During a long car journey i had a ‘heated’ discussion with my wife about equal pay.

She suggested women are discriminated against, i argued it was more a symptom of a capitalist society where men naturally thrive.

She didn’t like that, but i had no facts to back up my theory.

so after a bit of googling i still havn’t managed to find anything that actually gives cold hard figures in a way that they can be compared. There are plenty of headline grabbing news reports, but no actual facts and figures that havn’t been carefully selected to fit in with what the journalist is trying to say.

I thought if anyone can help it’ll be the STW collective, so does anyone know of a report or source of information that just gives the facts?

Because lazy journos can get a cheap story out of easily manipulated statistics?

In theory it sucks, in reality women in general take a career break for kids etc. So is it right that they stay on the same pay scale or should they fall behind a little in this period where the male continues?
not saying its right or wrong but it is reality

Well its clearly a historical thing and its clear the reason men historically were privileged is because we are strong and dont go through pregnancy.

Now what exactly is a capitalist society ? I would imagine it one with free trade and the market determines prices and wages.

It would just depend on whether you considered brute strength, violence and intimidation a commodity to be traded ?

Many women choose families over a career, and take on lower paid part time jobs, surely that removes any credibility from the figures?

I suspect its less of a problem than people think.

Because you’re worth it..

“A woman’s work is never done… Perhaps that’s why they are paid less”
— a comedian (I forget who)

Women are often paid less than men for doing the SAME jobs no matter if they choose to have children or not.

stating that it’s because women have a ‘career break’ to have children or take lower paid part time jobs to allow for a family smacks of the kind of complacent naivety that headline grabbing statistics rely on.

There are statistics and academic publications to back this up, just because google cannot provide answers does not mean they don’t exist

What i mean by capitalist society, is basically that men are more motivated by money. They chase promotions more, go for higher paying job sectors such as finance or banking and are generally more aggresive and vocal.

I’m not suggesting that men actaully deserve to be paid more just that they know, and have the tools, to earn more money.

Could we all think about the question?

And what the various “answers” might actually represent…?

Firstly, is it an indisputable fact that men get paid more?

In my teams everyone will be paid on merit. Pay will vary within grades, based on ability, experience (which I know is a difficult topic in the current climate, but in a highly technical role, experience and capability are closely linked). There will absolutely not be any gender influence on an individual’s pay.

An answer based on population wide stats doesn’t really answer the question posed. As a body, average female salary is lower than average male salary – doesn’t mean that women are paid less. Women are over-represented in low paid jobs and under represented in top jobs.

I think men are probably better at salary negotiations whilst not necessarily being better at the job (talking about women earning less than men in comparable jobs).

I personally believe that your rate of remuneration should be relative to how good you are at your job rather than negotiating skills. Although I’m aware lots would disagree.

I think greater transparency with regards to salaries would help to improve this.

Many women choose families over a career

Yes men play almost no roll in that decision.

Three factors IMHO
1. Sexism – men get paid more in certain sectors for equal work- finance law etc for no good reason- where they can negotiate their own contracts – suspect journalism as well actually.
2. PT work + career break
3. Women do lower paid jobs in general haridressing v construction, Child care v IT etc

mrmichaelwright I didn’t say it was the only reason but can you possibly say where this is wrong

subject a male works hard and each year gets a pay rise based on his improved performance

subject b a female works equally hard but takes a couple of years off to have children but now wants the same performance related increases without having put the work in.

Is this fair?

Men are taller than women, generally. Tall people have more success in the labour market, and get paid more on average.

What i mean by capitalist society, is basically that men are more motivated by money. They chase promotions more, go for higher paying job sectors such as finance or banking and are generally more aggresive and vocal.

You could flip that around, and say that due to our historically male dominated society, we have chosen to value jobs that are male dominated more, and hence pay those sectors more. It is hard to argue any reason for those sectors being more highly paid than other jobs requiring similar levels of skills, that doesn’t end up coming back to what society decides to value and reward with more money.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the future with professions like law, medicine etc., where more women than men are getting good results in training & degree courses (and more women are taking the courses also). Same is possibly true with many of the fancy degree courses that traditionally feed banks & the city and other high paid jobs – we’ll perhaps see in 40 years time whether the men at the top can still keep their end of things male dominated. Who knows, maybe by then, there’ll be a big masculinism movement aiming to counter what it sees as unfairly low mens pay…

Joe

I think men are probably better at salary negotiations whilst not necessarily being better at the job (talking about women earning less than men in comparable jobs).

I personally believe that your rate of remuneration should be relative to how good you are at your job rather than negotiating skills.

IMHO, that hits the nail on the head.

hustler – what you describe is how those headline grabbing statistics are formulated, if you adjust for factors like having children then the figures, although less dramatic, still reflect a lower wage for women in the same roles.

It varies massively by industry though, many jobs are equal but chauvinism and sexism in the boardroom/management is still sadly a reality of life in this country.

I think men are probably better at salary negotiations whilst not necessarily being better at the job

Utter nonsense. I see no evidence of this at all.

Think about it. You’re saying that men have better negotiating skills…

……and I said at the start of my first post it sucks, but statistics can go both ways

There are statistics and academic publications to back this up, just because google cannot provide answers does not mean they don’t exist

And just because you make vague references to possible publications that back up your point, doesn’t mean that you’re right.

Link to the papers/stats/unbiased reports, please?

(not saying you’re right or wrong, but if you’re going to call someone naive you might want to back it up with facts)

I’m positive that in the industries I recruit for women and men are paid the same for the same work.

