It is true that you are able to achieve no matter your race or sex. I want to make my views on this very clear. I think the gender wage gap is either false or a huge exaggeration as it doesn't take into account the sorts of jobs people do; women, especially those in relationships with young families, are more likely to work part-time and are more likely to be pressured to prioritise their children over advancing their careers. There is also equality in law, at least in Western countries.

However, there is evidence that you're at a disadvantage if you're of a different racial group.

Noon (1993) sent two fake identical resumes to the top 100 companies in the United Kingdom. One had the name "Evans" and the other the name "Patel". The majority of responses were sent to "Evans" (the white name) rather than "Patel" (the Indian name).

More recently, in the United States, Bertrand and Mullainathan sent resumes with either African-American or white sounding names. They found:

Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback.

Source: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct;=j&q;=&esrc;=s&source;=web&cd;=1&ved;=0ahUKEwjc_5H3zf7UAhWhIcAKHf- RD9cQFggoMAA&url;=http://;www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html&usg;=AFQjCNEjjJgZXWzjTK6nEqh6AXvE1A53TQ

In the USA, belonging to a different racial group means you are less likely to be able to get a mortgage than your white counterparts, even when your credit rating is on similar levels:

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1870173/thumbs/o-CHART-6-570.jpg?5

Black men receive longer prison sentences for similar crimes: http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/RaceCharts3.png

Young white men with criminal records are more likely to get a callback on a job than young black men with clean records: http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1870202/thumbs/o-CHART-13-570.jpg?6

But this is race. Let's look at sex.

Rich and Riach, two economists, sent off fake applications for jobs. Each resume was the same apart from the gender of the name. They found that qualified women were more likely to get engineering, secretarial, accountancy and computer analyst jobs than men.

In school, science is peddled as a "boy subject" and its teachers are usually male. Women are therefore less likely to take the subject forward. This means women are less likely to be able to go into STEM fields.

An exception to this is my old high school where most of the science teachers were female and there were a lot of girls taking sciences at A-level (which meant they'd be able to apply for a STEM course at university).

If you are female, you are more likely to have to deal with sexual harassment in the workplace than men. There are many cases of women being told that if they don't wear make-up, short skirts and high heels, they won't be promoted.

If you are female, you also have to make the choice between your family and your career in a way that men are rarely expected to do. If you decide not to have children to focus on your career you become "ruthless" or "unwomanly". If you decide to have children and put them in daycare, you're an "unfit mother". If you decide to have children and get your partner to look after them, you're "emasculating" him.

Taking time out for pregnancy also means you are more likely to be passed over for promotion.

So while individual choice has a huge role to play in whether or not you succeed in life, it assumes that no employer is in any way sexist or racist and that you are encouraged equally in school to go into various fields of work.

Now now, you don't know that. They could be really horrible at sex, and from a race that smells like rotten fish.