Connie
Gender gap in the pay and achievement at work remains significant. Never mind the patriarchy, a seemingly main culprit against gender equality. Rather surprisingly, biology may be the cause of women's lower paychecks or positions in workplace.
Biological factor can't help but influence women's attitude to their work, by means of hormones, natural chemical messengers that affect human behavior both in a physical and mental way. Among them is oxytocin, a nurturing hormone that induces labor and facilitates breast-feeding which may be behind women's failure in conventional success at work. Now dubbed "the trust hormone," oxytocin, researchers say, increases trust and reduces fear in interpersonal relationships. Simply put, women are born inherently to be caring, attentive, and trustworthy. In an experiment on one-day old babies, female infants showed more eye contact while male babies displayed more interests in mechanical objects. Much of women's work choices can probably be influenced by an innate attribute.
When it comes to underlying biological science of competitions, the differences are more pronounced. Performance of male is encouraged by competition in and of itself, while females are discouraged by winner-takes-it-all competition. according to studies, this disparity can be explained by the high level of testosterone in men. Testosterone, secreted normally 50 times more in men, make males more combative and aggressive, most notably when they lose a one-on-one competition.
Biological differences between men and women exert a significant influence on their pursuit of career goals. On the whole, high paycheck and powerful position are not so much attractive to women who want more connection and meaning from their working lives. In US, less than 2% of chief executive jobs are held by women. While in Canadian non-profit and volunteer workforce they make up of 75%, 90% respectively. In addition, in the competitive sphere, with their less combative and aggressive attitude toward competition, even high-qualified women in every sector have confined themselves to self-imposed glass ceiling, thereby often turning down a promotion or deliberately taking a low-paying position.
Though women fail in the so called conventional success at work, with smaller office and paycheck, if we factor in that gender gap significantly result from biological differences, that is the way they are. Therefore, the solution to the gender gap is not to impose unnatural neutral socialization but to recognize inborn difference, and help ourselves strengthen the strength and make up for the weakness.