The Equal Pay Madness Just Got Madder

By Alex Tabarrok. 

"In my post Equality Act 2010 I discussed the UK’s absolutely insane wage policy:

In short, supply and demand have been replaced by judges and labor boards with the authority to deem which jobs are “equal” and therefore should be paid equally….No one is alleging that male and female warehouse workers were paid unequally or that male and female retail workers were paid unequally or that there was any direct or indirect discrimination. The only claim is that warehouse workers, who are less likely to be female than retail workers, earn more than retail workers. And since these jobs have been judged “equal,” the company has violated Equality Act 2010.

…The warehouse workers were almost 50% female (47.25%). So females were not barred from the higher paying jobs. The fact that 77.5% of the retail workers were female suggests that retail work has special appeal to females relative to males and thus that there are compensating differentials. Any of the three female plaintiffs could have taken jobs in the warehouse. If the jobs are equal and the warehouse jobs pay more this is, on the plaintiffs’ theory, “puzzling”. [Or, as Ayn Rand would say, blank out.]

In fact, the court case reveals that Next was struggling to fill the warehouse positions and offered any retail employee—including the plaintiffs—the opportunity to switch to warehouse work. On cross-examination, one of the plaintiffs admitted that, given the unpleasant conditions in the warehouse—described by the court as “the drone of machinery,…vibration, alarm sirens and the screeching of machinery, wheels and rollers, continuously present in all areas”—the warehouse job “did not seem particularly attractive” compared to the greater autonomy and more appealing environment of the retail job. The plaintiff added that she would only have considered the warehouse job if it paid “a lot more money.”

Well, here is the update. The outgoing Keir Starmer government is trying to massively expand these laws. The “equal value” framework previously applied only to sex discrimination; under the proposed law, employees could also bring equal-value claims based on race and disability. Remember, these laws have nothing to do with discrimination—they are about demanding, at the point of a gun, that apples and oranges sell for the same price because they’re both fruit.

The new law would also establish an Equal Pay Regulation and Enforcement Unit. As I said, Orwellian.

See also my post, How Britain Become as Poor as Mississippi."

Bank Deregulation, New Businesses, and Race and Gender

From Jeffrey Miron. 

"Women and minorities start businesses at significantly lower rates than men and whites.

One study examines whether this disparity reflects, in part, access to financing, which

has long been recognized as a major obstacle to business success, particularly for racial minorities.

By measuring the availability of credit before and after passage of major banking bills, the study finds that

the deregulation of interstate banking in the United States between 1994 and 2021 narrowed gender and racial disparities in entrepreneurship by expanding and improving banking services, reducing discrimination in the financial market, and narrowing gaps in firm performance.

Once more, deregulation enables positive change through the free market."

The Soviet men who controlled the country weren’t always so keen on encouraging or even maintaining radical egalitarianism

See The World’s Greatest Feminist Experiment Was Not Where You’d Think: In “Motherland,” the journalist Julia Ioffe charts the Russian campaign to emancipate women — and the country’s failure to live up to that promise by Jennifer Szalai. Excerpt:

"But as “Motherland” also shows, the Soviet men who controlled the country weren’t always so keen on encouraging or even maintaining radical egalitarianism. And when they were intent on so-called equality, it was often to punish women because of their connection to men who happened to run afoul of the Kremlin. In Kazakhstan, the Akmolinsk Camp for Wives of Traitors to the Motherland was just one node in the sprawling network of the Gulag. Children born in captivity were sent to an orphanage where they were sometimes so neglected that they didn’t learn how to speak. One mother compared the sounds such children made to “the muted moans of pigeons.”

Having children, it turned out, would be a consistent obsession of the Soviet regime. Abortion was legalized, then outlawed, then legalized again. Stalin introduced a tax on childlessness. After the demographic disaster of World War II, the new superpower needed an expanding population. Ioffe notes that Stalin’s strategy for development relied mostly on “vast human sacrifice.” Men would make the big political decisions, while women would make more babies: “They would give up their sons for the country, pretend their children were heroes rather than cannon fodder, and when those sons fell in battle, they would have more.”

