Originally Posted by
Endus
Exactly.
If a woman makes the same choices as a man does, with regards to career and family, she should end up in the same spot. If she makes different choices, then she can't compare the place she ends up with his, since she took an entirely different path. That doesn't make it a worse path, just a different one, with different priorities.
That's the difference between equality of opportunity and equality in practice. Equality of opportunity says that you should have an equal chance to succeed, if you make the same decisions that lead to that success. Equality in practice is the idea that regardless of your choices, you should get paid the same, which is an idea that is patently ridiculous; it essentially argues that a homemaker who has a part-time job making decorative pots they sell at the flea market should be making the same income as the best neurosurgeon in the country. That's a far more extreme example than they ever use to defend it, but that's why I'm making it; it's no different except in extremity than arguing that a woman who's taken a year and a half out of her career path to bear and raise three children, and who works the expected hours per week but no more, should be making the same as a man who's been dedicated to his career since graduation and who always works 10-20 hours of overtime every week. The first example was deliberately gender-neutral, since the issue here is not actually gender-based; I only insert gender for the second because I'm paraphrasing the examples used by those who champion "equality in practice".
If your argument doesn't still work when you extend it to the extremes, then it's logically flawed. That's how a reductio ad absurdum criticism works.