Who works harder?

"It’s no secret that dedicated women have to work far, far harder in order to merely approximate the positions and (hopefully) earnings of men in what were once seen as typically male roles".
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     This is a common myth perpetrated by women to justify their lower salaries and lack of positions of higher authority over the ages. 
  I remember working at a drug store when I first got home from Vietnam and I worked with a red headed woman named Kathy who was always spouting off that she was as good as any man She resented the fact that when she was promoted to my former position she was paid less than I had been.  Then one day she asked me if I could help her with a task that I had completed by myself numerous times.  When I asked her why she needed help she replied "It isn't very ladylike for me to be carrying large objects up and down a ladder." 
     "Oh," I said, "It's okay to claim gender bias when things are against you but when it's to your advantage to be a female you want to play the gender card." 
   That made her mad and she completed the work on her own. 
    I am not saying that there are not women who are deserving of our respect.  Many work hard, are very smart, and make good decisions.  To give a man a promotion or a raise strictly because they are male  is wrong no matter how one looks at it.  But to claim a woman has to work harder to be equal with a man isn't fair to the men who have put in the time and effort to get to where they are.  Unless you are the bosses child, most people have had to earn their positions.  Where the problem lies is that most people tend to progress in their jobs until they reach their level of incompetence. That being true it would give the impression that since most executives have been men and most have risen as far as they can go so are functioning in a job at which they are incompetent that the workers struggling for promotions are being blocked by men so one has to work harder to rise above their bosses inabilities. 
   Because a woman works harder at something than she really wants too she perceives she has to work harder than her competition.  She does, but not because she is a woman.  It's because she has competition and it takes hard work to rise to the top.  But once she gets as high as she can go, she too will have risen to her level of incompetence.