Discrimination and the free market: hardly a piece of cake

We read this week that a judge has ruled that a Christian-run bakery discriminated against a gay customer by refusing to make a cake with a pro-gay marriage slogan. I’m uncomfortable with this particular legislation. Some people have been claiming that such a ruling is a victory for anti-discrimination proponents. The irony seems lost on them – that there is still discrimination going on – it’s just that in this case the discrimination is against the Christian couple running the cake shop. The Christian couple’s view on homosexuality isn't one I share, but I defend their right to choose to run their business according to their own religious beliefs and values, and in this case the State should do likewise.

Disapproving customers are free to walk away and shop elsewhere. They are even free to share their disapproval on social media and encourage others to join them in shopping elsewhere. Such responses are powerful in business, because they put pressure on socially undesirable behaviour, and they penalise discriminatory business owners with lost custom, diminished profits, and in extreme cases, bankruptcy.

Any law that makes it illegal to run a business according to your religious beliefs is a law that infringes on the liberties of the business owners in a way that is, in my view, socially undesirable. Saying that, however, doesn’t mean I think all anti-discrimination laws are undesirable - far from it. They just need to be applied more prudently.

As always, society involves tension between a) accommodating people's right to hold views and beliefs, and b) protecting others from unwanted discrimination. It is probably socially desirable for a racist café owner who wants to put a 'No Blacks' sign on his door to be forced not to discriminate. But at the other end of the spectrum it is also socially desirable for another café owner to be allowed to discriminate against under 65s by offering a pensioner discount on Wednesdays and Thursdays. In this case, I prefer the café owner's right to introduce pensioner discounts over any societal claims that under 65s are being discriminated against.

The question the cake shop case elicits is where on that spectrum do religious views sit? I think people's religious views should not be legislated against in business such that their freedoms are encroached upon in ways that are unacceptable. It's quite clear to me that if the choice is between a) forcing a businessperson to make/sell a good they do not wish to, or b) compelling a dissatisfied customer to use another business, it's a no-brainer that society should prefer the latter. A law that effectively wants to commandeer someone's bodies and cake-making facilities is to me far more repugnant than the offence these Christian bakers are supposed to have committed.

One final point: the market does a very good job of weeding out discrimination. Suppose racist Jim opened up a shop in 1960s apartheid South Africa but wouldn't serve any of the majority blacks - he obviously shoots himself in the foot because his restricts his trade options to a minority few and excludes the majority of potential customers.

In short, in a free market it pays not to unfairly discriminate, because whether on large scale or a small one you're going to limit your potential custom. The more socially undesirable your discrimination, or the more people your discrimination negatively impacts, the worse it will be for you. It is no coincidence that the time at which humans started to trade was also the time that we started to become more civilised and improved our methods of co-existence.

To be able to trade in any age, and in particular, the modern age, you need to be able to think of others; firstly, by coming up with something (goods, services, entertainment) that others want; and secondly, by being honest, ethical, friendly, and developing a good reputation for your business. Far from being a vortex of selfish, uncaring and unethical behaviour, free markets necessitate qualities that make trade conducive, with your success dependent (in most cases) on your being a reputable person who welcomes all and treats everyone well.

So who did cook Adam Smith's dinner then?

The portrait of Adam Smith’s mother above has been published here with the kind permission of her owner Rory Cunningham

Much excitement over in Grauniadland as a new book comes out talking about why that economically rational man so beloved of us neoliberals could not ever be the economically rational woman. Because, you know, women do all that caring and cleaning and stuff for love, not for reasons of calculated rational self-interest:

But a polemical and entertaining new book by journalist Katrine Marçal suggests that Economic Man has another major shortcoming: he’s not, and never could be, a woman.

