by frog
Girls can do anything – except get paid the same as men.
The latest Statistics New Zealand figures show there is a widening gap between the money earned by men and women.
Full-time pay for men rose just over six percent in the 12 months ending in June. The increase for women was only about half that, at just over three percent.
Over all, women earn 82 percent of what men do – down from 86 percent in 2004. Translated to work time that’s about seven hours a week that women don’t get paid for.
Not a bad deal for employers, almost one day’s work free!
Why is it that in the age of equality women still struggle to earn the same as men do for the same work? Why should it be that a person’s earning power should be based on anatomical differences?
The days of women being uneducated, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen are long gone, but it seems many employers have missed that.
For part-time workers, which include, mothers who chose to work while their kids are in school, the situation seems to be getting even worse. In that area men’s wages increased by 8 percent, but women’s rose just 2.8 percent.
Personally, I would advocate that until employers pull their socks up and start paying women what they are worth, women should work exactly what they get paid for – 82 percent. That could involve being on a permanent go-slow, leaving work about two hours early every day or taking Mondays off to make up for the seven or so hours they work, but don’t get paid for.
Published in Campaign | Economy, Work, & Welfare by frog on Thu, October 13th, 2005
Tags: environment
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Umm, my take is that women do get paid exactly the same as men. Not only is the law, but in this day and age no-one would stand by and let this sort of discrimination happen.
Doesn’t it seem more likely that the reason women are earning less ON AVERAGE is that they are choosing to take lower paid employment (or the opportunities for them pay less). For instance, part time work for men might be something like working as a builders labourer, which pays fairly well, compared to a woman who might only get a retail job.
I think before we get worked up about these figures, and take them as hard proof of institutional sexism from employers, we should look at the types of jobs being undertaken. Also, despite this being the 21st century and the New Age, there are a number of women who do put their careers on hold to have and look after kids. This affects their seniority, and their earning potential. This is ultimately their choice. Society does not force this on them, not in my experience anyway.
My wife earns twice as much as me, and I’m stoked about that. I only wish that when we have children, she would choose to go back into the workforce, and leave me at home to do the washing and change nappies. However, she wants to be the housewife, and then change career, from an $80 and hour IT contractor, to a florist. Her salary is less important to her than other factors. Our example cannot be taken as typical, but there are women out there who do choose to focus on things other than salary and income.
If anyone has any proof of some form of campaign to underpay women, I’d be interested to hear it. I simply don’t see how these figures are that proof.
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Um — What Tane said.
Why is it that in the age of equality women still struggle to earn the same as men do for the same work?
I didn’t look at the statistics in detail, but from what I did see, this is not what the report says. The most obvious thing you see, when looking at gender differences in the figures, is that more men are in higher-paid jobs than women. In fact, more men are working overall, and more women are on benefits or without income.
This is obviously going to translate into a higher average income for men. But if you want to claim that women are being paid less for the same work, you need to look deeper into the statistics, and provide actual evidence for your claim.
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Frog said: “Why is it that in the age of equality women still struggle to earn the same as men do for the same work?
They don’t, women earn the same as men do for the same work.
Frog: “Why should it be that a person’s earning power should be based on anatomical differences?”
They aren’t. Pay for a male cleanerr $9.55 an hour; pay for a female cleaner $9.55 an hour. Pay for a male Supreme Court Judge $313,900 pa; pay for a female Supreme Court Judge $313,900.
Increase in pay for male cleaner – 2.5%; increase in pay for female cleaner – 2.5%. Increase in pay for male Supreme Court Judge – 3.85%; increase in pay for female Supreme Court Judge 3.85%.
I’d like to quote to you from the website of the NZ Council of Trade Unions: “Under the Equal Pay Act 1972 and the Government Services Equal Pay Act 1960 women and men in the same job must be paid the same rate.”
I really am having trouble figuring this out Frog, do you really believe that employers pay women less for doing the same work as men? And if you know of examples where this has happened why haven’t you laid a formal complaint? You used to stand up for the rights of workers
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That is a shocking call. I join the other commenters in telling you you’ve made a big mistake. Pay is determined by education, seniority, aptitude, job type and a whole lot of other factors. As people pointed out, males and females differ in all these characteristics, for a whole host of reasons. Whether or not there is a gender wage gap you aren’t going to be able to spot it from a Stats NZ release. I haven’t read any of this, but I think some studies show there is a discrepancy after controlling for all these other factors- but there was no way you could infer this from the StatsNZ document. Do you think the people who spend their lives studying this stuff do nothing more complicated than eyeballing some figures?? I can assure you their methodology is a lot more sophisticated than that.
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Edge:
Yes, but ACROSS THE BOARD wage increases in 2005, in relation to 2004, have favoured men more than women, the former enjoying wage increases of around 8% while the latter only experiencing increases of about 2.2%
Discrepancies do occur, Edge, and employers certainly do discriminate as to how their employees are paid. Studies in Scandinavia have shown that blondes tend to get paid more than brunettes, in the same job. Studies done in Britain have shown that slim people tend to earn more than overweight people, in the same job. And the latest issue of the Auckland University Business Review did a study proving that ethnic minorities, in particular immigrants, get paid less than their Pakeha counterparts in the same jobs doing the same tasks (and also that immigrants are less likely to be enployed than Pakeha).
Sure, some women get paid the same as men in the same job for certain positions. But it is disingenuous to assert that in ALL cases and in ALL positions men and women doing the same job get paid exactly the same wages and enjoy exactly the same wage increases all the time.
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The fact that tradespeople (predominantly male) are in short supply, and executives (predominantly male) are ratcheting up their salaries much faster than lesser-paid mortals will be two factors pulling the stats in the direction they’re headed. The stats do not necessarily reflect M/F discrimination, as others have pointed out.
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Redgreen,
exactly. It is the across-the-board wage increases that favour men, in the same way that it is the across-the-board total wage/salary that favours men.
Men and women tend to work in different in different industries.
