A serious limitation is arising in the enforceability of the gender pay gap. The increasing availability of gender reassignment surgery offers women access to full pay with a reasonably short return on investment.

If we consider the median case: a personal income of $30,240, from 2015 statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau. Assuming a woman makes 80% of an equivalent man, that translates into an annual loss of $6,000. The Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery offers a complete female-to-male surgery for roughly $125,000. That cost would be recouped in under 21 years–less than half the average career. Looking higher up the pay scale, a woman in a white collar job making $100,000 would see wage gains to repay the cost of the surgery in only five years.

Given that sexual reassignment surgery is a relatively new procedure, it seems entirely plausible the cost may fall with new technologies and increased prevalence as acceptance of transgendered people increases. So, these ROI time horizons may get even shorter.

Economics has clearly shown people to act in rational, profit-maximizing ways. And technology time and time again has disrupted societies and upended business practices. If we don’t act quickly to address the gender pay gap, we may find ourselves in a society with only one gender.