Alongside this official history, Ioffe traces a private one. One of her great-grandmothers survived a pogrom. Another, the pediatrician, was forced by the secret police to work at a military hospital during World War II. The women in her family would eventually learn that their stellar professional achievements did not mean a break from domestic work.

As the Soviet economy sputtered in the 1970s and ’80s, a dearth of consumer goods also made household tasks infinitely harder. It was impossible to procure disposable diapers or washing machines. (Politburo wives, by stark contrast, had access to special stores filled with otherwise scarce goods at discounted prices.) Women with Ph.D.s and full-time jobs spent their evenings pickling mushrooms and mending clothes. Even basic menstrual products were scarce."

Land ownership has NOT produced racial hierarchy, gender inequity, underdevelopment and environmental degradation

See ‘Land Power’ and ‘The Land Trap’: The Human Story Has Many Plots: Struggles over who can own land and its wealth have driven wars and changed societies by Edward Glaeser. Excerpts:

"Mr. Albertus also argues that the struggle over land ownership has produced “racial hierarchy, gender inequity, underdevelopment and environmental degradation.” Maybe. The conquest of the Americas and the use of enslaved labor for farming was indeed catastrophic for Africans and Native Americans, but Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and Idaho were the first four states to give women the vote. Farming the Amazon is still producing “environmental destruction on a massive scale” but, as Mr. Bird’s chapter on Singapore reminds us, development can soar without land as long as there are strong property rights and accessible, excellent schools."

"But even if we accept Mr. Albertus’s view that “our lives today are determined by the choices that were made when the land shifted hands” over the past two centuries, it does not follow that shifting land around is more effective an antipoverty tool than, say, investing in education or urban sanitation. Mr. Albertus’s own work, cited by Mr. Bird, finds that “land reform actually lowered levels of human capital accumulation” in Peru and that “under certain conditions it also has the potential to stunt urbanization, wealth accumulation, and ultimately education by encouraging land reform beneficiaries to remain in the countryside and employ their children on the farm rather than migrating to urban areas where opportunities for upward mobility are greater.”" 

"Missing from both books is a serious discussion about the connection between property rights and the value and use of land. The powers of a landowner can range from the almost full sovereignty enjoyed by a mighty feudal noble to the essentially nonexistent rights I have over the protected swampland outside my window. Over the past 60 years, the nature of land ownership in the U.S. has changed because land-use regulations have increasingly limited the right to build. In 1763, William Pitt the Elder trumpeted the rights of the small English landholder: “The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail—its roof may shake—the wind may blow through it—the storm may enter—the rain may enter—but the King of England cannot enter—all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.” That proud sentiment, linking freedom with land, feels increasingly untrue." 

The causal effect of economic freedom on female employment & education

By Robin Grier of Texas Tech.

"Abstract

While there are decades of evidence that economically free economies grow faster and are more productive than less free ones, there is less knowledge about the effect of economic freedom on groups that have traditionally been disadvantaged. I study the causal effects of large and sustained jumps in economic freedom on women's labor force participation and primary school enrollment. I find that these jumps have a positive and statistically significant effect in both cases–economic freedom is good for women's labor force opportunities and female education."

Top Ten Most Dangerous US Jobs and Percent Male

Tweet from Mark Perry.

 

Protection for Whom? The Origins of Protective Labor Laws for Women

States were more likely to pass labor laws purportedly meant to protect women when more voters stood to benefit economically from restricting women’s employment.

By Matthias Doepke, Hanno Foerster, Anne Hannusch, & Michèle Tertilt. Excerpts:

"These protective labor laws, enacted by almost all states, imposed work restrictions on women that did not apply to men. They included maximum working hours, bans on night work, seating requirements, weight-lifting limits, and minimum wage provisions. These were presented as measures to protect women’s health and well-being, but in practice, they often curtailed women’s access to employment and economic independence. Most remained in place until the civil rights era, when anti-discrimination legislation rendered gender-specific laws unconstitutional."