Men are more likely to work in higher paying industries, and men are more likely to work in industries in which wage/salary rates increase faster.
There is a gender earnings gap. But it is not caused in the manner implied by Frog in this quote: “Why is it that in the age of equality women still struggle to earn the same as men do for the same work?”.
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Edge:
No no, I was referring to men and women who work the same job in the same position in the same company itself.
The studies done in Scandinavia and Britain showed just that.
Also, going by what you’re saying, it doesn’t rule out the possibility that higher paying industries which expand at a faster rate tend to have conditions more conducive for men attaining those positions ahead of women.
For instance, in France, as a recent article/s points out, company directors are overwhelmingly male (92%, if I recall the stats correctly) because there is a corporate culture there that regards women as inept and/or unsuitable for the job. Seems like blatant gender discrimination to me (women are regarded as less motivated).
I put it to you that it isn’t necessarily the case that women simply DON’T STRIVE to attain those high positions, but that they are SHUT OUT from attaining them.
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Surely the issue is that society values the work done predominantly by men (trades etc) over that done by women (nurturing caring). This shows that society has a gender bias.
NB I agree: equal pay for identical jobs probably has been acheieved. But the gender bias exists in that we deem “female” work unequal to “male” work . This is contingent on history that saw “male” jobs paid more than “female” jobs because men were deemed to need more as primary breadwinners.
Also NB: I’m not trying to be deterministic and saying that women are destined to in certain professions and should be argued with robustly! My issue is that we value masculinity over femininity regardless of boilogical sex. IMHO this is what needs to be addressed.
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- destined to *work* in certain professions and should *not* be argued with robustly – sorry.
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double negatives are not uncomplicated!
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and back to a woman’s point of view;
yes, I personally have worked on jobs in the past 5 years where the guys were paid more, on average, than the girls, for doing essentially the same hours. But the difference was an astutely used ECA and gagging clauses in our contracts, as well as a practically union-free worksite; this employer was very careful to show that each contract was negotiated on individual parameters. Not many employees were women, anyway, and those who were, uniformly had certain physical characteristics in common. Guess which ones!!!
Now on to hard stats:
NZUSA are doing ongoing research into this area, as the rates of Women’s pay vs Men’s pay have an instant effect on how quickly a graduate can pay off a student loan. Generally speaking, it takes 28 years for a woman to pay off an average-sized loan, compared to around 12-14 yrs for a male graduate.
Post-grad study exacerbates the issue, with less women committing themselves to further study and more debt, and consequently the employment prospects for male grads with post-grad degrees/diplomas are better than their female counterparts.
Specific post-grad programs have been known to show a gender bias: I’m not certain how much of it remains now, but I remember some schools where it just wasn’t worth getting excited about doing Honours because of the institutional misogyny of the supervisors. At least one of the people I’m thinking of has retired, so this is more historical than current, I would say.
RedGreen; great points! France is defiantly the culture which invented misogyny, and upholds it even in it’s modern secular society.
Edge; we all know what the Acts relevant to this discussion say, it’s the ways in which employment law is flouted by those employers who expect that their staff have never heard of unions, let alone award rates or standards of employment, that create the inequities that lead to this discussion.
I did a paper in 2003 where our class was visited by a Treasury staff-member, just after they’d been awarded Equity in Action prizes for that year. She described an extremely family-friendly workplace, where all staff could take reduced hours for parenting or further education, and we as a class sat in amazement as the refinements of this scheme were spelt out: not one of us had experienced anything like that in our extremely varied work experiences.
So there are basically a wide spectrum of styles being used in the HR environment, some of which assume a sausage-making approach, others which see the benefits of treating workers as individuals with varying skills and varying needs. To penalise an employee because she is young, attractive, and may sometime wish to take maternity leave (assuming relationships and an inclination towards reproduction rather than recreation) is not something one expects in this day and age, but is an unpalatable fact of substantial numbers of women’s experiences.
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uh,
guys? earth calling! Tane? Repton? Edge? Tom? Which planet are you from?
Have you never negotiated a raise? Or been passed over for a raise when someone else in the office got one – or vice versa? Certainly if Tane’s partner is an IT contractor like me she’ll know this: if she’s on $80 /hr that certainly doesn’t mean the programmer sitting next to her will be on the same (in fact variability in rates increases as you go up the ranks). This claim from you guys that “the law says equal pay for equal jobs so everyone is paid the same” is just nonsense: people very often get different pay for the same job. That’s okay: the problem is that there seems to be a systematic bias here.
Tom claims that education, seniority, aptitude, etc are to blame. Let’s take on those details:
Women’s education is increasing relative to men, but their pay is declining.
Women’s participation in the work force has been increasing steadily for years, so seniority should be increasing, but their pay is declining.
Let’s just assume that women’s aptitude is not declining. Or do you really wanna push that line? (don’t try this at home, kids).
So….. what’s going on? Certainly some job types are poorly paid compared to others (stereotypical ‘womens work’ pays badly). Nurses are a prime example: given their education levels, experience, and working conditions are chronically underpaid. This injustice we already knew of. But how come that divide is changing?
Tane, if you think this is explained because women have fewer opportunities (as in the example you give): how come you are complaining about frog pointing that out instead of joining him in railing against that injustice?
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huskynut,
I’ve a friend who tried to become a plumber. She seemed good at it. Topped her class at the poly. But was the only one in her class who couldn’t get a job. Was the only female in her class too… …. nor do I think hers is an atypical story (though now, 5 years later, I’m sure she’d have found a job because of the shortages of skilled people – just not necessarily as good a one as her male classmates).
Saying “oh trade people and executives are paid lots more and male” may explain the details of what’s happening. But that doesn’t means it’s _not_ M/F discrimination. It means that a certain feature of M/F discrimination which already existed is having more of an affect in incomes.
