NATION: Gender Pay Gap - A "Peek" at the Truth?

The current "Gender Pay Gap" (GPG) currently reported in America is in the 78% to 82% range. Many studies have shown that the gender pay gap in America is smaller than what is reported, once male and female "work dynamics" are taken into account. A recent study, summarized below, reinforces that dynamic.

DEFINITION: "gender pay gap" (Cambridge English Dictionary)
noun, also "gender wage gap"
​...the difference between the amounts of money paid to women and men, often for doing the same work:
The Government's aim is to enable women to know whether or not their employer has a gender pay gap.

An interesting new study offers compelling evidence that the choices and priorities of women account for much of the pay gap disparity. Information for this article comes largely from the Wall Street Journal article cited immediately below:

ARTICLE: Wall Street Journal -  "Parsing the Gender Pay Gap"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/parsing-the-gender-pay-gap-1542917969
Appeared in the November 23, 2018, Wall Street Journal print edition.

The study examined data from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) union shop. The MBTA has uniform hourly wages in which men and women adhere to the exact same rules and enjoy the exact same benefits. Workers are promoted based on seniority, not performance. Male and female workers of the same seniority have the same options for scheduling, routes, vacation and overtime. These rigid work rules would appear to give little to no latitude in providing men preferential treatment.

Nonetheless, in the MBTA study, female train and bus operators earned LESS than men. Harvard economists looked at time cards and scheduling from 2011 to 2017, factoring in sex, age, date of hire, tenure, and whether an employee was married or had dependents. 

SOME OF THEIR FINDINGS:
• Male train and bus operators worked about 83% more overtime hours than their female colleagues.
• Men were twice as likely to accept an overtime shift on short notice.
• Twice as many women as men NEVER took overtime, which pays time-and-a-half.
• Male bus and train operators also took 48% fewer unpaid hours off under the Family Medical Leave Act each year. 
• Female employees were far more willing to take less preferable routes if it meant working fewer nights, weekends and holidays.

MARITAL STATUS FINDINGS:
• Married fathers wanted more overtime cash.
• Married mothers wanted more time off. 
• Single mothers took 59% fewer last-minute overtime hours than did single fathers.

STUDY FINDINGS: 
• Women, especially single women with children, value both time and the ability to avoid unplanned work much more than men.
• In the highly equitable workplace of MBTA, the differences in choices create the observable "gender pay gap".

The study also looked at two policy changes that unintentionally narrowed the pay gap—and found they made life tougher for female employees. In 2016 the Transportation Authority made it more difficult to take unpaid time off under the Family Medical Leave Act. The next year it redefined overtime from “any time in excess of 8 hours worked in a day” to “any time worked in excess of 40 hours in a week,” which made it harder for workers to game the system by working fewer hours but making the pay up with overtime.

CONCLUSION: Men and women often have different work priorities, and the best way to accommodate them is through the workplace choices, rather than government mandates which limit flexibility and choice. 

Read the full article for full details. Results of the study are only summarized here. Something to think about?

MY PERSONAL OPINION: if the GPG was so dramatic as is so often claimed, it would be relatively easy for an entrepreneur to start a company, relying on the lower cost of labor resulting from employing women, and make a "killing" in whatever industry where they chose to compete. Yet there is no massive movement to pursue such an undertaking - wonder why? One explanation would be that the GPG doesn't really exist at the rate that is widely publicized.

California has created some dramatic new laws that intend to close the GPG, but if this Harvard study has any validity, these new laws will NOT change the GPG, but will add additional burdens and associated penalties for violation of law to existing California employers.

Here's the actual study by the two Harvard Economics PhD's, so you can see for yourself:
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bolotnyy/files/be_gendergap.pdf