"the answer primarily lies not in social norms or gendered values but in economic incentives and shifting labor market dynamics. Particularly, these laws found support among specific segments of the population that benefited from reduced competition in the workforce."

"Protective labor legislation limited women’s employment, thereby increasing the income of households that depended primarily on male earnings."

"a crucial force behind the rise and fall of protective labor legislation was these changing concerns about labor market competition from women."

"we developed a model in which women and men (single or married) can participate in the labor market and vote on protective labor legislation. In this model, two household types are key: single lower-skilled men and married couples consisting of a lower-skilled husband and a stay-at-home wife. For these groups, household income depends entirely on the male earner, who benefits from the exclusion of women from competing jobs."

"households where women contribute to family income—single working women or dual-earner couples—and households with higher-skilled men are more likely to oppose protective labor laws. Higher-skilled men benefit when women enter the workforce because women often perform roles that support and enhance the productivity of higher-skilled jobs."

"the two household types favoring restrictions did constitute the majority of the voting population when protective labor laws were introduced. In contrast, when these laws were dismantled, the share of the population opposing them had regained the majority. Further analysis shows that states were more likely to pass restrictive labor laws when a larger share of their voting population consisted of households that would economically benefit from limiting women’s employment."

"states were more likely to support equal rights amendments when the proportion of households that stood to benefit from eliminating gender-based labor restrictions was larger."

"Our research does not find support for the claim that states where women gained the right to vote earlier were more likely to introduce protective legislation. This finding confirms that the primary reason protective labor laws were passed was not because women pushed for their own protection. Similarly, we found little support for the idea that organized labor played a decisive role in promoting these laws."

Matthias Doepke

London School of Economics, Northwestern University, and IZA—Institute of Labor Economics

Hanno Foerster

Boston College and IZA—Institute of Labor Economics

Anne Hannusch

University of Bonn and IZA—Institute of Labor Economics

Michèle Tertilt

University of Mannheim and IZA—Institute of Labor Economics

Why Do Women’s Razors Cost More? Putting the “Pink Tax” in Perspective

By Sam Branthoover.

"For decades, economists and journalists have discussed the “Pink Tax”: the idea that products marketed to women price higher than identical ones for men. In 1992, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs released a study asserting that women were routinely charged higher prices for haircuts, dry cleaning, and other services. Then-Mayor Bill de Blasio commissioned a second study in 2015, which found that women’s products were more expensive for 43 percent of a representative sample (this figure is slightly misleading: of 800 products with distinct male-female versions, fewer than 350 had higher prices for women). These studies influenced legislation in New York and California, aiming to ban gender-based price differences for similar goods and services.

But lawmakers and economists have missed a key question: why don’t women switch to the same products men use? If we assume they don’t switch and are worse off because of it, we’re also assuming women can’t make the best choices for themselves.

On the contrary, any sound economic explanation must assume that women are no less capable than men of making decisions that maximize their well-being. The so-called Pink Tax (to the exclusion of explicit taxes on feminine products) can be understood as a difference of cost, even for identical products. As I’ll show below, this approach also correctly predicts which types of products are likely to cost more for women. Legislation to “fix” this issue, as I’ll show, may actually harm female consumers more than help them.

Some Price Theory

Imagine a product that varies in certain features — it could be more or less “X,”  very “X,” or not very “X” at all. A potato could have a lot of bruises, or not a lot of bruises; it could be very brown, or barely brown. John approaches the potatoes and selects at random, not caring about these traits. As he continues picking, the average potato in his bag starts to look like the typical one: mid-brown, lightly bruised. But John doesn’t care about these characteristics. He cares only about one thing: is it a potato or not?

Jane, however, wants a more specific potato: mid-brown, and lightly bruised. She’s willing to spend time searching for her preferred potato. But as economics teaches us, costs are shared between buyers and sellers. A six-percent sales tax does not mean buyers pay exactly six percent more, and a $100,000 fine on pollution does not fall entirely on the producer. Even if all potatoes are identical, and every potato in the bin meets Jane’s specifications, John and Jane are effectively searching for different things. Jane’s potato must have certain characteristics. John’s potato must simply be a potato.

