Peterson
© Image courtesy screenshotJordan Peterson is the clinical psychologist and author of the book "12 Rules for Life."
Earlier this year I rented an office in a building I now share with a man named John, a husband and father who sells insurance. One of the first things I (and, I'm sure, he) noticed after about a month is that John is always at his desk, but I am not. Some days I'm not in my office at all; some days I come in at 9 or 10 a.m. and then leave at 2 p.m.; and still other days I might not arrive until close to lunchtime. I don't think I've ever left my office later than 4:30 p.m.

That's because my work schedule is entirely based on my teenage kids' schedules and on the countless errands I have to do on any given day that are related to, well, life. But no matter what time I arrive or what time I leave, John is always there.

That's what I thought about when I watched a bogus segment on the Australian version of " 60 Minutes" about the gender pay gap over the weekend. In it, the producers spin a tale to suggest that discrimination, or as they put it, the "battle of the sexes," is the reason why women make less money than men throughout the course of their lives.

To begin with, the statistic alone is misleading. The real pay gap is between mothers and fathers, not between women and men. Just this year, in fact, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a study that showed the gender gap "can be attributed to the dynamic effects of children."

It is the existence of children, not sexism, that creates the gender pay gap. If I did not have children, I would be at my office from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. every day, thus mirroring John's life.

These two glaring omissions - that the pay gap is between mothers and fathers rather than between women and men, and that the reason it exists is due to the different choices men and women make regarding work and family - make the "60 Minutes" program a complete sham.

Men and women are not the same. They have wildly different sexual psychologies that lead to different choices, both in love and in work. Most women just aren't interested in careers that consume their lives. Careers, say, in law or in medicine or in business or in politics, don't allow a person to work 9 a.m.-5 p.m. or less, and that's what most American mothers (a full 67 percent) want.

That is not the case for men. While most men do not enter these fields either, far more men than women do. "Men are especially likely to place a greater emphasis on their role as financial providers," notes Kim Parker at the Pew Research Center . These different choices men and women make are at the heart of the debate over the gender pay gap.

That's the message Jordan Peterson tried to get across when speaking to "60 Minutes." As most people know (unless they've been living under a rock), Peterson is the clinical psychologist and author of the wildly successful book, 12 Rules for Life, who in January took on Cathy Newman of U.K.'s Channel 4 in a debate about the pay gap .

In his interview with "60 Minutes," Peterson points out that not only do women work fewer hours than men, they choose different careers. "Women are more interested in people, while men are more interested in things."

When the interviewer asked him why jobs that involve working with people can't be measured alongside jobs that involve working with things, Peterson correctly noted that work which is relationship-oriented - nursing, teaching, child care, elder care - isn't "scalable."

If you "write a computer program, like a piece of software, like a billion people can use it," he said. But it's hard to quantify the effect of one's work with human beings.

But the show would have none of it. Instead, they insisted the pay gap is a result of discrimination. In fact, the subject of children and of sex differences was never broached on their part, not even once.

Using Iceland as a model, since just this year pay equality became a legal requirement there (businesses with more than 25 employees must now have government certification to prove their equal-pay policies), "60 Minutes" suggested the rest of us adopt Iceland's new policy.

But Peterson noted that not only will the policy fail from an economic perspective, it dismisses male and female nature, which is "intractable." In other words, a company can instill all the policies it wants, but it can't make people do what they don't want to do.

Still not convinced, the program went so far as to suggest that those oppose such legislation (clearly referring to Peterson) are "threatened " by it. Closing the pay gap "isn't a threat to men," said Thorsteinn Viglundsson, Iceland's former Minister of Social Affairs and Equality.

That's the standard tactic of the left, especially when it comes to gender issues. If you don't agree with their progressive politics, it must be because you're against progress, or because you're threatened by women in power.

That's absurd. And viewers see right through it.

Fortunately, we have Jordan Peterson, who continues to put the media in their place. Peterson represents the first true apolitical yet formidable opponent to a media that is showing itself every day to be hopelessly out of touch with reality. He's tough, calm, smart, and, most importantly, he's right.

Thanks for putting up with them, Jordan.
Suzanne Venker ( @SuzanneVenker ) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. She is an author, Fox News contributor, and trustee of Leading Women for Shared Parenting. Her fifth book, The Alpha Female's Guide to Men & Marriage: HOW LOVE WORKS, was published in February 2017.