Hmm. The book's blurb says:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest When Adam Smith wrote that all our actions stem from self-interest and the world turns because of financial gain he brought to life 'economic man'. Selfish and cynical, economic man has dominated our thinking ever since and his influence has spread from the market to how we shop, work and date. But every night Adam Smith's mother served him his dinner, not out of self-interest but out of love. Today, our economics focuses on self-interest and excludes all other motivations. It disregards the unpaid work of mothering, caring, cleaning and cooking. It insists that if women are paid less, then that's because their labour is worth less - how could it be otherwise? Economics has told us a story about how the world works and we have swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. Now it's time to change the story. In this courageous look at the mess we're in, Katrine Marcal tackles the biggest myth of our time and invites us to kick out economic man once and for all.

The contention is entirely poppycock of course. For we can only make sense of gender roles and how they have changed within that very concept of economic rationality. The work of Gary Becker explores this world, where the decision to form a family for example, is explained in those rational economic terms. In a world reliant upon human muscle power to feed itself (ie, all of history until the tractor) there was obviously going to be a gender divide in who did what. And as the biologists tell us it really does take two to raise a family (historically one agricultural labourer could produce enough in a year to feed 1.7 to 2.3 people in total). So many other things about men and women only make sense if there is a division of labour (as Smith repeatedly pointed out, this is the basis of wealth creation) and trade in the subsequent produce. "Hunter Gatherer" as a decription of pre-agriculture societies is in itself a gender distinction of roles on the grounds of comparative advantage (which is all about David Ricardo).

We might also look at the work of Amartya Sen and Joe Stiglitz on the Sarkozy Commission. One of the questions they considered is what is the economic value of that unpaid household production that women tend to do? Given that it is undifferentiated labour (while there is that gender divide the specialisation and division rarely extends beyond two people) then it should be valued at the undifferentiated labour rate: minimum wage.

So two of the founding figures of economics address exactly this point, Smith and Ricardo, three Nobel Laureates point out the implications and then some journalist comes along to shout that of course economic rationality doesn't apply to women?

Yes, we'll probably file that under poppycock.

Quite apart from anything else it's impossible to explain the changes in society in the past century without using that structure of economic rationality. Why have fertility levels fallen so much? Because children now generally survive into adulthood, the name of the game is to have grandchildren, thus one needs fewer children to have them. Why have male happiness rates stayed largely static while female ones have fallen as they gain ever more choice over their lives? Because having more choices means that the opportunity cost of making any single one of them rises. Why have female paid working hours risen? Because automation has meant that the gender division of labour based upon muscle power is no longer useful.

You simply cannot explain this modern world without that assumption that we're all, men and women together, acting as economically rational beings to at least some extent. For, as Marx pointed out, the level of technology determines social relations: the inventions of the reasonable cooker, the microwave, the vacuum cleaner, the washing machine, the steam iron and so on quite killed off the servant class just as one example.

Sorry, but the concept that there's a male world which is economically rational and a female one that isn't is simply poppycock. Otherwise we wouldn't be in a world where one female journalist writes about a book by another one instead of them both being tied to the domestic treadmill in that game of producing grandchildren.

Non-discrimination laws matter least in helping women advance

On January 12^th, the International Labour Organization – a specialized agency of the United Nations – published its global report “Gaining Momentum: Women in Business and Management.” The report -

looks at the most recent statistics and information at a global level, and provides a unique insight into the experiences, realities and views of companies in developing countries.

It aims to create greater understanding of the barriers to women’s advancement in business and management. It points to possible ways of tackling the issue, highlighting good practices among private sector businesses and organizations that represent them.

Unlike a lot of reports that focus on the underrepresentation of women in the workforce, the ILO’s puts a refreshing emphasis on facts and figures, rather than resting on the assumption that all inequality comes down to inherent sexism on the part of male employers.

The data it compiles provides a huge range of insight into the state of female involvement in different areas of public life - exploring why less than 5 percent of CEOs are women while also explaining how a third of the world's enterprises have come to be run by women.