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what icehawk said…
for all of those who believe men and women are getting the same pay for the same work, where’s your proof?
and if women are prevented from doing the same work, then your logic is flawed anyway.
in such a tight labour market, one would have thought that women would have had a good chance to close the gap, but no, it’s widening. counterintuitve, eh…?
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Icehawk,
I’ve snipped a few of your points out;
ICEHAWK: “…if she’s on $80 /hr that certainly doesn’t mean the programmer sitting next to her will be on the same”
TANE : Yes, there is a large spread of hourly rates across her company, though as far as she can tell she is earning approximately the same as the other project co-ordinators (all male). This was not the case until very recently, as she was fairly new, but a 20% pay increase has changed that. I doubt she will make as much as the engineers, as they are a different trade. Given her relative performance to her male colleagues, I think she may be earning more than them by this time next year.
ICEHAWK: “Women’s education is increasing relative to men, but their pay is declining. Women’s participation in the work force has been increasing steadily for years, so seniority should be increasing, but their pay is declining.”
TANE: Fair points. The question to consider here is how much time away from the workforce do women take for child-raising, relative to men. I think this is one of the main factors holding women’s earnings down. I believe this is due to personal choice, not because of any antiquated ideas about a woman’s place. There is a growing consensus that men can and should stay home, if that is the better arrangement within the family. But in many of the cases I’m familiar with, it’s the woman who does so.
ICEHAWK: “Tane, if you think this is explained because women have fewer opportunities (as in the example you give): how come you are complaining about frog pointing that out instead of joining him in railing against that injustice?”
TANE: I’m railing against Frog making a very bold assertion on the basis of some very broad data. The highest paid person in the country is female (I think it’s Theresa Gattung). Can I assert from that that women earn more than men? It’s only slightly more tenuous than the claim Frog made. If average wages for women are lower than men, then what are the causes of this? One possibility is that there is a distinct bias against women by employers. But there are also other possibilities. Unless you answer and negate those possibilities you can’t make a broad brush statement that women are being actively discriminated against. Maybe they are. But a bit more proof would be useful.
The main issue identified in this comments thread has been that of ‘male jobs=high pay, female jobs=low pay’. I think there is some substance to this line of reasoning, and this is what needs to be addressed.
If it is true that women are being discriminated against by employers, then I’d be as angry about it as you. In this case, I think Frog’s call to arms was a bit premature.
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icehawk – you are absolutely right. I have no doubt that gender discrimination exists in the NZ workforce.
What I do dispute is that the study frog has referenced to try to prove this actually proves it. Redgreen has referenced studies in Europe attempting to prove this, had Frog referenced those (or similar ones conducted in New Zealand) I wouldn’t be here arguing.
Frog has pointed to some evidence and reached a conclusive unsupported by it. The evidence may be accurate; the conclusion may be right; however the two are not linked in this case. And to say, as Frog does, that they are, is not only disingenuous but dishonest.
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It’s probably quite similar in the way attractive people are paid more. Should we end up campaigning for the rights of the… er…. “aesthetically challenged” individuals? Most of these biases are probably unconcious… attractive people are treated better, paid more, but the people often don’t know they’re doing it.
And the feminist reality check: Females ARE different from males. We have enough similarities but we’re different enough in many areas that it may just happen to be that males are much better in certain areas. Females cite everything they’re so much better at that males, it’s only fair we should point out our good points too. A lot of it is probably the gender roles, expectations, but a reasonable amount is likely to be biological, too.
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Oh, and I know well-educated professional women who are quite happy to forgo Theresa Gattings’ pay-packet (or Helen Clark’s or Sian Ellias’, for that matter) because they don’t want their work-life balance to be “my work is my life”.
And does anyone want to seriously argue that ANY good nurse or teacher – regardless of gender – is paid what they’re truly worth? Or that every”stereotypically male” job is well-paid?
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Well, it’s obvious from this that Theresa Gattung and Helen Clark are being underpaid. Let’s campaign for them to get a 20% pay rise!
I think Judy Bailey is being discriminated against by her contract not being renewed. Perhaps people felt $800,000 tax dollars going to a women were the issue. Any-one want Paul Holmes to read the news – he might do it for $900K?
The points going both ways are all very interesting. What worries me is the solutions that might arise…was it Norway that demands 50% of boards of Directors to be Women? That is causing great pain. Push this too hard, and its a perverse slap in the face to Women who prefer to stay at home and look after the kids.
My wife is like Tane’s: very capable of earning big bucks in the IT industry, and generally got them once people saw her work…but she prefers putting our children first. What’s next? The Greens take double the tax from my income so they can pay my wife an income for staying home? I thought UF’s idea of income splitting the fairest thing in that regard (can I mention UF around here?)
But Frog, if your solution is a typical union “Go Slow”, I think you may not get the results you wish for.
I think the cost of losing good employees has only increased over the years, and at the same time, the recognition Women can work just as well as men have vastly improved. Staff that prove their value are retained. Staff that piss around and say “Frog told me to go slow” will likely not get that promotion or do well on their wage review.
The role of Unions might be teaching staff how to point out the value they add to the employer, not explaining how they can cause problems by leaving early and working at half speed.
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This post is pretty much a case study on the misuse of statistics. I’m surprised at you Frog.
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If employers could get women to do the same work as men, but for generally less pay…then why on earth would any men get employed?
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psycho_milt, do you think you could say why?
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Sure:
1. Taking an average difference that can and probably does have numerous possible causes, and choosing just one of them, most likely because it fits a pre-existing political opinion.
2. Drawing non-sequitur conclusions from a statistical result. Women earn on average less than men – therefore they’re not being paid for x hours that they work. Might turn out to be true, but doesn’t follow from the evidence presented.
3. Jumping from the average to the specific: the assumption that an individual man or woman can draw any conclusions about their own personal situation from a figure that is an average across a whole society.
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On average women DO earn less than men, which is the combined effect of many well known causes:
1. Women work somewhat fewer lifetime hours than men due to specific child-raising demands on their time that women are best suited to undertake. If a woman chooses to reduce her career committment and replace it with parenting, I for one cannot find an objection.
