In response to "The Gender Gap is a Myth" articles: As We Learn to be Human

I cannot buy into the gender pay gap being fabricated. If a woman and a man have the same education background, women earn less to the dollar than men. Controlling for education and work experience, the wage gap actually appears to grow. Some people account for a loss of pay when one becomes a parent and is not able to work as hard/as many hours. When a woman has a child, no matter if she gets right back to work, she earns a "motherhood gap" in pay, as opposed to childless workers of both sexes. Fathers, for some reason, see no "fatherhood gap" in their pay despite equal involvement (hopefully) in their kids' lives. This could of course also show a sexist truth that our society does not value a man's involvement in their childrens' lives like we try to value a mother's involvement. Thinking of how much either sex earns, at every pay level it seems the gender gap is there. However, the gap seems to be more prominent for higher paying positions. April of this year, a bill passed that OKed paying women less than men, for the same position, based on past salaries. You spoke of the rights outlined in the Equal Pay Act, which previously prevented women earning less. It is more likely, despite equal education, that a woman is paid less than a man in the first place. Thus, lower salaries are reinforced even as a woman tries to "move up" in the work force just as a man might do. Of course not all companies will do this, but the loophole is there to profit off of. There's a lot to research and consider when talking about this stuff. Psychology of Gender classes go over this stuff briefly, like a "Whelp, it's not fair but we've gotten better" sort of conclusion. But it's okay to admit that things still aren't equal between the sexes. As touched on previously, men experience sexism during parenthood as well. They are discouraged in Western society from staying at home with their children, and are expected to work long hours to provide for their families. A man who has just become a father in the US is likely to have a very small time for paternal leave from work, comparing to their wives. Just as a woman is adjusting to life as a man, the man is adjusting to a new life as a father, and as an equal partner in parenting. In countries outside of the US, paternity leave can be as long as three months. One parent is encouraged to be distant and career-focused, while the other is encouraged to be tender and child-focused. In the late 1800s, women in the field of Psychology were beginning to study under masters in the newly emerging field, such as Freud. If they wanted to have a family, they were encouraged to leave their careers and tend to their children instead, while fathers were never encouraged to do anything of the sort. This has been the status quo in the history of science fields. Women felt the injustice of this back then, when they worked hard for a degree that turned out to be useless upon entering motherhood.

We live in a day and age in which women are being encouraged to pursue more STEM related fields. Some men are falling away from the general machismo attitude encouraged by male peers and are beginning to get more in touch with their emotions. Both men and women are being encouraged to express stereotypically masculine and feminine feelings and passions which, in the past, were more taboo to either biological sex. There are many people who are questioning how much of gender is learned or socialized into us from an early age. Nonetheless, equality has got a ways to go, before men and women can consider themselves on equal footing in careers and other social settings. When we consider ourselves as both masculine and feminine, despite our biological sex, we grow closer to celebrating the true depth of our humanity. Society imposes superficial standards by which to compare one another, but just as these standards are woven in with type and the progression of civilizations, so will we come to realize how very human it is to celebrate what we truly feel, what we like and dislike and what we feel called to do and be in life, despite the societal imposition of gender norms and the negative consequences of these norms that we may experience daily..