But the most telling table in the report looks at "company respondents to the ILO company survey conducted across developing regions" who "ranked what they considered the most significant barriers in order of priority" to women's leadership and promotion:

It will be surprising (dare I say frustrating) for many people to learn that the top two ranked barriers to women's leadership had everything to do with traditional views of women in society and the their role in the family unit, and nothing to do with employer discrimination (inherent gender bias ranks 12th on the list!).

It often seems in western society that radical gender equality advocates want the reason for gender inequalities - especially in the workforce - to be sexism. To be honest, I'm somewhat sympathetic to what, I assume, is their reasoning. If inequality in the workforce is mainly driven by something as awful as sexism, then we can shout about it, legislate against it, demand board quotas, demand companies publicise payroll figures according to gender. Combined, we can legislate and ban the discrimination away.

But this just isn't the case: all regions in the ILO's survey, "identified inadequate labour and non-discrimination laws as the least significant barrier" to women leadership and promotion. (Bolded is my emphasis.)

In places like the UK, gender inequality has very little to do with male bias - after all, women in full-time work aged between 22 - 39 are now, on average, are earning 1.1 percent more than their male counterparts. The reality is that women's life choices are determining how far they succeed in their career, including the kind of degree they pursue, when and how they go about having kids, and how long they spend out of the work force.

We shouldn't harp or judge women for the choices they decide to make - different people have different priorities, and that's okay - but if we want to attack the institutionalised sexism that still exists in our culture today, it would be far more productive to target the teaching, training, and conditioning of women to become 'mothers and wives' than to go after the employers who, based on all recent evidence, seem to be giving women an equal and fair shot at having a career.

That's a big ask, I know. Solving sexism by reforming ourselves and our traditions will be a big change from legislating things.

Interrogating the evidence: women in academia

Lots of women have experienced individual instances of discrimination in academic settings. Women are underrepresented, relative to their half of the population, in some academic fields. Most people naturally conclude that one reason women are underrepresented is either (a) direct discrimination or (b) women being dissuaded from entering due to perceptions of an unwelcoming 'culture of discrimination'. A new paper argues that neither is a plausible explanation in philosophy, one of the fields most heavily criticised for its relative dearth of women. Authors Neven Sesardic and Rafael de Clercq, in the paper "Women in Philosophy: Problems with the Discrimination Hypothesis" present a strong case that there may well be bias in favour of women in the academic philosophy hiring process, with institutions going out of their way to try and find qualified women for positions if they can.

They point to a raft of previous work:

[At the University of Western Ontario 1991-1999] On average: 5.4% of female applicants were appointed compared to 2.9% of male applicants; 21.7% of female applicants were interviewed compared to 15% of male applicants; and 24.9% of female applicants who were interviewed were hired whereas 19.2% of men who were interviewed were appointed. Again, the results in each of the years are remarkably consistent. Women had almost twice the chance of being hired as did men.[9]

Similar results were obtained in a recent comprehensive study commissioned by the U.S. Congress to assess gender differences in the careers of science, engineering, and mathematics faculty—the area with the highest underrepresentation of women.[10] Conducted under the auspices of the National Research Council, Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty included two surveys of major research universities, focusing on almost five hundred departments and more than eighteen hundred faculty members.

The authors reported that among those interviewed for tenure-track or tenured positions, the percentage of women interviewed was higher than the percentage of women who applied for those positions, and that tenure-track women in all disciplines received a percentage of first offers that was greater than their overall percentage in the interview pool.[11] The situation was the same with tenured positions in all disciplines except biology.

They attack the anecdotal evidence of discrimination presented in popular debate around the issue, and suggest that rather than discrimination either at the university level or perceptions of discrimination, biology and culture are to blame. Women end up, for whatever reason, with skill sets and preferences that don't favour the hard sciences and philosophy.

