In this episode of Trigonometry, we talk to economist and author Jonathan Pieper about the impact of the gender pay gap on real-world wage differences between men and women, and why it matters. We also talk about the lesbian wage premium and why lesbians make more than straight women.
00:00:30.000hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kissin and this is the
00:00:42.120show for you if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing
00:00:46.860about at trigonometry we don't pretend to be the experts we ask the experts
00:00:52.040so what can you tell us about the impact of the differences between men and women
00:01:00.780on things like the real world stuff like the gender pay gap for example
00:01:05.300so this wasn't this talk wasn't recorded I probably should record it at some point but
00:01:10.860I gave a talk for the Adam Smith Institute back in December and I talked a little bit
00:01:15.300about where this kind of wage gap comes from and I hope I get all the details of the study right
00:01:19.420But they were looking at people who scored very high on quantitative measures, like the SAT, men and women, who scored very, very high.
00:01:27.740And they were looking at this kind of elite intellectual group.
00:01:30.660And they asked the men and the women in this group, how many hours a week would you work optimally if you were, you know, if you had your druthers, which I don't know what druthers are, but they are a thing that you can have.
00:01:41.620So if you had your druthers, how much, you know, how many hours a week would you work?
00:01:45.040And I think far fewer women, it's like 30 or 40% fewer women,
00:01:49.700said that they would work more than 40 hours a week.
00:01:52.360And so if you ask women, I think this is the major difference here.
00:01:55.260If you ask women, how much would you like to work in a week
00:01:59.260and how much time would you like to spend with your family
00:02:00.900and how much time would you like to spend with your kids,
00:02:02.920women say, on average, I would like to spend more time with my family
00:02:06.060and my kids and less time working than men say that they would like to.
00:02:12.480And so that's kind of a, it's not very well appreciated,
00:02:17.640but I do think it comes down a lot to personal preferences.
00:02:22.120And men are also more willing to kind of work on call.
00:02:25.900You know, there was this study that was done which showed that Uber drivers,
00:02:29.020like men, were making 9% more as Uber drivers than women were
00:02:32.240because they were willing to work more when the surge came.
00:02:34.640They were willing to make more short trips.
00:02:36.720They were essentially showing that they were more willing to take risks
00:03:16.660It's the sound of a meltdown happening.
00:03:20.560So, you know, this is what, this is idea like,
00:03:22.920oh, you know, women are assertive and they act,
00:03:24.840and I think that this is true to some extent,
00:03:26.920that women who act assertive, they're called bitches,
00:03:29.260you know, in whatever American black slang.
00:03:32.160You say a man who acts dominant, he's bossed up,
00:03:35.320whereas a woman who acts dominant is called a bitch, right?
00:03:38.160I do think that that happens, but you would think that a woman who didn't act in a gender-typical manner, like some lesbians do, would make less money because they would be oppressed for not fitting in with the larger gender roles.
00:03:49.720But no, they make more money, and I think it's because lesbians have some of these characteristics, like status-seeking, risk-taking kind of behavior, that more feminine straight women are less likely to have.
00:04:01.940you've recently released a video uh um well jonathan pie has uh what you're talking about
00:04:12.940the gender pay gap and it called uh widespread uh outrage i think is the right word to use
00:04:19.620i mean it depends on who you look i mean it it followed off the back of the video we did about
00:04:24.680the nazi pug yeah which i think probably caused more outrage it was unfortunate because we'd
00:04:28.700written the video a few weeks before that it just so happened that the pug thing happened and then
00:04:34.040we had to release this at this time because it was ready to go and it looked like we were being
00:04:37.640deliberately provocative doing two consecutive uh pieces like that but because that was the
00:04:42.060narrative actually it has been isn't it like you've gone all right like jonathan pie has gone all right
00:04:46.160sure yeah but he's actually been criticizing the left for ages i mean hasn't he you both i mean you
00:04:51.500have the two of you yeah absolutely i mean if you're familiar with the back catalogue uh jonathan
00:04:56.920pi is a lefty who bashes the tories more than anyone else the tories and trump more than anyone
00:05:02.100else so i mean if you're going to pick out these few videos where he's i mean he does attack the
00:05:06.080left for where the left is going wrong because he cares about where the left is going wrong
00:05:09.560so that makes sense uh to me um but the trouble is i suppose that the videos that cause uh
00:05:14.900contention are the ones that people remember or know about and maybe they don't watch all all of
00:05:18.880the other ones so they don't get that that perspective perhaps so on the gender pay gap
00:05:22.940You made a video where Jonathan Pye interviews what he thinks is a feminist academic who's releasing a book.
00:05:30.660And he's asking her, expecting her to provide the usual narrative about the gender pay gap.
00:17:18.020I think it's really terrible for young women,
00:17:20.220especially to see this so the gender pay gap i think is a really really good example of how
00:17:31.360statistics can be used to prove anything that you want them to prove at all because it all depends
00:17:37.060on what we measure so if you want to make the gender pay gap seem massive then what you do is
00:17:44.320you look at the earnings of all men and the earnings of all women and you compare them with
00:17:49.060each other and surprise surprise you find out that women earn less than men but obviously what
00:17:54.520that's not taking into account is the hours that men and women work the jobs that men and women do
00:18:00.240and this fact that we've already mentioned you know in the past men and women weren't as equal
00:18:05.980as they are today so if you look at the top rungs of careers where people have been working for 30
00:18:12.70040 years they've reached the absolute top of their profession you are more likely to find men
00:18:17.580in those positions so if you do that you take all men's wages all women's wages you find a very very
00:18:23.740big gender pay gap but basically the more we compare like for like so the more you look at
00:18:29.220men and women doing the same jobs for the same number of hours for the same level of experience
00:18:35.380then the pay gap gets narrower and narrower and narrower and eventually comparing like for like
00:18:42.240it disappears altogether there's no gender pay gap if you look at men and women who are both
00:18:47.720doing the same job same length of time same number of hours each week and of course that's the case
00:18:54.480I mean you just think about this for like a minute or two because for one thing it's illegal so if
00:18:59.780you took two people who are doing the exact same job exact same hours exact same level and the man
00:19:06.320was being paid more the woman could take this company the boss to court you know it would be
00:19:10.580illegal. They would be breaking the law. But there's an even more common sense argument as
00:19:15.940well. If bosses could get away with paying women substantially less for doing the exact same work
00:19:24.300as men do, but just cheaper, why would any boss anywhere ever employ a man? Why would you get a
00:19:32.040man to do the job? Well, it's interesting that you say that because we are recording this and
00:19:36.460And by the time this goes out, it will be a couple of weeks from today, probably.
00:19:39.840The guest whose episode we've just released is a lady called Dr. Pippa Malgram, who is a good friend and a wonderful person.
00:19:48.380She is a former advisor to an American president, founder of her own company, et cetera.
00:19:52.940And when we talked to her, we asked her about the pay gap as well.
00:19:55.460And she said that as a speaker after her political career and all the rest of it, she actually had her own agent, speaking agent, say to her, your metrics are great.
00:20:04.620You're getting better performances than your male counterparts, but we cannot get you the