/sci/ - Science & Math

>>14846823
Why do you think women used to (and still do, to some extent) earn less?
A less productive individual will be paid less for his/her work.
So long as the pay is proportional to the value the worker adds, there is no problem in hiring women or, more generally, in hiring people who aren't nearly as competent as you would hope to.
That has been changing lately since women have been complaining about the "gender pay gap", as they call it.
If history is any indication, this won't end well. It is similar to the heyday of unionism. In the post-war period, labor unions became increasingly vociferous and asked for collective contracts that would guarantee the same wage both for the most skilled workers and for the least skilled ones. Basically this encouraged laziness since skilled workers saw no point in putting in the extra effort if there was no financial reward for it. This led to gross inefficiencies and ultimately there was an overhaul of the role played by trade unions in the Thatcher era. The welfare state was scaled down and collective bargaining was weakened. Competent workers went back to getting paid well, while incompetent workers were paid less or they were out of a job altogether.
We are currently experiencing another era of inefficient employment of the labor force. You can already see the consequences in the number of men who have decided to drop out of society altogether, or to put in the bare minimum of effort (The Economist ran an article about "quiet quitting" just recently). There simply aren't any meaningful financial rewards anymore now that women and minorities ask for the same pay as white men even when they do not contribute as much. So we will either see a conservative reaction to this tendencies or our societies will slowly crumble to dust over the weight of "equality" and "diversity".