They document that existing studies showing bias have been overturned:

After re-examining the analyses, Nature has concluded that "[a study finding gender bias in journal acceptance of article submissions] can no longer be said to offer compelling evidence of a role for gender bias in single-blind peer review. In addition, upon closer examination of the papers listed in PubMed on gender bias and peer review, we cannot findother strong studies that support this claim. Thus, we no longer stand by the statement in the fourth paragraph of the Editorial, that double-blind peer review reduces bias against authors with female first names."[32]

It looks at evidence on research grant applications in the UK:

The authors looked at 1,741 grant applications to the Wellcome Trust and 1,126 grant applications to the Medical Research Council (in the UK). They concluded that “this study has shown no evidence of discrimination against women.”[35]

And across the developed world:

More recently, Ulf Sandström and Martin Hällsten investigated 280 grant applications submitted to the Swedish Medical Research Council in 2004.[36] Their conclusion is that “female principal investigators receive a 10% bonus on scores.”[37] More generally, Ceci and Williams report that “the weight of the evidence overwhelmingly points to a gender-fair review process” in grant funding.[38] Their conclusion is based on a number of smaller studies from different countries (including the abovementioned study by Grant et al.) as well as on six large-scale studies, including one by Herbert W. Marsh et al. that “found no significant gender differences in peer reviews of grant applications.”[39]

There is a huge amount more by way of evidence for their conclusion that neither (a) nor (b) is substantially true. Men and women sometimes want different things, and that's OK.

Men are not 'over', women are not discriminated against

In what seems to me slightly contradictory, two popular modern memes hold that, firstly, we are experiencing 'the end of men', who are steadily being eclipsed by women in many levels of academia, areas of the economy and so on; and secondly that women are discriminated against in the labour market, which is why they only earn around three quarters as much as men on average per hour. A 2013 paper by Kingsley Browne in the Boston University Law Review challenges both of these claims, arguing that the dominance women enjoy in many areas of society refutes the idea they are discriminated against, but their relative scarcity in other areas shows how men are still not 'over'. He explains this discrepancy between sectors to differences in preferences and characteristics between the sexes, differences he believes are biologically caused.

Common examples of perceived workplace inequality – the “glass ceiling,” the “gender gap” in compensation, and occupational segregation, among others – cannot be well understood if the explanation proffered for their existence is limited exclusively to social causes such as discrimination and sexist socialization.

Males and females have, on average, different sets of talents, tastes, and interests, which cause them to select somewhat different occupations and exhibit somewhat different workplace behaviors. Some of these sex differences have biological roots. Temperamental sex differences are found in competitiveness, dominance seeking, risk taking, and nurturance, with females tending to be more “person oriented” and males more “thing oriented.”

The sexes also differ in a variety of cognitive traits, including various spatial, verbal, mathematical, and mechanical abilities. Although social influences can be important, these social influences operate on (and were in fact created by) sexually dimorphic minds.

As I have written before, even if the very substantial work-related differences between men and women are socially constructed, satisfying their preferences as they are, rather than as an egalitarian might want them to be, makes men and women best off. I have also written how the gender wage gap isn't evidence for firm discrimination between the genders, because it is entirely explained by women's decisions (to take safer, more satisfying jobs, to work lower hours and to take substantial time out of the workforce).

He points out that women have recently come to dominate many high status fields and that most of the gender wage gap is between, not within, professions. Taken together, he argues there is no general 'glass ceiling', although of course there are many individual instances of discrimination.

In many respects, however, women have made breathtaking advances in the past several decades. Professions such as law and medicine are reaching parity among new entrants, and women represent over 60% of newly enrolled pharmacy students and over 75% of new veterinarians.

Even within fields in which men predominate generally, such as science, technology and engineering, there are interesting variations: women are underrepresented in metallurgical and mechanical engineering but much closer to parity in biomedicine and bioengineering.

And he gives strong evidence for differences between men and women in: competitiveness, which are not easily explained by 'stereotype threat' given that they start very early and only appear in specific sorts of high pressure competition; risk-taking (boys and men take more risk); interest in children (girls and women show more of it); spatial reasoning ability (men excel); verbal ability (women excel); and occupational interests.