We can therefore model these two distinct markets, and evaluate what happens when a  “generic” good is replaced with a more “specific” good. Put another way, we shift from a consumer with John’s preferences to one with Jane’s, all else held equal. See below:

In the example above, an introduced “search cost” is shared by both consumers and producers, raising the equilibrium price compared to markets with lower search intensity.  Producers absorb part of this cost by investing in or renting assets that mitigate the “search” burden; for example, a potato producer may build a brand for a specific type of potato, or may package potatoes in ways that help consumers recognize the right potatoes sooner. Consumers absorb some of the search cost by increasing the reward to suppliers for providing a more correct product, paying a premium for a more suitable product.

As economists Klein, Crawford, and Alchian have described, consumers are willing to pay a premium to suppliers who fulfill expectations. Without the price premium, sellers are more induced to “cheat,” misidentifying their products to consumers.

Prices rise when they include added search costs. We should expect, then, slightly higher prices for products that women search for characteristics, while men do not. The aforementioned studies explicitly mention three products with the largest gender disparity: cosmetics (shampoo, etc.), haircuts, and dry cleaning. These are all products where men clearly search for more generic goods than women. It would be no rash generalization to describe men’s haircuts as “make it shorter,” and men’s shampoo choices as utterly indiscriminate of ingredients, specific use, or even scent. Two shampoos may have the same ingredients, but women’s shampoo might be branded more specifically (‘sulfate free,’ or ‘color protecting,’ or ‘all natural ingredients’) because they search relatively more.

But we needn’t rely only on the most obvious cases. Why, as one study shows, does a girl’s bicycle helmet have an equilibrium price higher than a nearly identical helmet for boys? One explanation is market segmentation — charging different groups according to their (presumably different) willingness to pay. But there’s another possibility: women face, and are willing to pay, higher search costs. 

Why women might have these preferences and be willing to pay a premium for them where men and boys are not — for example, to achieve a particular hair texture, to have a basket and a bell included on a bike, or because they really do enjoy using a pink product more than a black one — is not the economist’s to examine. It is enough to know women reveal the preference of being willing to search and pay slightly more for their particular, preferred potato. 

Consumer Welfare Implications

Legislation that bans price premiums for women’s products has predictable consequences. We can model the market for specific products resulting in a higher equilibrium price. I previously omitted this step for clarity, but show it below (along with a price ceiling) to illustrate the impact on consumer welfare.

Consumer surplus (a measure of how much satisfaction buyers gain from a purchase) shrinks from the blue triangle to the darkly shaded trapezoid.  Producer surplus also declines. A price ceiling might improve welfare if firms were mistakenly overpricing products for women. But, as shown earlier, that doesn’t appear to be the case.  Women tend to pay more for products they search for more intensively. Producers, in turn, invest in branding that reduces those search costs — like making the product pink or highlighting desirable traits more clearly. A price ceiling only creates a relative shortage, further shrinking women’s consumer surplus. 

Unless we assume women consistently fail to substitute away from more-expensive products they do not actually prefer, a price ceiling is unlikely to enhance their well-being."

The Political Economy of Protective Labor Laws for Women

From Tyler Cowen.

"From a new NBER working paper:

During the first half of the twentieth century, many US states enacted laws restricting women’s labor market opportunities, including maximum hours restrictions, minimum wage laws, and night-shift bans. The era of so-called protective labor laws came to an end in the 1960s as a result of civil rights reforms. In this paper, we investigate the political economy behind the rise and fall of these laws. We argue that the main driver behind protective labor laws was men’s desire to shield themselves from labor market competition. We spell out the mechanism through a politico-economic model in which singles and couples work in different sectors and vote on protective legislation. Restrictions are supported by single men and couples with male sole earners who compete with women for jobs. We show that the theory’s predictions for when protective legislation will be introduced are well supported by US state-level evidence.

That is by Matthias Doepke, Hanno Foerster, Anne Hannusch, and Michèle Tertilt."