2. For the same reason some women tend to deliberately choose jobs that are less demanding in order that they may have more time and energy for their family. Again this is a legitimate priority that no-one could argue with.
3. Women are clustered in caring professions such as teaching and nursing. Again this is because many women find this kind of work suits their temperament better. If a woman prefers to work with the elderly rather than the pressure of a board-room executive, who are we to judge? Some women (eg, Gattung, Clark etc) handle high pressure, competitive careers that attract high incomes very well, but many prefer not to.
4. Women tend to have a lower level of committment to the corporation, ie are less willing or able to uproot a family if offered a transfer, or a role with extensive travel. For this reason progress up a corporate ladder is slower, or stymied altogether.
5. Women tend to avoid the more aggressive, high risk roles within an organisation, preferring roles within Admin or HR to Sales or Marketing from where the majority of execs are recruited.
6. Women tend to avoid the dangerous and dirty jobs that attract the relatively few incentives or bonus’s within the reach of the working class. Some do, but generally most do not.
And each one of these reasons is ONLY a generalisation, for each one there are many women who are fine exceptions. But the statistics we are debating are generalisations, so it is entirely valid to respond to them in kind.
The fact is though that women have different priorities in life. For many (and not all) relationships, family, security and socialisation are more important than they are to men. By contrast men tend to measure their value to their family in terms of how well they provide for it, which translates to employers as being somewhat more biddable in the long run.
In the short term most employers are happy to offer equal pay for equal work, but in the long term the male employee is has tradiitionally been better placed and more responsive to the demands of career advancement. Even so, when women are willing to postpone or abandon parenting, then the last decade or so has shown that in some professions, women are advancing even more rapidly than men. The career marketplace pays according not to body-shape, but to utlility….and historically men have had a somewhat higher overall utility to employers (read exploitability in many cases) than women. Whether this will always be true remains to be seen. What is absolutely clearcut however is that relying on the market to solve all such problems yeilds patchy results.
In some cases there are reasonable arguments to be made that some careers such as nursing were allowed to become “low paid ghettos” simply because they were dominated by women. In the end the resultant shortage forced the employers hand and an adjustment was made, but in the case of many low skilled workers, shortages may never arise. For example, those caring for the elderly remain poorly paid. If the market fails such people, is there a case for intervention?
Even more radical is the idea that because women earn less lifetime income than men, that indeed they should be paid at a higher rate than men. As much as it might make for equity in the longer term, in the short term the objections are obvious…not the least of which is that many women might just not feel right about being paid more than the man next to them doing the same job.
Unspoken in much of this debate is the role of the family. In this “girls can do anything” age, it is entirely unfashionable to suggest that in fact when men and women play together as a team than they do better than as individuals. Indeed it is well known that the prime cause of relative poverty is the failure to form and maintain stable families. The family, in all it’s forms, is the primary engine of wealth generation and the source of the kind of lifetime security that is relevant to women, and that renders less critical the question of lifetime income. But the current western model emphasises the atomist model, enshrining the economic role of the individual at the expense of our place within a family and wider community.
It is as atomist individuals that we are at our most valuable to the corporate consumerist world, for it is the individual who is most readily exploited to serve the coporation body AND soul, and the individual most likely to respond to the blandishments of the borrow and spend, junk status lifestyle. By contrast a person securely embraced by family and community has more substance to them, more resilience and more motive to invest in a future. Of course these are generalisations, and not all families or communities are functional nirvana’s….but simply because we live in a time when the family as an institution is struggling with many pressures, is not justification to pronounce it dead.
And political agendas that promote “gender equivalence” by dismissing the differences between the sexes, and thereby justifying the further atomisation of the individual, and marginalisation of natural gender roles, do not take us in the right direction. There are more powerful models that protect gender equity while at the same time allowing family and social networks to flourish and prosper.
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look fwog the fascists say that you donts really talk to girls at all,
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I am of the generation that worked/fought for parity in wages and employment. I’m shaking my head in utter disbelief at this array of opinions.
I don’t recall reading one mention of the possibility of two parents sharing the task of child rearing, and thus both ajusting their careers a little, to suit this option for the few years that this would be necessary. (I suspect this is at least in part because of the “work all hours” expectations of our now “competitive” society, which is regarded as normal.)
It seems we are back to arguments of sutability and strength, with the male as the norm, anatomy is destiny etc …
In this regard, I remember, around 1970, when a (male) specialist in aviation medicine was asked to support pilots (all male) in their move to get higher salaries because of the extra care they needed to take to keep themselves physiologically fit. He recommended that all airline pilots should be women because they were physiologically stronger than men, and therefore more suited to the job. (His recommendation was buried.)
What goes around comes around … History teaches that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it …
eredwen
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So women get paid less because they choose to look after the kids. Anyone care to come up with a better argument than “women are best suited to undertake” this? Apart from breastfeeding, there’s no physical reason why women need to be the ones doing the majority of this work, yet they do. Other likely reasons include societal expectations (sexism), or because when it comes to deciding which member of a couple should step out of the workforce, it’s usually the less-paid one. If you want to argue it’s because “women like that stuff more than men”, you really ought to have evidence to back that up, rather than touchy-feely 19th century assertions.
I can’t think of a reference off the top of my head, but I read a study a couple of years ago showing that even in their late 20s, before most educated women start families, there were differences between the hourly rates of equally qualified men and women. Arguments such as “women are less valuable employees because they are less likely to prioritise their work over their families” are still inherently sexist, because of the assumption that women are primarily responsible for the welfare of the family. Sure, this is how many families work, but that doesn’t make it fair.
There have been big changes over the last 25 years as to the role of the family – most young women expect to be working for the majority of their adult lives. Most expect to be treated equally to their male colleagues, although whether or not that expectation is met is debatable. Most young women know that there’s an even chance that they’ll be taking on the breadwinner as well as the caring role at some point. Inequality in incomes affects single parents the most, and there’s a hell of a lot of them.