Whether these are biological or social they massively affect the fields that women want to enter and the ones they can do well in. And this is OK! It makes people happier to do jobs (including work in the home) they want to do and jobs they are good at. It's OK for our labour markets to reflect this—it makes us better off overall.

Free movement and discrimination: the case of football

The more you open markets up, the less discrimination you get on grounds of 'taste' (racism). The stuff left over is usually 'statistical' (i.e. where certain groups are different in their average levels of job-relevant criteria). There was already a great paper showing this for the Fantasy Premier League (which I play avidly), but now there's also one for the real Premiership! Pierre Deschamps and José de Sousa look at the impact of the 1995 Bosman Ruling on the gap between black and white footballer wages in the English league. They find that when only 20 clubs competed for their skills, black players were underpaid relative to white ones, indicating that owners were able to indulge their preference against non-whites (or indulge their fans' preferences).

But once the whole of Europe were effectively on an equal footing, blacks became highly mobile and garnered equal pay for their efforts:

This paper assesses the impact of labor mobility on racial discrimination. We present an equilibrium search model that reveals an inverted U-shaped relationship between labor mobility and race-based wage differentials. We explore this relationship empirically with an exogenous mobility shock on the European soccer labor market. The Bosman ruling by the European Court of Justice in 1995 lifted restrictions on soccer player mobility.

Using a panel of all clubs in the English first division from 1981 to 2008, we compare the pre- and post-Bosman ruling market to identify the causal effect of intensified mobility on race-based wage differentials. Consistent with a taste-based explanation, we find evidence that increasing labor market mobility decreases racial discrimination.

The figure below shows how the 'turnover' (i.e. churn between clubs) of black English players jumped when European markets opened up. Market freedoms; exit; a sort of 'voting with their feet', outperformed voice in bringing equality. And we know from ASI research that this did not harm the English national team.

This is in line with a lot of what we have been saying recently—markets are a good way to bring about justice!

Don’t worry about Brand’s sexism – worry that he’s the new poster child for the left

I don’t throw around words like racism and sexism. Not because they don’t exist – on the contrary, I recognise both ‘isms’ as serious problems that plague different parts of the world to different degrees on a day-to-day basis. Racial and gender prejudices are the most heinous of crimes, and that’s why the accusation of such things must be used with thought and caution; to levy the words at a Republican voter or someone who points out the real numbers behind the ‘equal pay’ myth takes away from the seriousness of the words. I wasn’t surprised to wake up this morning, however, and read the many headlines that accused Russell Brand of being sexist. During his appearance on BBC Question Time last night, Brand got a bit carried away with the ‘confrontation game’ and wound up in hot water with his fellow, female panellists:

As communities minister Penny Mordaunt praised firefighters, Mr Brand interrupted, saying: "Pay their pensions then, love. Excuse the sexist language, I'm working on it."

This isn’t the first time Brand has been accused of ‘lazy sexism’ – he’s gotten in trouble, multiple times, for objectifying professional women he encounters, and many have noted that much of his humour stems from humiliating women in personal, direct ways.

Was last night another addition to the sexist Brandwagon? Probably not. Putting cultural differences aside, [In the States, calling any woman who is not in fact your love, ‘luv’, would be considered deeply unacceptable.] I think it’s fairly obvious that Brand was speaking casually, and arguably being a bully- but without any sexist intent. Perhaps someone should have flagged up to him (or written on that note card he seemed so attached to) that when you’re on a world-renowned platform with lots of elected officials, you try a little harder to sound more professional.

What about the other accusations? Is Brand a sexist at heart? Honestly, I don’t know. Brand’s a comedian. He makes jokes about women. Presumably he does this, not because he wants to preach his sexist manifesto, but because people laugh. Men, and women, laugh at jokes about women. Depending on the joke, I may or may not laugh along with them. Having researched some of Brand's previous jokes, there's no doubt that some of them cross the line; at which point, we should be able to get up and walk out, turn off the TV, tune him out and not give credence to his remarks.

