"Men with egalitarian attitudes about the role of women in society earn significantly less on average than men who hold more traditional views about women's place in the world." So begins an article from yesterday's Washington Post. And it goes on to say "If you divide workers into four groups -- men with traditional attitudes, men with egalitarian attitudes, women with traditional attitudes and women with egalitarian attitudes -- men with traditional attitudes earn far more for the same work than those in any of the other groups. There are small disparities among the three disadvantaged groups, but the bulk of the income inequality is between the first group and the rest." (And no they don't know why this is, that wasn't part of the study.)

Now two sentences like that can really ruin your day. Especially when the study, "Is the Gap More Than Gender? A Longitudinal Analysis of Gender, Gender Role Orientation, and Earnings" is very well done.

Before you get too depressed and start telling any handy male significant other to "be sexist; we need the money", let me tell you a little more about some of the things the study found.

First of all, those of us with more egalitarian attitudes toward gender are in good company: the list includes more educated and intelligent people (well no that doesn't mean that mean more educated, intelligent people make less money-- what can I say; it's just that whole whacky hierarchical linear modeling thing), African Americans, people who have been married for awhile (no they didn't say whether the relationship had to be happy or not), and city folk. Women are more egalitarian than men (big surprise) but these differences are narrowing over time as men are getting more egalitarian (you go guys!).

and I love what they wrote under practical implications of the study:

"Collectively, institutions that socialize children to accept traditional gender role orientations may be
sowing the seeds of gender economic inequality."

Well folks if that isn't a call to action I don't know what is.

PS Thanks to the American Psychological Association for making the study available to us for free.