Poverty is not distributed evenly between the two halves of the human race. Diana Pearce named the pattern in 1978: across very different economies, women end up poorer — not through one dramatic act of exclusion but through a series of ordinary ones that compound. Switch each barrier on and watch a bar that started at parity get shorter.
At parity
How to read it. The tall bar on the left is where two lives start — equal. Each red block is a bite one barrier takes out of what is left, not out of the original, which is why the last few cost so much. The dark bar on the right is what she still holds.
Two lives, one starting linetap a barrier below to switch it on
Barriers on0
She retains100
The gap0
Now read the same chart three ways
Three lenses, one patternThe chart is only a set of bars until a paradigm tells you what kind of fact it is: a system doing its job, a conflict someone is winning, or a meaning we keep agreeing on. Tap a lens.