ASHE SCHOW: Harvard prof. takes down gender wage gap myth.

I’ve written extensively on how the gender wage gap would be more accurately referred to as the “gender earnings gap,” because the gap is due mostly to choices women make and not discrimination.

But now you don’t have to take my word for it, you can listen to Claudia Goldin, an economics professor at Harvard University. Goldin spoke to Stephen Dubner, the journalist behind the popular podcast “Freakanomics,” in a segment about what really causes the gap.

As one can imagine, Goldin comes to the same conclusion that I and many others have: That the gap is due mostly to choices men and women make in their careers and not discrimination. . . .

“So if men were better bargainers, they would have been better right then. And it doesn’t look as if they’re better bargainers to a degree that shows up as a very large number,” Goldin said.

But as men and women progress through their careers, Goldin said, the difference in pay comes to light.

“But we also see large differences in where they are, in their job titles, and a lot of that occurs a year or two after a kid is born, and it occurs for women and not for men,” Goldin said. “If anything, men tend to work somewhat harder.”

I can see her last sentence there gaining the ire of many a feminist. Of course women work hard, Goldin isn’t suggesting they don’t work hard — she’s referring to the difference in the number of hours women and men work.

“And I know that there are many who have done many experiments on the fact that women don’t necessarily like competition as much as men do — they value temporal flexibility, men value income growth – that there are various differences,” she added.

If women were free to want different things, what would feminism be for?