It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!

An interesting example of how an ideological conviction can outlast all evidence against it. From The real gap: fixing the gender pay divide from Korn Ferry.

The belief has existed for a long time that women work in a patriarchal world where men pay women less for the same work. This has been routinely and consistently been refuted for over thirty years all over the OECD. This study shows the same result as the others but with one difference. This is working off an incredibly large data set. No experiments here, this is straight-forward empirical observation.

New Korn Ferry Hay Group research shows that male-female pay disparity isn’t exactly as commonly portrayed. Tapping into its database of more than 20 million salaries at 25,000 organizations in 100 nations, the firm found that the gap is remarkably small—as low as 2.7% in France, for instance, or 1.4% in Australia across the globe, or .8% in Britain for like positions. The disparities the research found can be pegged to women still not getting access to the highest-paying jobs.

The study shows that gender pay disparities all but disappear if comparisons are made like for like, looking at individuals doing the same function in the same company.

There is no patriarchy. That is not to say that there are not random acts of discrimination against men and women. What it does say is that it is random, not systemic.

The fascinating thing is how the results of the Korn Ferry study are being cast. The original theory was that men were being paid more than women and that this was being done based on systemic discrimination against women.

All the other studies, consistent with Korn Ferry, have shown that there is no wage discrimination. Men and women choose different fields of endeavor, invest differently in their careers (amount of time committed and duration of time), and choose different industries. Men choose fields and industries that pay more, and they invest more time over longer durations than do women. Interestingly, women in countries with more legal protection and stronger cultural commitments towards egalitarianism demonstrate the greatest variance in choices.

Korn Ferry found the same thing. Women are paid the same wage for the same work but they choose (on average) different fields (and lower paying fields), they choose different industries, and they choose to invest less time and take more breaks in their career than do men.

In the freest and most egalitarian countries, on average, the fields which pay the most are thing-oriented (STEM, Engineering, construction, etc.) versus people-oriented (service jobs, retail, psychology, education, etc.); industries which pay the most tend to be dangerous (mining, timbering, policing, farming, etc.); and the positions which pay the most are the ones achieved by the longest hours over the longest periods of time. Men disproportionately choose those options compared to women.

So there is no systemic discrimination as had been hypothesized but there are individual choices which entail significant trade-offs in terms of interest, danger, and sacrifice. That's pretty much what we want. People are paid the most for the most dangerous and most difficult jobs, people are free to choose, and the system is non-discriminatory. That's not just progress, that's an incredible achievement. That's reason for celebration. Unless you are an ideologue and think you can make better decisions for people than they choose to make for themselves.

Peggy Hazard is the Korn Ferry Hay Group’s managing partner and co-lead for Advancing Women Worldwide Solutions. Her position depends on there being discrimination against women. How does she respond to the wonderful news that women are not being systematically discriminated against, are being paid the same wage for the same work, and are free to make the best choices that meet their own needs? She thinks women are making bad decisions and should make the decisions Hazard herself has not made but wants them to make. More pertinently, Hazard wants corporations to keep buying the consulting services she offers to solve a problem that her own company has shown does not exist. Company's should buy Korn Ferry solutions to get women to make career decisions different from the decisions they currently prefer.

"Organizations can better support women's progress in many ways," said Peggy Hazard, Korn Ferry Hay Group’s managing partner and co-lead for Advancing Women Worldwide Solutions. "Our research shows one key way to achieve wage parity is to ensure more women advance to senior managerial levels, including to CEO, board director, and C-suite executive positions. To get women there, we need to ensure that early, and throughout their careers, they receive mission-critical and complex assignments─and that they receive candid feedback about their performance. Both of these are essential to build the skills, experiences, and attributes most valued at the top."

She also said more women should be encouraged to enter higher-paying fields of science, technology, engineering, and medicine.

Fair enough. Hazard has an income to justify and services to sell. But let's not pretend that we are solving problems of systemic discrimination or that we are helping women make the decisions that best suit them.

As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"