Gender Pay Gap

[Peppino Impastato]

On 01/04/2018 at 00:29, JTS98 said:

The arguments in the video are perfectly valid and this is something that has deeply irritated me in the media in recent years.

The studies used to 'show' that women are paid less than men for the same work do not show that at all. They show that your average man makes more money than your average woman. That is not anything like the same thing. I find it quite concerning that so many media outlets report this as fact when their well-educated staff simply must be aware that it is not so.

The studies that give figures like 76p in the pound would fail a first-year university stats project. They would fail because the figures are not controlled.

For example, we know that men work more hours than women https://www.statista.com/statistics/280749/monthly-full-time-weekly-hours-of-work-in-the-uk-by-gender-year-on-year/. So, men making more money shouldn't be a surprise. We also know that 97% of accidental deaths in the workplace in the UK are male http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/pdf/fatalinjuries.pdf. We also know that women are much more likely to take sick days than men, as reported by the ONS. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/10660612/Women-are-almost-42-per-cent-more-likely-to-take-sick-days-than-men.html

These are just three examples. But basically men work more hours, take less time off, work in more dangerous jobs and are more likely to be prepared to take employment that means they have to be separated from their family for extended periods. In a capitalist society this is always going to result in men being paid more. The market values those attributes.

It is disingenuous in the extreme to say that women are paid less than men for the same work simply by citing 'full-time' work, and what bothers me is that those reporting this clearly know that. Yet they are happy to whip up a controversy where none should reasonably exist. The Guardian recently ran an article on the 'gender' pay gap at an airline where, blow me down with a feather, the mostly-male pilots were paid more than they mostly-female cabin crew. They actually presented that as a gender pay issue. It's ridiculous.

I'm a generally PC and left-wards leaning kind of person, but arguments based on falsehood, especially known falsehood, really annoy me, regardless of who they come from. The gender pay-gap in the UK as reported in the 21st century is nonsense.

 

Brilliant post but you forgot the biggest factor of all - pregnancy.  Add that and you've ended the entire debate.

[Guest JTS98]

Just now, Peppino Impastato said:

Brilliant post but you forgot the biggest factor of all - pregnancy.  Add that and you've ended the entire debate.

I deliberately avoided pregnancy as I believe there is enough evidence without it. But of course, you're right. Women have babies and that means they earn less money. It doesn't mean they are discriminated against.

[Peppino Impastato]

10 hours ago, JTS98 said:

I think he was a bit more than 'leftwards leaning'. Also, I didn't endorse capitalism, just noted that in our capitalist society, what we have is what could reasonably expected rather than the result of discrimination. You made the baseless jump to assume I was endorsing the system.

And, yes, it is a bit chicken and egg, but there is evidence that most mothers are happy caring for children (see attached link). I don't see the problem with women continuing to be primary carers. It seems to be what most women I know want. This poll (Gallup poll from America) http://fortune.com/2016/10/05/working-moms-stay-home/ certainly indicates that mothers would rather not work, while fathers would rather work.  I'm not sure how many men who work away from home would swap that for being primary carer if given a choice. I'd be interested to see a study on that.

I think quality of life is often lost in this debate. For example there was a married couple at my work until last year when the wife went off on maternity leave and then quit at the end of the maternity after having the baby. I still work with her husband. She decided she'd rather bring up the wean than work, and her husband does the earning. So he'll make more money over his life than she will, but she gets a lot more quality time with the kid. She also spends most of her mornings socialising with other mums, going for coffee etc while her husband is at work. I'd argue she's winning in the quality of life stakes. Why is money the only measure we use for equality between the sexes? This survey suggests that a large number of men would be happy to swap earnings for quality of life. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-26274518

We live in a society where girls do better at school, girls are more likely to go to uni, women do better at uni, there's growing evidence they get paid more as young adults, women are less likely to do dangerous jobs, women spend less time in paid employment,  women are less likely to kill themselves, women are less likely to go to prison, women live longer. Yet some people like to argue that women are oppressed simply by using the measure of income. What about all the other factors?

