Y is for the Y Chromosome

Photo care of diewelt.de

Patricia Arquette thinks that it's time to talk about the pay gap now that women have solved the rights issues of homosexuals and African-Americans, so lets do it.
But seriously folks, to paraphrase John Gray, men are from Switzerland and women are from Switzerland and they don't earn the same, they don't work the same amounts and they don't come out to vote in the same numbers. Swiss men have birth control pill hormones in their drinking water and are more likely to kill themselves than their female counterparts are. If they're homosexual, they're nearly 5 times more likely to marry or be civilly partnered than a swiss lesbian couple and they're less likely to beat their female partners than citizens of many other countries.
Though many of my American friends think that I live in Sweden, Switzerland is actually a country all it's own and does not have nearly as comprehensive maternity and paternity leaves as Sweden (or any Scandinavian country.) We don't (yet) have state-funded preschools (though it is regularly proposed) and on average have the most expensive crèches in the world according to a 2014 study, so working parents are in the awkward position of one member working nearly exclusively for the price of childcare. Also, swiss children go home for lunch (more and more go to a daycare facility for lunch - but either way, lunch is not served in Swiss public schools) and have no lessons Wednesday afternoon, so many women in Switzerland choose to reduce their work schedule in favor of providing their own child care. 17% of Swiss women with children under the age of 25 work full time compared to the 88% of Swiss men who work "100%." Men earn 19% more than their female counterparts as of a census in 2012.