But now we’re getting to the real problem – which is not his humour(less?) remarks, but rather that Brand, along with his jokes, have been given a huge political platform to be taken seriously by his fans and the public at large…and it’s obvious that when it comes to women, and everything else, the man has no idea what he’s talking about.

Clearly unable to come up with any stat about Britain’s population growth or housing/land availability when asked to make the case for immigration (there are some great stats out there, by the way, in favour of this argument), Brand decided to go on a loud, but not always so coherent, rant about bankers’ bonuses and why the City is ‘bad’, whatever that means. His only evidence that more redistribution of wealth would help those at the bottom was that his bank account was big enough to handle a cut, and when asked if he would actually try to put into practice what he preached (ie: stand for Parliament), the answer was pretty straight-forward: no.

This, my friends, is not just a comedian with an opinion. He is the new poster-child for the left, in the UK and beyond. He is being given the highest platforms to discuss his views and opinions, and despite his attempt at anti-establishment rhetoric, almost every policy he promotes – if you can be generous enough to call them that – advocates heavy government intervention, centralised redistribution, state-funded everything, and heavy emphasis on paternalism and left-wing policy.

Brand’s political stardom is going to backfire, but it’s hard to know who will suffer. Either, Brand will continue to slip and slide on national television, further associating the left (to their despair) with his radical, inarticulate rants; or he’ll wise up, graduate from one note card to three, cut back on the lady jokes and actually have a shot at convincing a few more people that his bank account is the only number you need to cite when reforming the UK’s buckling welfare structure. The former would be a spectacle; the latter would be nothing to luv.

Sometimes men and women want different things

Sometimes men and women want different things. Their actions in labour markets are one example of this. That's OK, even if it results from socially constructed gender roles, so long as it leads to good lives for both genders. One recent example of where this might be the case comes in a new paper studying the mathematically gifted. (Hat tip to Stephen Hsu).

Two cohorts of intellectually talented 13-year-olds were identified in the 1970s (1972–1974 and 1976–1978) as being in the top 1% of mathematical reasoning ability (1,037 males, 613 females). About four decades later, data on their careers, accomplishments, psychological well-being, families, and life preferences and priorities were collected.

Their accomplishments far exceeded base-rate expectations: Across the two cohorts, 4.1% had earned tenure at a major research university, 2.3% were top executives at “name brand” or Fortune 500 companies, and 2.4% were attorneys at major firms or organizations; participants had published 85 books and 7,572 refereed articles, secured 681 patents, and amassed $358 million in grants.

For both males and females, mathematical precocity early in life predicts later creative contributions and leadership in critical occupational roles. On average, males had incomes much greater than their spouses’, whereas females had incomes slightly lower than their spouses’. Salient sex differences that paralleled the differential career outcomes of the male and female participants were found in lifestyle preferences and priorities and in time allocation.

Men and women differed widely on a large number of metrics. Particularly, men, much more than women wanted high pay, risk taking, merit-based compensation and, work involving physical objects. On the other hand the top three things women valued more than men were, in order: working no more than 40 hours a week, working no more than 50 hours a week, and working no more than 60 hours a week.

It's OK for people to have different preferences, and it's OK for those preferences to differ not just within groups but across groups. That's because satisfying people's job preferences is what gives them general satisfaction and happiness with their job (shock! horror!) Some people may want men and women to be more alike, and that's fine, but we should do this keeping in mind the costs that may impose on both groups.

