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A warming planet, complex geopolitics and fierce competition means business operations are under more scrutiny than ever before.

Returning to Singapore this July, the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit is uniting leaders and investors

to explore how sustainability efforts can bolster resilience

and mitigate risk. Learn more at Bloomberg.com slash sbsd-SBS-Singapore. That's Bloomberg.com

slash sbs-sdash Singapore.

Hey, it's me, Rebecca Greenfield, the host of The Paycheck. Welcome back.

Last season, we looked at a lot of the reasons why women earn less than men, from illegal discrimination to the everyday workplace sexism

that makes it harder for women to get raises and promotions.

But one idea in particular really stayed with us,

that there's one thing that hurts women's earnings more than anything else.

I don't want to say that there's no sexual harassment, no gender discrimination, no bias,

no absence of negotiation skills, no lack of competition for women relative to men.

I never want to ignore someone's hurt and someone's stories.

That's Claudia Golden.

She's an economics professor at Harvard University.

She's been studying women, work, and pay for decades.

And she says, even if we were able to magically erase workplace discrimination,

harassment, and all that other stuff, the gender pay gap would

still exist. And it would still be pretty big. But I think it's extremely important to point

out what the real problem is. So what is the real problem? What Claudia calls joyful events, also known as having kids.

And she's got a point.

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