For some years now, decades even, we’ve been pointing out that there isn’t, in fact, a gender pay gap. It’s most certainly true that there was, there was direct discrimination in employment against women. It’s simply one of those things that isn’t true any more.

What we actually have is a motherhood - or if you prefer, primary child carer - pay gap. The difference is that if employers are not discriminating against women to produce the observed difference in pay then action to stop employers discriminating will not move that observed difference in pay. If it is primary child care producing the gap then it is the perhaps more difficult societal change in who becomes the primary child carer within a child producing human unit - that thing we often call “a family”.

At which point further evidence of that original contention - it’s a child care pay gap:

Women in the United States continue to earn less than men, on average. Among full-time, year-round workers in 2019, women’s median annual earnings were 82% those of men.

The gender wage gap is narrower among younger workers nationally, and the gap varies across geographical areas. In fact, in 22 of 250 U.S. metropolitan areas, women under the age of 30 earn the same amount as or more than their male counterparts, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.

Interesting, especially when added to this:

First-time mothers are older in big cities and on the coasts, and younger in rural areas and in the Great Plains and the South. In New York and San Francisco, their average age is 31 and 32. In Todd County, S.D., and Zapata County, Tex., it’s half a generation earlier, at 20 and 21, according to the analysis, which was of all birth certificates in the United States since 1985 and nearly all for the five years prior.

The mapping of women under 30 outearning men near exactly coincides with that of average primagravidae being at or later than 30.

It’s about children and their care, not women specifically. Now, true, that does most often devolve to women and given the sexual dimorphism in our human species it might be some time before that changes.

However, science is not just about observation, it is to use observation to construct an hypothesis which can then be tested against further and different evidence to see whether it stands up. It’s even considered good practice for those who propose such an hypothesis to point to where evidence might be gathered to prove - as in the meaning of test - their hypothesis.

So, we shall do so. That glorious expansion of liberty which is marriage equality has expanded the number of same sex marriages. Some to many of those are having children by the usual variety of means biology makes available. A study of such families might well be able to identify the primary child carer in such and then look at wage incomes. If the result is that the primary child carer achieves a similar reduction in earning power as that gained by mothers in heterosexual relationships then that would be supportive of the claim that we have a child care, not women’s, pay gap.

It would even be interesting to see whether there is a difference in results across countries - especially between those that have free child care, sorry, taxpayer provided child care, and those that do not. Just to test whether that policy is a solution or not.

It is, of course, up to those who wish to shoot down our hypothesis to go and do that work. We look forward to discussing the results.