Are we critical enough when thinking about problems that don't affect our gender?

Trigger warning, I will be mentioning the wage gap in this post. If that makes you blow steam out of your ears, this is your chance to leave.

So, now that we've got that out of the way, on to the actual post. Are we thinking critical enough about problems that don't affect us?

Let's have an example. The typical MRA in the internet sphere (here, TRP, RoK etc.) won't think the wage gap is any kind of problem. And maybe it's not. Here are two facts about the wage gap:

1. Women get paid almost exactly the same as men for the same job (only in higher paid jobs where results are less measurable, like higher acedemic positions are there slight differences).

2. The average woman makes 22% less than the average man.

So, is there a problem? You might say no, there is not. Women are choosing to work part time, not seek promotions, or not go into higher paying fields. And you might be right.

Now let's take another example: men getting custody. The first thing you'll hear from MRA's is how unfair it actually is that men get so little custody. So here's two facts about that for you.

1. When men seek custody, they almost always get some.

2. A lot of men don't seek custody.

We can apply the same logic as the first example. There is no problem, men are just choosing to seek less custody. Problem solved. But is that true? A better explanation might be why men don't seek custody as often. Are they likely to get rejected? Does society look down upon working fathers? Is it really their own choice that they don't seek custody?

And that brings us back to the first example. Every MRA will question WHY men often choose not to seek custody and they will try to find a problem there. But almost no MRA questions WHY women don't choose to work more, or go into higher paying fields.

A possible reason is for example, that women are less likely to go into higher paying fields because they are male dominated and have a rather sexist environment. Or perhaps they get promoted less than men even though they try the same and end up in lower paying positions, because they are assumed to be less competent than men. Maybe there is a lot of societal pressure for woman to not work full time in order to take care of the kid, even though the husband does work full time.

The point is that there may be a lot of factors that affect a woman's (or a man's, in the custody case) ability to really choose freely.

So, when you're an MRA and you're talking about the wage gap, don't stop at "well women are choosing it themselves", ask WHY they are choosing it, and how much of it is not actually their choice. And, because this goes the other way as well, when you're a feminist, stop to think WHY men don't seek custody as much, instead of seeing that men get it when they ask for it and pretending there is no problem.