On pendulums and society

[Papewaio]

No, society doesn't work like that. Let's take an example. People measure inequality in wages by looking at average wage compared to which sex you belong to. This hides the very important fact that there's a great difference in average wage ratio man/woman for 50 year olds than for 20 year olds, for example (for 20 year olds, there's in many industries a massive advantage for women today). So, with this measurement method, you would think it's time to keep pushing the pendulum in the direction of "more to the women". The problem is, in doing so you build up regulations and society structures which remain in society for some time until they are explicitly removed. It's not always apparent which those things are, until it has starting swinging into the other direction. That's one of the reasons it won't be as you say, in this issue as in other issues. There are always massive delays in how long it takes before the effects of a decision appear in a measurable form. If you measure average wage over all ages, for example, there's a huge delay. It's much better to measure average wage for the youngest generation of workers. But even then, there are delays, which are however too complex to be worth going into detail about (but their effect is limited - all they matter for this discussion is that there needs to be a preparedness for a plethora of such effects, and the need to regulate back a bit in the other directions once effects of such things begin appearing).

I'm pretty sure that I have seen in IT wage breakdowns on Age, Gender, Location, Qualifications, Job Role. I'm also pretty sure that I've seen despite all other things being equal a woman in the same categories of Age, Location, Qualifications and Job Role earn less then their male counterparts.