One of the reasons I think occupations like the caring professions are less well-paid is because historically, women were expected to do that sort of thing free, as part of their family obligations. It’s certainly not because it’s more comfortable. I’d rather be holding the stop/go sign on the roadworks than changing nappies and dressings. We’re already having problems with shortages of nurses and caregivers. I suspect that until wages in those professions rise, that will continue to be the case. And that, to a large extent, is up to the government.
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feeling well and truely fisked frog..?
though perhaps more relevant questions could be around the issues of child poverty and our low-wage economy..(and aren’t we going into the third term of a labour-led government..?..cor..! )
i didn’t hear clark addressing either of those issues in her campaigning….though peters was on the money during the campaign on the low-wage issue…(maybe he..a former nat..will force clark to do something about our most exploited workers and our low-wage economy..?..go figure..eh..?)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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I wrote a reply in the wee small hours but it seems to have disappeared.
Hence this rehash.
I was “there” at the time that “equal pay for equal work” was being fought for. (eg I missed out on being automatically paid less than my (less able and less qualified) male colleagues when I first went teaching because I had stayed on at University for an extra year … and then took a job there.)
I have found much said here very “what goes around comes around (again!)”
Women with the help of men fought hard to get rid of many of the attitiudes that seem to be back in vogue (in a different guise) but that is a recurring human story …
I don’t recall any posts contemplating shared parenting where both partners remain in their careeers but decrease their workloads for a few years. (ie two smaller decreases rather than one big one).
I worked right up to the births of my two children, took a full year’s maternity leave each time (but continued some part time work in key aspects of my professional position, and was available “oncall” for any emergencies). The kids had two parents, two grandparents, and later, a supportive “in house” child care centre at my workplace … and I breast fed each of them fully until they ate solid food, and then on demand “for comfort” until they each stopped of their own volition at age three. (Neither of them ever learned to drink from “a bottle”.) Today, this probably sounds more like Scandinavia than modern day Aotearoa NZ.
I remained very effective in my job as did the children’s father in his. (Neither of us had any time for corporate lunches, after work drinks etc however.)
Later, when our marriage broke up (for reasons unrelated to our shared parenting), I became the “trial” for a move to “tenured proportional time positions” (between 0.5 of a position to 0.8 of a postion) within the Polytechnic system. At first, the Tutors’ Union was against this “favouring women who would not take their work seriously because of other commitments”. Soon members of the union realised that it was a great idea for “male breadwinners” approaching retiring age to be able to retain tenure and gradually decrease their workload … so the Union agreed! The system has worked very well for the institution and everyone concerned.
Another “anecdote” (factual). I notice the “male superior strength” theme emerging here. … A specialist in aviation medicine when asked by an Airline Pilots’ Association to support their claim for higher pay because they had to be phyisiologically in excellent condition to be safe pilots, pointed out that in this regard all airline pilots shoud be women because they were physiologically better suited, and thus safer pilots. Apparently the (all male) pilots did not like being told this.
Kia ora!
eredwen
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Woops!
After posting my second attempt, I notice that my first, written in the wee small hours, has now appeared !
I appologise for some repetition … (same story differnt slant!)
Frog moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform” !
eredwen
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The basic premise of this debate is that employers are discriminating against women. The proof cited was the NZ Stats study, showing a disparity in average pay levels between men and women in the 12 months to June.
While I might believe that premise, I will need more evidence before I do. If you think women are being discriminated against, fine, prove it. That’s all I ask. This single study is part of your proof, but it is not enough in and of itself.
I agree with Logix when he says that women, on average, choose to put other things ahead of work, and as a result, sacrifice their earnings. That is my experience, and will be a bugger when my higher-earning wife stops work to have children. As more women begin to earn more than their husbands and partners, we can expect more house dads. I believe this is happening already, and over time, that disparity gap will narrow, maybe even close.
Finally, I think both partners taking time out is not usually the best option. Better one fully developed career, with it’s potential for advancement to higher paying roles, than two part-time ones with much slower promotion. I’d be happy to ’sacrifice’ my career (such as it is) to look after kids. It’d give me time to devote to more worthy pursuits.
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Tane wrote:
“As more women begin to earn more than their husbands and partners, we can expect more house dads. I believe this is happening already, and over time, that disparity gap will narrow, maybe even close.”
evidence, please!
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tochigi wrote;
“evidence, please! ”
A bloke I met in the pub told it to me. Just before the bit about aliens abducting him.
OK, you got me. In a post about demanding sufficient evidence to back a claim, I then produce none of my own. Touche.
All I have is anecdotal, and based on my experience in my own circle of friends and family. It’s enough to persuade me, but I can understand if it falls short of anyone else’s requirements. Does anyone else have the same belief, based on their own observations?
Maybe Stats NZ will ride to my rescue…….?
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Tane, not wishing to labour the point, but the evidence cited by Frog shows just the opposite of what you are suggesting to be the trend.
the income gap, that had been shrinking, has started to widen again.
and the various explanations offered on this thread regarding women’s career choices don’t seem plausible to me. why has the trend been reversed? or is it a one-year blip? but in the context of such a tight labour market and continuing educational gains by women, it seems anomalous.
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Ok, how many of you actually looked at the data? Perhaps that might give some hints as to what is going on? I’ve checked and it appears that although the average female/male hourly wage has gone from 85.8% to 82.0% (2004 to 2005), the median has only gone down from 87.3% to 85.3%, implying that high income earners (predominantly male) are getting more than their fair share of the increase. Continuing educational gains by women? Perhaps that is part of the cause: The biggest change from 04 to 05 average hourly wages were those with “Sixth form qualification” and “Other post-school qualification”, (23% and 12%), whereas those with “Bachelor or higher degree” the increase was only 1.4%!