There is a lot of rhetoric in the gender pay-gap debate. And it has become quite toxic to even question whether it exists. Certainly I'd be shy about doing so in my office for fear of being branded a misogynist. Yet there are clearly demonstrable reasons why your average man earns more than your average women and there is evidence that most mothers are happy with the underlying cause (looking after kids). The answer is not always 'discrimination'.

Another quality post.

[Peppino Impastato]

1 minute ago, JTS98 said:

I deliberately avoided pregnancy as I believe there is enough evidence without it. But of course, you're right. Women have babies and that means they earn less money. It doesn't mean they are discriminated against.

Exactly, they lose a big chunk of professional progression time that men don't.  It's logical they would earn less.

[Guest JTS98]

1 minute ago, Peppino Impastato said:

Exactly, they lose a big chunk of professional progression time that men don't.  It's logical they would earn less.

It is not reasonable to come back after a year away from the workplace and expect those who have been working for that year not to have progressed ahead of you. However, there's more to life than work and the women who has been off has had lots of time with her kid and family and probably strengthening other relationships in her life. I don't see this as her losing.

[Peppino Impastato]

1 minute ago, JTS98 said:

It is not reasonable to come back after a year away from the workplace and expect those who have been working for that year not to have progressed ahead of you. However, there's more to life than work and the women who has been off has had lots of time with her kid and family and probably strengthening other relationships in her life. I don't see this as her losing.

Absolutely, and perhaps doing that three times.  Often for even eighteen months.  So losing basically five years, obviously the person working away for that five years stands a great chance of progressing further and thus being paid more.

You make some excellent points about quality of life too.

[Jacksgranda]

6 hours ago, Honest Saints Fan said:

Not many and this topic isn't something I particularly care about.

I gave up working  full time when our daughter was born in 2016 and have no plans to go back full time. I also work in a very male dominated industry but 80% of my office are female. Every single man in my office works in a high earning  job though but they want to. The women seem happy doing to admin jobs. 

Have a greenie for saying "our daughter" - most people seem to think their joint child belongs exclusively to them.

[chomp my root]

2 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

Plumbers can earn a fortune.

 

Yup, that's why I suvgested it to her although I knew it ws futile. She lived in Edinburgh and I thought a lot of lassies wod prefer/trust a female 'worky' more than a dude. 

The mad cow is happy enough NOT having shit up to her elbow. Go figure. 

[NotThePars]

Of course social engineering takes place to a degree. It always will. I don't really have a problem with that. Our biology and our surroundings combine to shape us, and that will never change.

Males are more aggressive than women. An interesting study recently done at Oxford University suggested that both biology and nurture are behind this. Men are also, generally speaking, bigger and stronger than women. Therefore, I see no reason why anyone should be surprised that men develop more suited to aggressive, competitive environments.

Women and men are biologically different, and I would expect this to show itself in choices made in life. In the twenty-first century it seems that we should prize 'equality' above all. But what does equality mean in this sense? Women will always give birth, and I'd imagine women will always be more in favour of being primary carers than men will. Men will always be paid more. That doesn't mean men have better lives. There's a lot more to life than how much you get paid.

It seems to be a dirty idea to express these days that men and women are just fundamentally different, and that that's fine. Why do we have to pretend to be the same?

 

I imagine the solution contained there is to craft a working environment that isn’t aggressive and competitive. The wholesale adoption of a neoliberal ideology and the smashing of trade unions certainly has made the workplace worse in a lot of ways IMO. A glance at Amazon’s working practices both within the factories and at head offices are a good example of this.

[Peppino Impastato]

1 hour ago, G_Man1985 said:

When baby is born men can take the time off ( say 9 months) while some women may want to go back to work straight away.
A guy at work was off for 7 months while his Mrs went back to work after 2 months and I think it was her being the main bread winner ( English teacher ) and the fact she enjoys her work

Utterly pointless post

[Peppino Impastato]

6 minutes ago, G_Man1985 said:

Like all your makey up stories

Gid een

[sparky88]

I have no idea why maternity leave can't be made into parental leave. the current system penalises families where the mother is the main breadwinner.  i suspect the 'gender pay gap' would still remain as women would choose to take the leave rather than let the man have it in most cases. 

