Professor Alan Barrett:

No, we have not really done this. We have not done it in a direct way. The research I am talking about can be interpreted along certain lines. If one looks at the average man and the average woman, one will see a pay gap. When one starts trying to account for reasons for these salary differences by adding in various issues, that gap shrinks and shrinks. It was always argued that if one found a gap one could not explain, one had evidence that discrimination of some sort was occurring. The research we did basically showed us that the gap really diminishes. There may well be discrimination - I do not want to be overly simplistic on that - but we did not find in the data evidence of the type of discrimination the Deputy is talking about. The wage gap really disappeared when we controlled for various sorts of things. It is important to stress that when one is doing economic research, one's failure to find something does not mean it is not there. We did not find evidence of this, but it is a completely different step to say it does not exist. I have answered the Deputy's question in two ways.