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A very interesting thread. I did fail to emphasise that I have no problem whatsoever with equal pay for equal work. Indeed if this were not the case women would have a competitive advantage in the workplace and men would find themselves being shunted out of jobs by women who would do it cheaper.
The key question to bear in mind is the difference between pay rates, and total earnings. It is pefectly possible that in general men and women have very similar pay rates (ie a male and female sales person in the same organisation, at the same experience and seniority are very likely to be paid very much the same), but for male total earnings to be somewhat higher yhan female, for a variety of reasons that have less to do with employer discrimination, and far more to do with employee choices.
One element of the pay disparity that arises between men and women is the degree of risk that they are prepared to undertake. The big bad marketplace values work by a number of measures, only one of which is the hours worked and the effort expended. (If this were the case shearers would be the highest paid of all!!) The other obvious measures are the degree of training and skill, and the relative scarcity of qualified workers available.
But the most potent measure of how much a job is valued is determined by the degree of responsibility and risk attached to it. For example when nurses were largely relegated to changing bedpans, and low level caring duties, their level of responsibility was considered low and they were paid accordingly. In those days the doctors reigned supreme in the medical system. In recent times however nurses have become highly trained professionals in their own right, assume a significant responsibilty for the medical care of the patient and now attract much better pay.
Therefore one of the most powerful reasons why women’s total earnings lag male earnings is the relatively lower willingness to assume respnsibility and risk. Of course many women do, they run businesess, are some of our higest paid execs, and assume the highest roles in politics and law…but on average men are still by nature more inclined to risk and responsibility than women…therefore they attract somewhat higher total earnings.
The next question; is this difference hard wired into the choices each gender tends to make, or are they the result of conditioning? The best answer to this is of course… both. But I would suggest that the relative degree to which is the more important, varies very much according to the individual and the stage of life they are at. Coming back then to the original point, to suggest that women earn less because backward male employers like to discriminate against them, is a simplistic argument, overlying a flawed agenda, that fails to take into account that in the workplace, as they do in almost all other areas of life, men and women make different choices because they have different motives and priorities.
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Eredwen, why the disbelief? You won that battle (not all by yourself, but you know what I mean), and nobody on this thread is anything but happy about that, I’m sure. I, and presumably Tane, Logix et al although I can’t speak for them, only have a problem with someone taking a bald, society-wide average and jumping to a conclusion from it. Very bad social science to do such a thing. And especially bad social science to invent bad guys like “society” or “employers” whose malignant conspiracy is supposedly responsible for the unpleasant statistic.
For instance, how “society” values a particular profession does not determine how much they’re paid. That is determined by things like the necessity of their skills to an organisation, the scarcity of those skills, the militancy with which the possessors of those skills pursue higher wages etc. “Society” doesn’t value IT people very highly (nerds, geeks, dorks etc) but IT people don’t give a rat’s ass – their pay is good. As a librarian, I’ll never earn as much as my wife does as a scientist, but that isn’t because of society or malignant employers, it’s because of the factors listed above.
Re parenting, I wouldn’t bother to mention the prospect of both parents sharing the responsibility of looking after children, because how people raise their children is their own damn business. Logix put all this far more diplomatically, but now it’s time for the unreconstructed punk to have a go. If more women than men are sacrificing their careers to look after children, those are decisions that are theirs to make. “Society” is not standing over them with a shotgun. If a woman sacrifices her career to look after children while her husband cheerfully goes on doing what he’s always done, who’s forcing her to take sole responsibility? Society? Well, why not tell society to stick its behavioural expectations up its arse? The husband? Well, who made him her boss? It’s not the 1950s any more, and women like Eredwen freed the slaves back in the 70s. If you’re living with a man who thinks children and housework are your job, all I can say is “Why? You’re just encouraging them”. Much as I hate to view the prospect, I’m led to the ugly right-wing term “personal responsibility”.
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Indeed if this were not the case women would have a competitive advantage in the workplace and men would find themselves being shunted out of jobs by women who would do it cheaper.
Earth to Logix… well isn’t that exactly what those dirty rotten women do in certain professions? They practically shut men out of nursing, by accepting low wages and routine humiliation from the male-dominated doctor caste. As Laila Harre has demonstrated, they are seriously underpaid WRT their level of qualification etc… In France, I have observed over the past decade the dramatic increase in the proportion of male primary school teachers, after pay parity with secondary was achieved… what’s the proportion of male check-out operators in supermarkets… etc
Low-paid, low-status, servile type occupations attract a high proportion of women. Risk averse, eh? Clearly, the chicks have an attitude problem.
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cytochem:
thanks for putting up the median figures. always better than mean when discussing income.
but really, the median wage differential has widened by 2 percentage points. has the previous trend been reversed, and if so, why? what has changed enough to reverse the previous trend? it’s a valid issue to discuss.
(btw, some of the other posters on this thread seem to think “they get paid what they deserve” is a valid argument/explanation. just looks like unreconstructed sexism to me)
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psyco_milt (and quite a few others):
I wasn’t going to answer this (as I think it comes into my “There is no point in farting against thunder” category.) However, against my better judgment, I will try …
psycho_milt wrote (October 14th, 2005 at 11:16 pm)
“Eredwen, why the disbelief? You won that battle (not all by yourself, but you know what I mean), and nobody on this thread is anything but happy about that, I’m sure”… etc etc
I believe that your reference was to my opening comment:
“I am of the generation that worked/fought for parity in wages and employment. I’m shaking my head in utter disbelief at this array of opinions.” etc etc …
My partial answer:
You probably have heard the expression:
“We won the battle but lost the war.”
My “disbelief” was the evidence I saw before my eyes among these posts, that it might be happening again. (I would prefer to disbelieve it!)
I was unprepared for what I read, as my two young-adult offspring (male and female) and and all of their friends show no signs of sexist thinking.
Those who have studied and/or thought deeply about “sexism” (and preferably have experienced it first hand as well) could point out in many of the so called logical/rational opinions in these posts, many classic examples of sexist thinking.
