Isn't there a study that said women ask for pay raises at the same rate as men, but they are granted them less often?
> In four studies, Bowles and collaborators from Carnegie Mellon found that people penalized women who initiated negotiations for higher compensation more than they did men. The effect held whether they saw the negotiation on video or read about it on paper, whether they viewed it from a disinterested third-party perspective or imagined themselves as senior managers in a corporation evaluating an internal candidate. Even women penalized the women who initiated the conversation, though they also penalized the men who did so. They just didn’t seem to like seeing someone ask for more money.
Some things can only really be tested in artificial environments.
What exactly do you think will be tested in that artificial environment when the environment itself (with what I'd hazard to guess quite a list of specifics, many of the "subtle and implicit, but influential" kind) is a central variable of the test?
If an observational study of this kind is deemed hard/improbable/impossible to set up - how hard do you think it is to get the artificial setup right? To account for - or even identify - all variables and preconditions? This is so easy to mess up and end up with basically meaningless data. (Yeah, I know - that doesn't mean it won't be published. Everybody raise your hands and shout "Replication Crisis"! :) )