The Gender Wage Gap in View of the Critical Reason of Economic Liberalism

One of the active fronts of the social policy of democratic capitalist societies in recent times has been the fight against professional discrimination for reasons of gender. In Spain, the so-called << wage gap >> is perhaps the most powerful manifestation of the aforementioned commitment of the public authorities to the protection of women's rights, through the intervention of the market -and of civil society itself- in order to correct their natural sexist and discriminatory inclinations or distortions. Indeed, the << gapist >> proposal regarding labor remuneration, which is certainly not lacking in real foundation, since it cannot be denied that women earn less than their male counterparts when they sell their professional energy in the labor market, has penetrated with great strength in Spanish society. In fact, it has spread with hardly any resistance in certain fields of knowledge historically characterized by commitment to the cause of the weakest workers and those in need, leaving aside any hint of critical argument or simple contemplation of the phenomenon of wage differences in a alternative way, perhaps less intuitive but more rational, from a more roundabout or far-reaching perspective, in any case less direct and therefore much less clear or self-evident, but not necessarily untrue or preposterous. This more distant point of view -counterintuitive- is the one offered by the liberal-economic critique of the wage gap, in whose context -of free market reasons- it ends up being reduced to a << pseudo-problem >> that cannot come to justify the over-reaction that the State powers expresses in market and society intervention measures as intense as those that have been practiced -and are planned to be practiced- effectively, either it in the form of political actions or in the form of changes in the legal system (quotas, salary regulations, permits to care for family responsibilities, etc.)