[Marguerite]

Just to add onto what Cosmo said...

Somebody said women are underpaid in certain fields than men. That's not really true. The 'wage gap' is not calculated that way, it is calculated across the board from census statistics and taking an average annual wage for males and females working full time.

If I were to hire two people for the same job, a man and a woman, then pay the man more simply because he's male, that would be very illegal.

The two main reasons for the wage gap are;

1. Women still take on the role of staying home and raising the child much more often than men, as cosmo said. Of course if more women than men are staying at home for long periods of time- say a couple of years at different periods if they have more than one child- women are going to likely make less than men as a whole.

2. Women are not employed in booming industries at the moment, like mining. Women tend to stay away from these kind of labor intensive jobs. I don't think 'the patriarchy' can be blamed for this as I've never heard one of my female friends declare they want to go operate a forklift or work in the logging industry.

So basically the wage gap comes down to women's own choices, and despite what kind of jobs women get in the future or who choses to employ them, as long as women continue to stay home and raise children I can't see the wage gap closing. And what's wrong with that? It only means that on average because women like men can choose what they want to do we earn less, it doesn't mean that you or I will earn less in our respective jobs than men.