Who is at the origin of the pay gap between men and women? I came across an answer in “Le Voyage de l’Humanité”, a book in which Oded Galor, an Israeli scholar who teaches at Brown University, explores the reasons for the dazzling economic take-off of the West in the 18th and 19th centuries, after hundreds thousands of years of survival economy. And this answer is surprising: the culprit would be the inventor of the plow pulled by beasts. Gallor writes:
“In regions that introduced the use of the plow earlier and more intensively, such as southern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, fewer women are present in working life, on boards of directors and in the political arena”
He adds with aplomb that “a whole range of gender biases are linked to the adoption of the plow”. Some languages would even have been affected:
“In regions like southern Europe, where the widespread use of the plow has led to a sharper division of labor between men and women, languages have tended to emerge which grammatically distinguish masculine from feminine: as well as Romance languages. In regions less suitable for ploughing, on the other hand, gender-neutral languages have prevailed”.
“What’s the fuck? », will say the slightly English-speaking reader (English being one of the neutral languages has
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