Greater economic freedom for women leads to more well-being for women

See Seven additional countries eliminated gender discrimination for economic freedom from 2020 to 2022; 35 others continue to impose severe restrictions on women’s economic rights by Rosemarie Fike. She is an Instructor of Economics at Texas Christian University and a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute.

• This year’s Women and Progress report explains the construction of the Gender Disparity Index (GDI), which estimates the degree of gender disparity in economic freedom in each of 165 countries around the world.
• It also illustrates the effects of restricting female economic freedom.
• We compare the gender-adjusted measure of economic freedom to a broad sample of economic indicators of women’s well-being such as health, labor market, and educational outcomes. Countries are sorted into quartiles according to their gender-adjusted economic freedom scores and the average outcomes are compared across quartiles, from most free to least free. Countries with greater economic freedom tend to have more desirable scores on the measures of well-being.
• 15 countries moved towards gender parity under the law by permitting women to make more of their own economic choices. Gabon showed the greatest overall improvement since 2020, as it removed barriers to a woman’s ability to own property, open a bank account, head a household, work a job, and choose where to live. It also ended the legal requirement that a woman must obey her husband. In 2020 Gabon was among those countries with the most pervasive restrictions on women’s economic rights. It now has complete gender parity in economic freedom.
• There have been setbacks: Niger and Saudi Arabia both showed decreases in their overall GDI scores. Saudi Arabia reinstated formal restrictions on women’s mobility, removing a woman’s right to choose where to live or travel outside the country, while Niger imposed new barriers to women working industrial jobs.

A Good Man for U.S. Manufacturing Is Hard to Find

American factories are already having difficulty filling jobs, and not because of trade policy

By Allysia Finley. Excerpts:

"The labor force participation rate among working-age men is now about five percentage points lower than in the early 1980s. As a result, there are about 3.5 million fewer men between the ages of 25 and 54 in the workforce, and 1.3 million between the ages of 25 and 34, than there would have been were it not for this decline."

"So where have all the good working men gone? Some are subsisting on government benefits or living off their parents. About 17% of working-age men are on Medicaid, 7.4% on food stamps and 6.3% on Social Security (many claiming disability payouts), according to the Census Bureau. Many spend their days playing videogames and day-trading."

"Only about 41% of men complete a bachelor’s degree in four years, and about a quarter take more than six. Many high-paying vocations don’t require college degrees, but government subsidies and public K-12 schools nonetheless steer high-school students to that track."

"Federal student loans won’t pay for apprenticeships, but they will cover the cost (including living expenses) of worthless graduate degrees in community organizing, creative writing, tourism, dance and more. Rarely does one need an advanced degree to enter such fields"

"The unemployment rate among recent college grads with a sociology degree is 6.7% and their median wage is $45,000, according to the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Sociology grads could earn twice as much working on an auto assembly line, which pays on average $100,000 a year. Good gig, but not many want it."

"Only 31% of blue-collar workers feel that their type of work is respected"

Yes, women had access to credit before 1974

By Patricia Patnode of CEI.

"March is Women’s History Month, a time to acknowledge and celebrate many “firsts” for women in public life. One of those “firsts” is the ability for American women to open a credit card independently, without a husband or father’s cosignatory, following the passage of The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) by Congress in 1974. This bill prohibited discrimination in credit transactions based on sex or marital status and is generally considered a landmark for women’s financial independence. However, this is only partly true.

The ECOA made it illegal for banks to discriminate based on sex or marital status. The law didn’t grant women access to credit but, rather, formalized their ability to sue for discrimination. Much like women had been voting in American elections since the 1700s, before passage of the 19^th Amendment to the US Constitution, women had also been navigating loans, credit, and the financial system long before the 1974 law.

In the 19^th century, both single and married American women relied on local stores and small businesses for credit. These businesses often granted credit based on personal trust and reputation, allowing women to purchase necessary items even without ready cash. A charge account at a general store, restaurant, or similar establishment could be settled at the end of the week or paid periodically. Like in the TV show Cheers, at a place “where everybody knows your name,” it’s harder to skip out on a bill and easier for businesses to give grace to customers who need it. This non-mandated, localized credit access was particularly important to women.

