Now why didn't I think of that? You want to look at what's behind the gender gap in wages? Check out what happens to men who change their gender to women and women who change their gender to men. Sure is one way to control most of those confounding variables. Actually that is exactly what Kristen Schilt of the University of Chicago and
Matthew Wiswall of NYU did.

According to the Time Magazine article they found "women who become men (known as FTMs) do significantly better than men who become women (MTFs). MTFs in the study earned, on average, 32% less after they transitioned from male to female, even after the authors controlled for factors like education levels. FTMs earned an average of 1.5% more."

And you gotta love the stories: After a female-to-male transgender attorney changed from being Susan to Thomas, another lawyer mistakenly believed that Susan had been fired and replaced by Thomas. The other lawyer commended the firm's boss for the replacement. He said Susan had been incompetent; "the new guy," he added, was "just delightful."

You can find the entire article here. You will need to register as a guest but you can view it for free.

Thanks to FairerScience friend David Mortman for letting us know about this one.