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Michael Smith's avatar

A little research would beef up this case. Real male earnings did not grow from the early 1970s, when large numbers of women entered the workforce at the professional level. Source below, though dated. Declining paychecks (after inflation) for men continued until 2018, when they rose slightly until COVID.

The Atlantic's writer also left out that there's a quirk to women's entry into fields traditionally dominated by men, specifically white-collar professions: Women's tendency to accept the first salary offer.

When a recruiter from a big accounting firm sits down with a qualified BBA candidate at a respected business school, his job is to make the lowest offer the top candidates will accept. It's been documented (and decried by feminists) that a female candidate is much more likely to accept the first offer than a male candidate.

And, because businesses won't be caught dead making higher offers to males, starting salaries decline overall. (Again, relative to inflation.)

Of course, the recruiter would like to offer the woman less, because he can cite statistics showing that she is very likely to leave the company (and the workforce entirely) within 5-10 years. But the law says pay can't correlate with sex. So men's starting pay goes down, in the name of equality.

And yet, when choosing a mate, women still want their husband to earn more, or at least enough to pay all the expenses if she can't resist the pull to stay home and nurture their children.

Pretty soon, the only way men can attract a high-value mate is to choose professions that have defied equality. Construction (99 percent male), sales, travel-heavy careers. Men stick these out. Women don't enter, or don't stay long if they do.

(Source cited above: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/mens-earnings-havent-grown-since-the-1970s-why/262296/)

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