Prior to the 1970s, marriage too often dictated the terms by which women accessed credit. Since married women’s property was also owned by their husbands, “only unmarried women could independently form contracts and engage in litigation…” the author of To Her Credit writes in her book examining the finances of women during America’s 18^th century Revolutionary period. She found that“[women in Boston and Newport] appeared in debt litigation as creditors and debtors in roughly equal proportions,” however, “women’s credit networks were predominantly local.” Women routinely made purchases on credit, signed contracts, participated in court cases, and settled debts. At that time, married women also commonly extended lines of credit to their unmarried friends.

A hallmark example of a Revolutionary-era woman navigating the financial system is Abigail Stoneman, a widow who opened and operated inns and teashops in New England in the 1700s. She also extended lines of credit to other business owners and her own customers. In fact, there are many documented appeals in local newspapers by creditors like Stoneman requesting repayment from debtors.

But credit access differed from state to state. For example, in 1848, the Married Woman’s Property Act passed in New York, and established that a woman was no longer liable for her husband’s debts, could enter contracts on her own, was able to collect rents or receive an inheritance in her own right, and could file a lawsuit on her own behalf. The act became a model for other states.

The rise of department stores and catalogs

By the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries came the emergence of department stores and mail-order clothing catalogs. Larger businesses were able to offer more formalized credit options, catering to women’s shopping experiences. The “charge plate,” akin to an in-store card, was somewhat of a predecessor to modern credit cards. Although single women faced more challenges in securing credit, they could still apply and receive credit by providing proof of financial stability. Over time, these store accounts, costly to maintain and collect on, gave way to portable credit cards managed by banks that could be used at other stores.

Leading up to the ECOA

In the early 1970s, women’s organizations gathered testimony from women nationwide describing their hassles receiving letters of credit and financial services from local banks. These letters were presented in a hearing before the National Commission on Consumer Finance in May 1972. This and subsequent hearings helped inform the 1974 bill.

Although the bill was passed, it did not guarantee that women or women-owned businesses would be considered creditworthy by banks. It merely allowed them to pursue legal recourse for discrimination based on sex.

Women’s banks

Still, in response to the need for women’s creditors, bank entrepreneurs opened a small number of women’s banks following the bill’s passage. The First Women’s Bank in New York City opened in 1975. Principal advocates for the ECOA Stephanie Lipscomb and Jeanne Hubbard were instrumental in its founding. Similarly, The Abigail Adams National Bank, originally known as the Women’s National Bank, was founded in 1977 in Washington, D.C.

Although both banks have since changed their names and pivoted their financial services away from primarily serving women, these banks helped challenge societal perceptions about women’s roles in the economy, enabling women to take control of their economic destinies and contribute more fully to the economy.

Women in finance

During Women’s History Month, it is important to recognize that women had been creatively and successfully navigating the financial system in the United States long before Congress intervened in the 1970s. This historical context underscores the resilience and ingenuity of generations of women who forged a path to success that included access to credit. The passage of the ECOA was a significant milestone, but it built upon a foundation of determined women who had already made substantial strides in business and entrepreneurship."

Why Are Girls Less Likely to Become Scientists?

Closing the gender gap in STEM jobs has proved difficult, perhaps because it has more to do with the priorities of men and women than with sexism. 

By William von Hippel. He is a social scientist in Australia. Excerpts:

"There’s growing evidence that girls and women aren’t pursuing STEM careers because they’d simply prefer not to. That is, that sex differences in the STEM workforce may largely be a product of sex differences in interests and priorities."

"if discrimination were preventing women from entering STEM fields, then women in countries with less gender equity, such as in the Middle East and South Asia, would surely be less likely to pursue STEM careers than women in countries with greater gender equity, such as in Scandinavia. After all, there must be more barriers for women who want to be scientists in Algeria than in Finland. In fact, we see the opposite: Women make up over 40% of the STEM graduates in Algeria and only 20% in Finland. This pattern can be seen around the world."