The fact that some writers are Green (or sypathetic to Green ideas), intelligent/educated (and live with intelligent/educated women), and believe that they are egalitarian or even “feminist” in their thinking makes it worrying … (“it” being the trend)
I am aware that “feminism” is no longer “cool”. Hoever, younger women, having had the advantage of growing up in a society that gave them wide horizons, do have the attitudes and skills to get where they want to go in most endeavours. Many are also more “selfish” and assertive. Many of them are doing well. However from what I have read on this site, and know from history, these gains could easily be lost because women are more likely to be the ones who (are expected to) make concessions to “keep things happy”. (This expectation is usually internalised as part of being female.) I am not talking about choosing to be a full time parent here. That is a legitimate choice, if one has the financial means, and IF that choice is freely made among a full range of other realisitic options.
Because I realise that this post may be seen as …(it isn’t)… a challenge to some readers:
One of my credentials:
I was a member of the team that set up “Feminist Studies” at Univ of Canterbury in 1983/4 (Canterbury now has a “Gender Studies”Dept that includes male lecturers, tutors and students … while (some?)other places in AotearoaNZ still stick to “Women’s Studies”)
and to answer those who use the physical as an argument …
Another credential:
I have been, and am, involved in a competitive sport at the National (sometimes International) level on and off since the mid 1960’s. In all that time, in my chosen sport, in whatever category (now its “the old buggers” (Masters)) there have seldom been more than one or two men in the country who place higher than I do. I am smaller than they are, and not as physically strong, but I make up for that with extra skill and efficiency.
I have written this only because I was asked to, “against my better judgement”.
Have you noticed how carefully I have covered myself here?
Unfortunately that is a form of “rescuing” (translate as: protecting some men from potentially making “total dicks” of themselves by the replies they may write) In general, women learn to be good at that.
On that note, I’d actually be happier if people don’t reply with any “Yes, but’s” and, instead, just think about what I have said and whether there is any of it that you recognise.
I do like men! (reassurance … another “rescuing” technique)
Kia ora!
eredwen
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eredwen,
From the tone of your last post I guess that you are responding to a perceived challenge to what are deeply held ideas for you.
And if you read me carefully I tried to express myself in a way that “covered my ass” too. Forty years ago it was common for men and women doing the SAME job to be paid differently. This is no longer the case, the war was won, and good on you.
What I am challenging however is the failure of some to stop fighting. The misuse of the statistics that originally sparked this thread is one of the most common “talking points” that is raised. To my mind it is very bad science to go from generalised statistics about a disparity in total earnings, to assuming that this is because evil male employers like to exploit helpless female workers by paying them less.
Now as far as I can tell the only feasible way for female total earnings to be made the same as male earnings, would be to pay women at a higher rate than men. Care to defend that idea? After all women live longer than men, have a longer retirement to fund, have a somewhat shorter careers and higher lifetime medical expenses, so why not relegate men to second class status and pay them less?
For what it is worth I have never even hinted at the relevance of physical differences. In most jobs these days it is simply not a relevant factor, on the other hand in our grandparents day it was. Back then many jobs were indeed “backbreaking labour” and relatively few women could, or were allowed to, tackle them, and this ancient and “reality based” attitude took some battling to break down. Nowaday it really is ‘girls can do anything”.
Yet even today there are some jobs women rarely choose. For instance there are very few women who choose drainlaying, or work in sewerage treatment plants, yet as far as I know there is absolutely no impediment to them doing so. There are quite a number of such jobs about, roadmaking, forestry, sawmilling, tanneries, etc which are highly male dominated not because women could not do the work, but because they choose not to, because they have different values and outlooks to men.
And yes it is true that women tend to be the ones who “make concessions to “keep things happy?.” But would you have it different? Would women in general be happy if were men who took second place in order to keep things happy, it were men who had first choice at not working in order to look after family, and men who routinely chose lesser paying jobs in order to follow their high status and well paid partner through a career? How many women look for potential partners who may be decent reliable men in every respect, but are terminally unemployed? Some may, but most I can assure you, do not. Frankly most women put achievement and earnings potential fairly high on their “male shopping list”, and yet by contrast few enter a long-term relationship with the expectation that they will always be the primary bread winner, as most men do. And if you want to brand this “sexist” thinking by all means feel free, the trouble is I am only a man, and no way do I feel responsible for how most women think.
My point is that wherever you look in life, men and women have different priorities and values, and make different choices. Is is so surprising that this also applies in the workplace? However much feminism wanted to convince us that men and women are absolutely identical, the real world keeps informing us differently.
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Tochigi and Eredwen: at issue in this thread is that Frog has taken a difference in average incomes and jumped to the conclusion that employers are deliberately ripping women off to the tune of 7 hours unpaid labour per week, despite other more likely explanations being available. Those who’ve troubled themselves to point out that this is bad social science and a misuse of statistics have pretty much been accused of sexism, without any corresponding evidence of such. I’m willing to give that all the serious consideration it deserves, no rescue necessary.
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Logix and Psycho_milt:
You didn’t need to reply!
However: Fascinating responses and wonderful stuff to analyse!
and to answer Logix’s “guess”:
“From the tone of your last post I guess that you are responding to a perceived challenge to what are deeply held ideas for you.”
Not an accurate guess. Not a “perceived challenge”.
This is an area with which I am familiar. Male recipients often make the assumption that a female’s writing on this topic is a personal assault on that individual male. (Such men tend to assume that it is always OK to be “helpful” and tell women “what is what”.)
It gets rather tedious so I try to avoid these situations before they happen.
Kia ora!
eredwen
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“Oh speak not of need!” (King Lear I think). I hang out on blog comments threads exactly for the purpose of arguing the point (topics of non-virtual conversation in the local expat community tending to be restricted to methods of smuggling in alcohol, how to make you own wine/beer and who’s doing it with whom). If it’s tedious, don’t read or reply – for my part, I always reply, that’s what I’m here for. I’m not surprised these kind of arguments get tedious for you, because it’s hard to imagine anyone of either sex (don’t know which one Logix is) remaining silent for patronising responses like the one above.