Markets make us better people

One of the most common objections to market-based societies is that they erode non-market motivations to doing good. Critics, with this objection, say that although markets can in some areas latch onto greed and turn it to society's benefit in some areas ("It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest") they can also pervert and corrupt existing motivations in domains where markets are inappropriate. Consider blood donations: many argue that if you start paying for blood donations then people will stop seeing them as a good deed but as a market activity, and lose their 'intrinsic motivation' to give blood. Overall you might get less blood, or less good blood than before, even though you're now spending money to get it. Back in 2012, Harvard communitarian political philosopher Michael Sandel (famous for his online lectures), wrote a hugely popular book What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets making roughly these arguments (read a wonderful review here).

These questions are discussed widely, but what's weird is they tend to be tackled mainly with a priori thought experiment arguments like mine about blood, above, and anecdotes, even though they are empirical questions. We can actually test whether you get less or worse blood when you pay for it! (You don't) We can test whether people are less pro-social when you add extra market institutions!

A new paper by Björn Bartling, Roberto Weber and Lan Yao, "Do Markets Erode Social Responsibility?", in the Quarterly Journal of Economics tries to do as much:

This paper studies whether concerns for social responsibility persist in repeated market interaction. We develop a laboratory product market, in which socially responsible behavior by firms and consumers involves incurring additional production costs to mitigate potential negative externalities imposed on individuals otherwise uninvolved with the market.

The data from Study 1, conducted in Switzerland, show, first, that there is a non-trivial share of socially responsible products supplied and demanded in all our market conditions, and that—importantly—the market share of the fair product is stable over time in all conditions.

Second, the socially responsible product, which costs more to produce, sells at a price premium that persists with market experience. In most cases, this price premium increases over time, suggesting that consumers’ willingness to pay for socially responsible products is not eliminated with repeated market interaction. Third, we show that individual-level market behavior is consistent with a preference for positive social impact, though such concerns are heterogeneous.

In other words: markets do not erode existing pro-social motivation; they complement it.

Can we stop talking about the alleged 'gender wage gap' now?

Many are boasting good news on the ‘gender wage gap’—I agree, it’s great news: the Office for National Statistics’ findings offer more proof that wage gaps have very little to do with gender, and much more to do with choices each gender is prone to make. From the BBC:

The average full-time pay gap between men and women is at its narrowest since comparative records began in 1997, official figures show.

The difference stood at 9.4% in April compared with 10% a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, a gap of about £100 a week.

This as well:

Hourly earnings figures reveal that, in April 2014, women working for more than 30 hours a week were actually paid 1.1% more than men in the 22 to 29 age bracket and, for the first time were also paid more in the 30 to 39 age bracket…

…The government said that, from next year, it was extending the rights for shared parental leave. It had also invested in training and mentoring for women to move into higher skilled, higher paid jobs, and guidance to women looking to compare their salaries with male counterparts.

Women, from the start of their careers, are now earning a higher salary than men; and, if they choose to make the decision to stay in the work force, they are more likely to be promoted than their male counterparts as well.The real gap, it seems, is not between women and men, but between mothers and child-less women. Leaving a job early on in one's career or for an extended period of time to have children will impact a women’s salary when she returns to the work force.

As this is the case, I think the government is probably right to extend rights for shared parental leave (though the money put into training will surely be a waste; women who are ambitious and attracted to careers in science, business, and formerly male-dominated sectors aren’t having much trouble pursuing them). But anything legislated from the top-down can only go so far to change cultural opinions that have been in place for centuries about the role of women and the household.

In reality, women’s choice in their private and home lives will be the greatest determinate as to what further changes we see in wage gaps. It seems there's evidence that good economic climates actually lead more women to stay at home with their kids rather to go out and get jobs - at the same time, we are witnessing an increase in stay-at-home-dads, which, most likely, has multiple reasoning to it: more women are demanding to work, and more men feel comfortable making the choice to stay home.

Either way, it seems there is no obvious discrimination between men and women when they enter the work place; as far the element of motherhood is concerned, we should be less focused on the numbers and far more focused on ensuring that women are not being socially pressured, either way, to make any decision that is not completely their own.