"Countries with less gender equity tend to be poor, and careers in STEM are one of the clearest routes to financial success anywhere. Women with strong quantitative skills in poor countries have good reason to enter the sciences to make a living. Women in relatively rich countries can afford to pursue less lucrative careers without risking a life of poverty."

"Why are women consistently more likely to become sociologists than chemical engineers?"

"A better explanation for lasting sex differences in various disciplines, I believe, is that they reflect the inherent attractiveness of different fields to men and women.

"women tend to be more interested in careers that involve working with other people while men prefer jobs that involve manipulating objects, whether it is a hammer or a computer." 

"Studies published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in 2016, for example, found that women were more responsive to pictures of people, while men were more responsive to pictures of things."

"the STEM fields with more men, such as engineering and computer science, focus on objects while those with more women, such as psychology and biomedicine, focus on people."

"girls on average outperformed boys in both STEM and non-STEM subjects but rarely pursued STEM in college if they were just as strong in other things."

"women are generally more likely than men to have skills in non-STEM areas, while men who are strong in math and science are often less skilled elsewhere."

"In every country, female students outperform male students in verbal tasks."

"It is likely, then, that girls who are strong in STEM subjects have more options for what careers to pursue, given their strengths elsewhere."

Increased profits may cause diversity efforts, not the other way around

See The Economics of DEI and Merit: A hiring approach that maximizes talent and rewards performance is the antidote to bias by Roland Fryer. Excerpt:

"Some say that diversity in and of itself is good for business. Consulting firms and activists have advised that adding women and minorities to a company, especially its board, will magically cause profits to grow. Credible research has always shown this was wishful thinking.

Frequently cited McKinsey studies have found a strong link between firms’ earnings and the racial and ethnic diversity of their executives. The consulting firm doesn’t make its data public, but in 2024 business researchers Jeremiah Green and John R.M. Hand were unable to replicate the results with data from S&P 500 companies. In 2020, Robin J. Ely and David A. Thomas further debunked the “add diversity and stir” approach in Harvard Business Review: “We know of no evidence to suggest that replacing, say, two or three white male directors with people from underrepresented groups is likely to enhance the profits of a Fortune 500 company.”

The available research focuses overwhelmingly on correlations between diversity and performance, rather than causation. Another Harvard Business Review article notes a link between businesses’ DEI rankings and various measures of their dynamism and culture, which in turn are linked to performance. But the authors concede that causation is “difficult to prove.” If the most successful businesses also face the most pressure to improve DEI metrics, it’s plausible that increased profits may cause diversity efforts, not the other way around."

Covid school closures hurt girls more than boys

See Long the Star Pupils, Girls Are Losing Ground to Boys: Girls have suffered greater test-score declines than boys by Matt Barnum of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Girls have lost ground in reading, math and science at a troubling rate, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of student test scores across the country.

Since 2019, girls’ test scores have dropped sharply, often to the lowest point in decades. Boys’ scores have also fallen during that time, but the decline among girls has been more severe. Boys now consistently outperform girls in math, after being roughly even or slightly ahead in the years before 2020. Girls still tend to perform better in reading, but their scores have dropped closer to boys.

The findings suggest that pandemic learning loss hit girls particularly hard in ways that haven’t been addressed by schools. The most recent test scores show that girls haven’t yet recovered. This comes following longstanding gains for girls and women in educational attainment.

Teachers, parents and education researchers aren’t sure what is driving the gender gap in learning loss, but some suspect the rise in behavior problems during the pandemic years prompted teachers to pay more attention to boys, who tend to act out more in class. Another factor may be the caregiving and household responsibilities many girls took on during and after the pandemic, sapping their time and energy for school."

"Shutting down schools might have hurt girls more because they tend to do better in school generally, said David Figlio, a professor of economics and education at the University of Rochester who has studied gender gaps in education. “Girls have a comparative advantage in school and you take schools away, they’ll suffer more,” he added.

Another hypothesis is that girls took on more household duties during the pandemic—including taking care of younger siblings—so were less able to focus on school. 

On some tests, this gender gap in learning loss was larger in later grades and in math, the Journal’s analysis found."