However at the most senior levels on salaries over the 200k mark there does tend to be fewer women as a proportion of the overall numbers.

subject a male works hard and each year gets a pay rise based on his improved performance

subject b a female works equally hard but takes a couple of years off to have children but now wants the same performance related increases without having put the work in

Do they both do the same job ?
Are you suggesting that subject a at 56 gets more money that subject b aged 45 as a has done longer than b ?
See equal pay act and age discrimination act to help you decide. Bet there is one on discriminating against pregnant women as well

mrmichealwright – I appreciate that google isn’t the fountain of all knowledge, but you’d think there would be something somewhere?

And if not why? surely if the figures stackup making such reports widely available would have the positive effect of spreading the message?

Oh yeah, any idea where i can get these academic papers?

Lots of factors.

Pay Equity is a big one. Traditional “women’s jobs” teachers, nurses, librarians are paid less than traditional “men’s jobs” firemen, policemen etc.

Having babies doesn’t help career ladder either.

And just plain old sexism in promotion, old boys clubs in directorships, exec positions.

One of the Skando countries (Norway ?) passed a law that all companies had to have equal numbers of men and women on the board. That helped even the balance !

trusting in broad statistics like ‘how much you get paid by sex and age’ as a proof for anything apart form the obvious IS naive. If you look at those figures (women earn 53% of what men do Median total income, 2003/04, £ per week, GB from ONS) then it actually looks far worse than reality. It is obvious that if those figures are adjusted to represent actual earnings by career stage/job role discounting age then the gap will lessen and become a far more accurate picture of reality, it will not however reflect equal pay.

I’m not going to link to publications as i don’t know what they are or even where to find them. i do however, by discussion with the very clever people that i strangely find my self associated with by marriage, know that they exist. I’m not going to go up to the office and read the hundreds of academic books to prove my argument, i don’t understand 99% of what they say anyway!

I’m not the academic in this house, my wife (who’s paid far more than me 🙂 but less than some of her male colleagues) is. I’m just arguing by proxy 🙂

If you wish to pay for the data then the ONS will no doubt furnish you with statistics in raw form which you may interpret as you wish, without a degree in statistics though then you may struggle

The woman sat opposite me earns 400 pounds a day. I know this because she asked me to work out how much she earns an hour because she couldn’t.

She’s also asked me to spell ‘readiness’ for her.

And she’s on 400 pounds a day.

Oh yeah, any idea where i can get these academic papers?

Libraries. Try university library access – it’s usually possible to pay for the right to have access to read in the liabrary (though not borrow).

The law is an interesting one – more women go into the law than men. Consistently, the balance of trainees in law firms is biased towards a greater number of female entrants. But, if you look at the make-up of partnerships, they are massiely male dominated.

Women make very good lawyers, and the toughest negotiators I’ve ever found have been women.

The profession has asked itself why women are so underrepresented at the top. the simple reality is opportunism.

Our society has dictated that women, if they wish to have children, need to take some time out. The fathers continue working, without any opportunity for time out. Within the law, where performance is still closely linked to time served, this means that women are immediately put at a disadvatage. There is also the fact that, as a career choice, it is very hard work. I cannot begin to count the number of evenings, weekends and holidays I lost to work. If, following the standard societal model, that women are the primary carers of children, that becomes impossible to reconcile.

And so, because men ran the show before, and the system remains inherently biased towards them, they get the jam, and the women – all perfectly capable – are excluded from the same opportunities for earning at the same levels.

Those who can’t use google properly:

http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&biw=1092&bih=964&q=equal%20pay&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=ws

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/aug/19/equal-pay-michael-white

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/aug/19/equal-pay-women-2057

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/pay_gaps_accross_equalities_areas.pdf

‘Made in Dagenham’ a film about the struggle for equal paym is a bug hit.
Producers said ‘It was cheap to make too, as it’s mostly women’.

men don’t get paid more than women… this thread is like virtual toilet paper..

Why are men paid more than women?

The first question there is, “are they?”

Once you’ve worked out the extent of how true this premise is, you can then perhaps work out why.

I’m tending towards thinking that the ‘negotiations’ comment might be on the right lines; in my experience, a company will pay the bare minimum it can get away with in order to retain its staff. Worth has little to do with it (or I’d be loaded rather than broke…) So perhaps, assuming the original premise is correct, companies pay women less than men solely because they can.

And to the OP.

DO NOT actually go and find some hard facts and then present them to your wife. That’s a bad move.

That would be one reason why I might get paid more than a woman, because I know that being right, is not always right.

Our society has dictated that women, if they wish to have children, need to take some time out. The fathers continue working, without any opportunity for time out. Within the law, where performance is still closely linked to time served, this means that women are immediately put at a disadvatage. There is also the fact that, as a career choice, it is very hard work. I cannot begin to count the number of evenings, weekends and holidays I lost to work. If, following the standard societal model, that women are the primary carers of children, that becomes impossible to reconcile.

I think it goes beyond that – women are just less likely to be sucked in to working crazy hours on the promise of rewards later. I know a few women working in law and similar fields (or rather did), doing well, being promoted in line with male colleagues, but just didn’t want to keep up the effort needed to stay in that race. Not a case of being unable to compete with male colleagues, just not wanting to. Inevitable the people who are on the boards of law firms and big corporates are those who have been maintaining that level of effort for 25+ years and even amongst women who have decided not to have kids, there aren’t many willing to make that sort of sacrifice in other areas of their lives to get there.

more fool us men…….