The difference in median earnings between male and female workers is due to the personal choices of women, so no gender discrimination is occurring.

The argument

Proponents of this position do not deny that society does place certain expectations upon women, or that women might feel pressured to do or not do certain things. Their claim concerns what follows from that pressure. Women are nonetheless free agents who can choose whether or not to let those societal pressures affect their life choices, and on this view it is the choice rather than the pressure that determines where a person ends up in the distribution of earnings. Applied to career selection, the argument runs like this: it's unfair to attribute women feeling the need to pursue careers that pay less on average to systemic gender discrimination when it is the woman herself who is making that choice. The same reasoning is extended to advancement within a job. In that same vein, although some individual women may feel less confident in the workplace, and therefore are afraid to pursue promotions, it is still unfair for them to attribute their own lack of assertiveness to gender discrimination when they are allowed to pursue higher paying jobs but choose not to. The door, proponents argue, is open, and a door that goes unused is not a door that was closed. The final case is family. Although women might feel pressured to have children and raise a family when they'd rather focus on developing their career, they still have the choice as to whether or not they will succumb to those expectations. Whatever decision a woman reaches is their own personal decision that should not be blamed on external factors. Put together, the argument is that the difference in median earnings between male and female workers is the aggregate of many such individual decisions — which field to enter, whether to seek promotion, how to weigh family against career — rather than evidence that anyone is paid differently for the same work. If the difference is the sum of freely made choices, proponents conclude, then no gender discrimination is occurring in it.

Premises

Counter-arguments

It is much easier said than done to defy gender expectations that have permeated society for centuries. Women who are raised within a patriarchal society are conditioned since childhood to believe certain things regarding gender, and shaking off those viewpoints is incredibly difficult and takes a long time. In addition, refusing to conform to certain expectations, such as the expectation to marry and have children, could result in serious strife within a woman's family (especially when the woman's parents desperately want grandchildren). It is sometimes easier for women to do what the patriarchy wants them to do. It can also still be considered gender discrimination because these expectations for women exist due to the patriarchy, which is upheld by men in society who make no effort to acknowledge it, question it, or make any attempts at dismantling it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Free agency and unconstrained choice are not the same thing. A decision taken under expectation, obligation and cost is still a decision, but its distribution across a population then tells you about the pressures rather than about preferences — which is what the premise needs to rule out and does not. [Rejecting P2] The premise does not engage the measurement. The unadjusted gap compares all men with all women, and the disputed question is what remains once occupation, hours and experience are controlled for — a residual that studies persistently find. Nor does it address unequal pay for the same work, or the pay penalty attached to time out for caregiving. [Rejecting P3] The conclusion overshoots the premises: even if every earnings difference traced to women's decisions, the gap in median earnings would still exist. The argument would then be about its cause, not about whether it is real, so the position it supports does not follow.