If ever you needed convincing that the paygap is actually a thing...

[Biggreygoose]

Hopefully the image works.

Taken from the article:

The reality is that male graduates earn more than female graduates.
The gap can already be seen only one year after graduation, when men earn an average of £1,500 (8%) more than women per year.

After five years, the gap has increased to around £3,500, or 14%.

This is likely to continue to increase with age, but it should be noted that that this gap is less than half that experienced by non-graduates.

Some - but by no means all - of this difference can be explained by differences in subject choices, with women more likely to choose courses with low earnings potential.

For example, creative arts, nursing, psychology and social science all have far more female than male students, while the opposite is true for architecture, computing and engineering.

However, a large part of this difference cannot be explained away by personal choice.

Data is from the institute of fiscal studies, which probably has the least interest in bias over the pay gap as could be expected from anyone. Median average used so impact of outlying data reduced.

Noble,

As you put it ‘girls crack on with it while boys posture’. The interesting question is why.

There is value in investigating how boys learn most effectively and if they could be got to ‘crack on’ more.

However this is not the right part of the website to discuss that as I appreciate not subject matter of OP.

It seems quite simple to me larry and it's about reward/incentive.
Girls are rewarded for being compliant and following rules. Boys are rewarded for being individuals. Yes girls do better at exams- exams have rules girls can follow. But it doesn't translate to better life outcomes. Hence no real incentive for boys to change. There is no reward for them to do so.

So what does explain the gap then? Is it other personal choices like taking more time off to look after children? Doing this earlier on in one's career? Is more to do with what goes on in the work place? A failure to ask for more money? A perception that women are less valuable employees? Merely observing a difference in what men and women earn on average is pretty pointless unless you try to figure out why.

Is it other personal choices like taking more time off to look after children?
This is not a personal choice. Children need looking after or they will die, and having children is a biological imperative or the human race will die out. As many men as women have children yet it doesn't impact their career, often because their female partner is doing all the childcare. Read the facilitated men thread.

‘girls crack on with it while boys posture’

That's an interesting viewpoint (and generalisation). I don't know many people (male or female) that could get away with just posturing - especially in the current climate where jobs are not at all secure.

Boys are implicitly taught that their value rests on their personhood. Girls are implicitly taught that their value rests on their usefulness.

So girls tend to go off and work hard to prove how useful they are while boys are more prone to rely on their expectation that others will find them valuable regardless. The former strategy works better in situations where actual performance is measured e.g. exams, the latter in situations where confidently overselling yourself is half the battle, e.g. many workplaces

Not convinced at all by the above.

Boys’ confidence is terrible these days and they I think a lot of the ‘posturing’ is defensiveness.

Also boys used to ‘crack on’ a lot more when society was far more biased in their favour.

Ref boys' underperformance in education. In the 'No more boys and Girls' series there was a dramatic decrease in boys' misbehaviour as a result of them actively fighting gender stereotypes. I absolutely agree Trills that the way we socialise boys disadvantages them in education.

There is also the lack of incentive. The boys see girls working hard vs boys misbehaving, but simultaneously see their dads out earning their mums and in positions of authority. It's not surprising many conclude working hard isn't necessary.

boys' confidence is terrible perhaps, but still way better than girls', judging by relative rates of depression and anxiety.

The fact that boys have anxieties around their performance of masculinity could simply demonstrate their understanding of the dynamic I describe above

I thought women out-earned men up to the age of thirty?
This is graduates though, is it non-graduate women out-earning men?

That's an interesting viewpoint (and generalisation). I don't know many people (male or female) that could get away with just posturing - especially in the current climate where jobs are not at all secure.*

Depends how you word it though. There are many complaints at work about talentless men (NAMALT) who get on by managing upwards (and claiming credit for other's ideas) rather than doing their job and managing downwards (and helping develop others aspirations and careers).