On gender equality

How about looking at the gender equality issue, as far as pay-parity is concerned, from a completely new standpoint. This is what a new study claims to have done.

"In previous studies, academics have looked at variables like years of education and the effects of outside forces such as nondiscrimination policies. But gender was always the constant. What if it didn't have to be? What if you could construct an experiment in which a random sample of adults unexpectedly changes sexes before work one day? Kristen Schilt, a sociologist at the University of Chicago and Matthew Wiswall, an economist at New York University, couldn't quite pull off that study. But they have come up with the first systematic analysis of the experiences of transgender people in the labor force. And what they found suggests that raw discrimination remains potent in U.S. companies.

Schilt and Wiswall found that women who become men (known as FTMs) do significantly better than men who become women (MTFs). MTFs in the study earned, on average, 32% less after they transitioned from male to female, even after the authors controlled for factors like education levels. FTMs earned an average of 1.5% more. The study was just published in the Berkeley Electronic Press' peer-reviewed Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy."

My own barometer of geneder equality is that the day we have an equal number of females in airport lounges is the day when we'll have meaningful equality. And, as I answered in an interview discussion recently, I don't forsee that happening in India at least for the next 100 yrs but the tide is surely but surely turning.