[chomp my root]

1 hour ago, NotThePars said:

 

I imagine the solution contained there is to craft a working environment that isn’t aggressive and competitive. The wholesale adoption of a neoliberal ideology and the smashing of trade unions certainly has made the workplace worse in a lot of ways IMO. A glance at Amazon’s working practices both within the factories and at head offices are a good example of this.

I'm a big fan of Trade Unions but with the best will in the world work isn't there so we can celebrate each others birthday and raise money for Comic Relief.  

[NotThePars]

I'm a big fan of Trade Unions but with the best will in the world work isn't there so we can celebrate each others birthday and raise money for Comic Relief.  

 

You can easily reward people that are team players and work hard for each other rather than rewarding a dog eat dog environment. Maybe constraining people’s ability to hoard vast sums of wealth and distributing more evenly across a company could help. It seems like some other countries are doing it better than we are.

[chomp my root]

4 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

 

You can easily reward people that are team players and work hard for each other rather than rewarding a dog eat dog environment. Maybe constraining people’s ability to hoard vast sums of wealth and distributing more evenly across a company could help. It seems like some other countries are doing it better than we are.

Maybe but that's not the way our system works. I'm not sticking up for it, there's a lot wrong with it but we are where we are. By all means have a greet about it but you're never going to keep everyone sweet, people work for money generally, not because they love it so we turn up, grit our teeth and crack on. Its up to the individual if they want to climb the ladder or try and find a wee niche that suits them etc.  For most of us work is shit but necessary shit, we all want it to be nicer but that's not the point of it. 

I should probably point out I bowed out of the whole working thing a few years back, I'm a trophy husband these days. Its a good job I'm pretty. 

[NotThePars]

Maybe but that's not the way our system works. I'm not sticking up for it, there's a lot wrong with it but we are where we are. By all means have a greet about it but you're never going to keep everyone sweet, people work for money generally, not because they love it so we turn up, grit our teeth and crack on. Its up to the individual if they want to climb the ladder or try and find a wee niche that suits them etc.  For most of us work is shit but necessary shit, we all want it to be nicer but that's not the point of it. 
I should probably point out I bowed out of the whole working thing a few years back, I'm a trophy husband these days. Its a good job I'm pretty. 

That literally doesn’t refute the points that you can collectively organise to redress vast levels of inequality and make the workplace less dependent on aggressive competition. I’m not wholly convinced by the gender pay gap but I do acknowledge the vast inequality that exists between top and bottom in our society and within individual workplaces.

[chomp my root]

2 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

 

That literally doesn’t refute the points that you can collectively organise to redress vast levels of inequality and make the workplace less dependent on aggressive competition. I’m not wholly convinced by the gender pay gap but I do acknowledge the vast inequality that exists between top and bottom in our society and within individual workplaces.

 

Yeah that's feck all to do with the initial points either. Still, at least you can get a good whine about it. 

[NotThePars]

Yeah that's feck all to do with the initial points either. Still, at least you can get a good whine about it. 

The initial point was about making a workplace less dependent on competition between workers. Maybe paying people up and down a workforce more equally than we do atm might relieve some pressure to constantly be climbing the ladder. Pretty simple my man.

[pandarilla]

Yeah that's feck all to do with the initial points either. Still, at least you can get a good whine about it. 

He's not whining (or greeting) about it.

These are complex and often subtle issues. Trying to demean them in this manner is pretty poor form.

[pandarilla]

Maybe but that's not the way our system works. I'm not sticking up for it, there's a lot wrong with it but we are where we are. By all means have a greet about it but you're never going to keep everyone sweet, people work for money generally, not because they love it so we turn up, grit our teeth and crack on. Its up to the individual if they want to climb the ladder or try and find a wee niche that suits them etc.  For most of us work is shit but necessary shit, we all want it to be nicer but that's not the point of it. 
I should probably point out I bowed out of the whole working thing a few years back, I'm a trophy husband these days. Its a good job I'm pretty. 

Work doesn't have to be shit. We can build and shape our society in a different way.

Work life balance is a good example of this. Compare the average working week in different countries and the difference is sometimes vast.

These cultures around work can be changed.