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eredwen,
>This is an area with which I am familiar. Male recipients often make the assumption that a female’s writing on this topic is a personal assault on that individual male. (Such men tend to assume that it is always OK to be “helpful? and tell women “what is what?.)
It gets rather tedious so I try to avoid these situations before they happen.
I’ll put it bluntly, cut the “patronising bullshit”. I’ve been blogging a while and our interesting and decent conversation is as far from my idea of a “personal assault” as it could possibly be.
You were the one who hedged your post with “However, against my better judgment, I will try …” and “Have you noticed how carefully I have covered myself here?” and ” Unfortunately that is a form of “rescuing? (translate as: protecting some men from potentially making “total dicks? of themselves by the replies they may write)”
And no this is not a personal attack, really. I would be just as happy to say it to your rt (non-virtual) face, and say it with a grin, and trust to be good friends after. Sometimes I just try to be too polite for my own good…so here is my upfront take on “feminism”.
It was kind of like socialism, a great idea, until someone took it too far and it became something else, communism. It is 100% agreed that men and women, are both equally human and of equal spiritual and ethical stature and are accorded the same rights in law. What you cannot do is make them absolutely the same as each other, no more than a communist could make everybody equally wealthy.
Go analyse that
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Great response!
The questions are: Would you have noticed if it was a male writer? and if you had noticed, would you have commented to that male writer?
e
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Nah, I’ve been patronised by experts…..
My partner and I have gone over this thread (hence the delay) and our upfront take on feminism is this:
It is rather like socialism, a good idea until it was taken too far and turned into something else, communism. It is axiomatic that (to us at least) that men and women are equals, spiritually, ethically, and are accorded the (almost) identical stature before the law. There is no question they both posses the same inalienable rights, but they are not identical. It is no more possible for men and women to be equivalent to each other than it was for the communists to make everyone equally wealthy.
Go analyse that
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Logix:
I prefer the second version … but would add “in every way” in the last sentence, to read:
“It is no more possible for men and women to be equivalent to each other “in every way” than it was for the communists to make everyone equally wealthy.”
In many areas the differences mean diddly sqat. We are members of the same species …
Thanks for the effort. (I’m impressed.)
eredwen
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eredwen, logix, et al;
I am so saving this to use in my “Gender, power and Knowledge” course this summer!
funny how statistics which NZUSA have been using, from research which has been conducted over 5 years, is not acceptable in this context. The %ages used by frog have been growing over the past 3 years, it used to be 86% to 100%, F – M split, but the F wage is dropping.
My take on why that’s happenning is part of the “great student loans societal affect conspiracy theory” whereby the need for part-time work while studying is driving down average adult pay-rates, and many more people are acceting work at the minimum adult pay rates ($9.60/hour) which employers seem to think is good enough for students of any skill level or ability, never mind prior experience.
Most guys just don’t keep doing the crappy lowest-paid jobs, they find something that has requirements of physical stamina or bulk, (eg; labouring, security guard/bouncer, etc) and jump away from waiting/shop assistant/office drudge, which get filled by sweet young things in short skirts and high heels, without a feminist thought in their heads, who wouldn’t dream of asking for a pay rise once the ink has set on their temporary, casual, non-union employment contract.
It’s up to the aging unionists to keep pushing the issue that women generally, and especially in woman-dominated industries, get paid less.
IT is an environment of it’s own, and yes, I know women in IT who have always done well career-wise, but they just don’t share the career experience of 95% of women in the workforce. Unfortunately, most IT women don’t know this, because they really don’t have social time to spend with anyone outside their own industry, and attributes differences in experience to personality rather than occupational differences (in my extensive experience of my sister, her friends, and my ex-husband and his peers).
None of the people I know in IT can understand anyone choosing to work in another field, either, total lack of comprehension or imagination!
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Katie:
Very interesting.
I suspect the same thinking on minimum pay rates is sometimes/often applied to parents (usually mothers) who work during school hours, and in some instances may require time off when kids are sick.
This work pattern, and its subsequent low wage, may be further affected by the other parent (if still on the scene) being unable to take time out in an emergency. “He” (in this instance) having been trapped in the “work all hours” expectation which is now part of the problem, and he is thus unable to take share “time out” when emergencies arise.
Add this to the Great Student Loan Societal Effect etc … ”
eredwen
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Kudos to cytochem and tochigi for actually looking at the data and asking relevant questions about the trend.
Just to clarify for those who’ve written screeds of generalisations: the statistic under discussion refers to employed women and men who work for wages and salaries (ie, it excludes the self-employed, employers – and of course the non-employed). It’s not about all women and men. And it’s not about total earnings (which are affected by hours worked); it’s about the hourly rate.
The ratio of female/male median hourly earnings increased between 1997 and 2002 from 83.0 percent to 87.8 percent (a large leap which has received little attention), and had fallen slightly to 85.7 percent by 2005.
Short-term fluctuations like this are unlikely to be caused by broad factors such as discrimination (Frog) or gender preferences (Logix). More plausible factors include fluctuating demand for certain skills from a labour market with long-standing sex differences in occupational distribution, as well as union coverage and clout.
Occupations that showed significant increases in average hourly earnings in the year to June 2005 were agriculture and fisheries workers (13.7 percent); trades workers (9.5 percent); and plant and machine operators and assemblers (7.3 percent). These are all male-dominated occupations. The big wage rises won by nurses recently may show up in future surveys.
The Statistics release doesn’t give a breakdown by age and sex but in The Social Report 2005 there is a graph on page 53 that shows almost no difference in the median hourly earnings of males and females under 35 years. So there have been gains for women from higher education in the last decade or so. The world that Logix describes is changing.
http://www.socialreport.msd.govt.nz/paid-work/
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JTF:
good stuff!
looking at the evidence as closely as possible is always a good start.
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