It is the first time social scientists have produced evidence that large numbers of men might be victims of gender-related income disparities. The study raises the provocative possibility that a substantial part of the widely discussed gap in income between men and women who do the same work is really a gap between men with a traditional outlook and everyone else.
The differences found in the study were substantial. Men with traditional attitudes about gender roles earned $11,930 more a year than men with egalitarian views and $14,404 more than women with traditional attitudes. The comparisons were based on men and women working in the same kinds of jobs with the same levels of education and putting in the same number of hours per week.
My first thought when I saw the headline was that they did not account for age. But they did. In fact they followed the same group of people from the time when they where children.
All the guys I know who have traditional ideas of gender roles are more ethical (taken as group there are exceptions) then the men who do not have traditional ideas of gender roles (again, granting there are exceptions). But working in a union environment where everyone with the same job is paid the same amount, it never occurred to me that this could lead to higher pay.
That may be wrong explanation based on my limited circle of acquaintances. It may also be possible that men with traditional attitudes towards gender roles may have higher testosterone levels on average. Testosterone generally helps/drives you to become top dog in any situation.
And last but not least, family background does not seem to have been taken into account. It is likely that the people who had more traditional attitudes towards gender came from more stable families then people who did not have have traditional attitudes towards family. Coming from a more stable back ground may have enabled them to be more successful even when they had the same job as other people.
I am not sure which if any of my explanations are correct. But they are both better then the explanations that the authors of the study came up with. They seemed designed to maintain a PC orthodoxy in the face of inconvenient facts.
Also, it seems that the authors of this study consider people with in similar jobs, working similar hours, and with similar education as being equal. I suspect that the did not account for how long people spent in the same job as opposed to moving around.
If this is true it would explain why traditionally minded woman make so much less the other categories even when doing the same work. On paper they might have the same qualifications, but I doubt they stay in the same field for as long.