At a lunch the other day attended by inspiring and interesting SheEO activators, I was questioned by a very successful business woman in her 30’s about the gender wage gap. She had listened recently to an interview of Jordan Peterson, the psychology professor from University of Toronto, who she said casts doubt on gender discrimination as the basis for the gender wage gap. She was apologetic, saying she was not certain about the facts he put forward, nor did she side with his assertions. But in describing the nature of the discussion, that is what she thought he said.

Once home, I started researching the professor and his views. I have always believed it is important to listen to others who hold views that differ from my own. I listened to his interview on the BBC with Cathy Newman and, when I had heard his assertions about the gender wage gap, I initially agreed with him. He asserts there are many factors creating the gender wage gap. He admits gender discrimination is one factor but he puts forwards other factors as well: women being agreeable and accommodating in negotiations (personality factors); women not being assertive enough in negotiations; and women not asking.

As I continued to think about what he said, I realized that although the facts he put forward were correct, his over-all interpretation was off. The conclusion was that if women changed, the gender wage gap would disappear. If women became more like men, the gender wage gap would close. That the gap was less about systemic gender discrimination and more about personal responsibility.

This is where his interpretation is widely misleading. In studies of personality and wages, agreeable guys get lower wages than dominant guys. But more importantly, women, both dominant and agreement, have lower wages than all men. That is — gender discrimination trumps personality discrimination. In a more recent and fine-tuned Dutch study on this topic, researchers concluded that personality explains only a small portion of the gender wage gap (3%), with discrimination involved in the still substantial unexplained 15.5%  of the gap.

Sheryl Sandberg suggested something similar about women’s responsibility, with much more nuance and sophistication, in her book Lean In. She wrote that women needed to step up, an approach she now admits does not work. Research shows that when women ask, they don’t get.  Women have always appreciated that if they ask, they may hurt the relationship and provoke stereotype backlash. So they don’t ask. (for more information see my blog “Are Women Good Negotiators?”)

What Jordan Peterson fails to mention about the gender wage gap is that recent research suggests that motherhood is the largest contributing factor. In a New York Times article “Children Hurt Women’s Earnings, but Not Men’s, Claire Cain Miller reviews a number of studies on this topic and concludes that although biases and discrimination are still factors, motherhood explains a large portion of the gap. Specifically, women, whether by choice or not, spend more time on child rearing than men do, which creates more work interruptions and lower overall work hours.

Policies like paid leave, subsidized child care, and flexible work options are all helpful, but they’re not enough to overcome gender wage inequality. There is evidence that the gap would shrink if fathers spent more time parenting and sharing family responsibilities.  One expert, Heelung Chung, says “if you know that both men and women will go off and take care of children, not just women, what that does is remove the motherhood penalty.”

This and other types of research support the idea that we need everyone’s helps to achieve gender equality, and that it is everyone’s responsibility – not just women’s. It also confirms that we need to disrupt gender stereotypes about motherhood so that humankind and society can evolve.

So what did I learn listening to Jordan Peterson’s interviews? That we need to stay open to different views but remain vigilant. To recognize dubious interpretations and spin. I am very glad that I was introduced to Jordan Peterson by this young woman and, in the spirit of continued curiosity and vigilance, I have just bought his new book.