make 3x more as a software developer than my teacher friends that have had far more schooling (masters degrees in many cases, plus continuing education requirements). I don't know where you live, but in my state (Michigan) teachers have rigorous certification requirements.

And I definitely would NOT expect someone without training to be an effective teacher. I'm in awe of what my kids' teachers are able to do. Classroom management is a skill that is incredibly difficult to master.

Successful software engineers have a lot of knowledge & skill that is often acquired informally, so it may not be reflected in university history. Because of the demand for developers and the apparent difficulty of acquiring the skills, they are well-compensated.

If a person has a bachelor's degree, they can get a Michigan interim teaching certificate by passing a test. https://www.teachercertificationdegrees.com/certification/mi... Permanent certification then requires 12 hours (1 semester full-time) of courses, or working toward a masters degree would probably give an immediate and permanent bump in pay.

Imagine a random liberal arts graduate: Would it be easier to go into elementary teaching in Michigan or software development?

I see a lot of parallels between this alternative certification route and a bootcamp: yes, the route is shorter, but you're at a huge disadvantage when applying for entry-level positions.

The teachers I know personally obtained traditional four-plus-year bachelors degrees before applying for jobs. In most cases, they had to do a year or more of subbing before finding a permanent position.

(edit to add: education degrees are very hard to get done in four years, especially with the aiding, student teaching, etc.)

I think how far you are removed from the direct financial impact of your job plays a major role in it.

It is harder to measure a cost on society inflicted by poorly educated students than it is to measure the cost of buggy, failing commercial software. Also, students who were academic failures are not necessarily guaranteed to fail in life, since there are ways to succeed in life other than by being good at school subjects, whereas an incorrect software program can never succeed.

The same holds true even inside the same field. It depends whether you are near a cash cow or a cost center. Working on infrastructure, building tooling for other developers is not likely to be rewarded as well as writing code that could cost your company millions if there is a bug.

There are also differences in specialization. An average game dev is probably going to make less than an average mobile dev, who in turn is going to make less than what a random quant makes.

Intellectual capacity- programming requires a certain ability towards abstract thinking and logic that a minority of the population is comfortable with.

I actually believe a greater percentage of the population, by far, is CAPABLE of this, but very few choose a path that gives them a self idealization that they believe they can or want to be a computer expert of any sort.

I'd argue that the skill-set to be an effective teacher is also not prevalent in the general population. This includes not only intellectual capacity (effective pedagogy is hardly a cakewalk) but also the emotional intelligence required to manage a classroom.

I think it gets back to self-image. Many many women can 'see' themselves as a teacher. Relatively few imagine themselves in a career in tech.

This is very much a cultural issue- the messages women receive from their media sources rarely contain reinforcement towards technical excellence.

This is a frustration for technically oriented men, I believe, because we aren't directly the source of this disparity- I think the vast majority of STEMish career men would welcome more women into the fold as true peers, but are somewhat aggravated by messages that we are somehow directly responsible for large cultural forces we have little/no power over.

Its been positive to see more girls get into sports as that message has permeated into the culture. Hopeful an equivalent message about women and STEM will percolate into the larger collective id.

Amount of training is not the reason. It's supply and demand. Training requirements reduce supply, but that's only part of it.

Not many people can play bagpipes, so supply is low. But not many people will pay to hear bagpipes, so demand is low, too. Bagpiping doesn't pay well.

Nearly everyone needs food cooked, so demand is high. But nearly everyone can cook, so supply is high, too. Cooking doesn't pay well.

Not many people can do surgery, so supply is low. Many people need surgery, so demand is high. Surgery pays well.

Supply and demand explains why surgeons make more than teachers, why basketball stars make more than nurses, and why programmers make more than janitors. It isn't about how hard something is or how noble it is. It's just supply and demand.

I agree that training requirements affect salary primarily by limiting supply. But I think the description of supply and demand above is inaccurate because of the many distortions in these markets, including teachers unions, monopsony providers/employers in public education, insurance company contracts, lack of price information, etc.

These market distortions affect the prices and thus the salaries in various ways. Teacher shortages show that the wage is not sensitive to the supply and demand for teachers. Do people shop around for price on needed surgeries? Do they even know the price before receiving the surgery? Do they even pay the price of the surgery? (usually paying some subsidized part of a contractually limited price).

Basketball stars show another market distortion, particularly in college basketball. The player salary is not governed by supply and demand, but by the cartel of college sports (though colleges do compete on non-salary benefits they provide...)

You could assert that these factors just inflate or reduce the supply or the demand, but it's not simply "lots of people want but few provide therefore it pays well".

> Elementary school teaching: a teaching certificate and a Master's degree

FTFY

Does any state require a Masters for elementary ed?

Generally only specialized teaching areas require a master's degree.

A Bachelors and a teacher training program w/ possible test is generally sufficient - and you can usually begin teaching with an interim/provisional certificate, and work on the certification as you go.

https://www.teacher.org/how-to-become/ https://www.alleducationschools.com/teacher-certification/

Supply and demand. Easier to become an elementary teacher, more qualified elementary teachers available compared to the need

I'm not sure if that's a good thing. the bar for elementary teachers might just be too low

>It's only "apples to oranges" if you're willing to beg the entire question. Why is elementary teaching less highly paid than university teaching? Why is nurse practitioning less highly paid than anaesthesiologizing?

Because of education level?

A university professor has a PHD. An elementary teacher has a bachelors degree.

If you think a PHD and a bachelors degree should be paid the same. That's perfectly fine, that's called communism. It's perfectly fine to be a communist.

This isn't quite right. People are paid such that the amount is enough to attract needed workers and less than the value those workers provide. Education isn't a critical factor except that it enables people to be more productive and therefore more desirable to employers.

As an example: a middle school dropout who self learned machine learning, became a master, published papers, worked at a successful startup etc, will likely be better paid than your average History PhD.

Calling it "apples to oranges" is overlooking how some fields are broadly underpaid, which often (though not always) overlaps with gender disparity. For example, primary and secondary school teaching is a 'traditionally female' field that gets massively underpaid compared to tertiary education, despite if anything being much more important to society.

Nope, not that, either: the supply of doctors, for instance, is deliberately restricted by the American Medical Association; whereas the supply of elementary teachers is not restricted by the CAEP. Supply and demand are still second-order effects here.

If the supply of doctors is restricted, then you'd expect them to get higher pay, and vice versa with teachers. I agree it is a secondary effect. The cost of training/education required to perform the job is bigger, though it ultimately has the same effect of reducing supply.

Were we to, say, stop the cap on H1-Bs in the medical profession, doctors' pay might migrate down towards teachers' and the OECD average (and US healthcare might be affordable).

The “underpay” of teachers is due to supply and demand.

> High school teachers should be paid much less than university professors.

Why?

I imagine you want to make the point that primary School education is more important than secondary School education (which may be true) and thus should be paid better.

I disagree with this in general, because I don't feel like the skills and knowledge needed to be a successful primary School educator are as difficult or unique as those needed to be a secondary School educator.

My reasoning is that a good percentage of the value that comes from primary School education is based around behavioural education, such as learning how to interact and behave with peers and teams. It also is a place where students learn authority and social heptarchy, and punishment and consequence. In addition to learning the foundations of school subjects.

In secondary education, it's assumed that the student has learned all that, and their attention will be focused on difficult study of each of their subjects. The professor should be an embodiment of that subject, with understanding beyond primary School educators. Likewise it's arguably more difficult to keep the attention of University students than primary students.

On the other hand (as in not in general), if someone was a truly exceptional primary educator / early life coach / babysitter, what have you, then the private sector would be a better place for them I imagine.