by Catherine Delahunty
As the holidays approach and people start to finish work for the year, I’m reminded of the fact that New Zealand women have effectively been working for free since mid-November thanks to the 12 percent average pay-gap between men and women in this country.
It’s a disgrace that the gender pay gap is still so wide when we have had equal pay legislation since the 1970s. And yet what has this Government done about it? Axed the Pay Equity Unit from the Ministry of Labour and scrapped pay equity investigations that were underway into pay gaps for school support staff and social workers.
Last week the Government finally released some of the findings from the now-defunct public sector pay and employment equity investigations. They reveal pay gaps in the public service of between 3 and 35 percent across the board; show that women and men are often offered unequal starting salaries for the same job, found gender inequalities in pay progression and performance pay, and confirmed what we already knew: that women predominate in lower-paid professions.
These findings are damning, and show that the Pay Equity Unit is still urgently needed. The Minister of Women’s Affairs, Pansy Wong, has been shamefully silent on this issue given it is so central to her portfolio, refusing to comment in a recent OneNews Special Investigation on the topic.
Meanwhile the extent to which the gender pay gap is being allowed to continue in the public service is embarrassing. In addition to the findings of the axed review, public sector Chief Executives have legal responsibilities under the State Sector Act 1998 and the Crown Entities Act 2004 to be good employers, which includes implementing an equal opportunities employment programme.
Although fiscal constraints will affect how business and Crown entities conduct their affairs, they cannot override this responsibility. In a culture where pay gaps of between 3 and 35 percent are allowed to prevail across the board in the public sector, we have to ask whether this legal requirement is really being met?
And how will the New Zealand Government justify its axing of the Pay Equity Unit next time we are reviewed for our performance against the international Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women? New Zealand is a signatory to this Convention, and under Article 11 we have a responsibility to promote equal remuneration and equal treatment for work of equal value.
Last time we reported to the CEDAW Committee in 2006, it noted concerns about women’s disadvantaged status in the New Zealand labour market and urged that efforts to close the gender pay gap be intensified. New Zealand is due to report again in 2010 and will hardly be able to report any progress in this area.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Featured | Justice & Democracy | Society & Culture by Catherine Delahunty on Mon, December 21st, 2009
More posts by Catherine Delahunty | more about Catherine Delahunty
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Women are equally as capable as men, but will never on average be paid the same as long as they get pregnant and have babies. It’s a fact of life, and always will be, so you best be getting over it.
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So we’re supposed to believe that those grasping Capitalists who think only of the bottom line and would gladly sell their grandmothers are at the same time choosing to pay men significant extra money for no benefit at all?
Does that sound even remotely plausible?
You won’t grasp this at all, but outside of your cosy state sector companies are constantly struggling to compete and to return a profit. Discrimination has a cost. In all my work years I have never come across any instance of females being offered less than their talents commanded, or more than the market could bear.
- “Meanwhile the extent to which the gender pay gap is being allowed to continue in the public service is embarrassing.”
One of the benefits of shrinking the coercive state sector to a minimum size and outsourcing as much as possible to private competition is that you vastly reduce the scope for such discrimination.
- “GIVING women a lengthy period of maternity leave could mean they miss out on highflying jobs, a new study has revealed.
The findings from three continents show that the more family-friendly a country tries to be, the less its women succeed in the workplace.”
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article6936224 .ece
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The actual problem is many (but by no means all) women don’t do the same work as men, they have what I’m choosing to call “supporting” roles, which pay less than “lead” roles, and average that over an entire country’s workforce, and you can arithmetically conclude that all women get paid less.
Now the real question is what can one do about it, if indeed it needs correcting? Should the best supporting actor be paid the same as the best actor?
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wat
Is there any actual evidence that women have pay rates closer to that of men in economies with a smaller public sector?
“GIVING women a lengthy period of maternity leave could mean they miss out on highflying jobs, a new study has revealed. The findings from three continents show that the more family-friendly a country tries to be, the less its women succeed in the workplace.”
Is this not a consequence of the private sector reacting to such legislation as governments can organise public sector policy in accord with maternitry leave legislation.
It’s only the effect of women making a family first choice after taking parental leave that is nuetral across both employment sectors.
People are ignoring the continuance of historic lower pay scales for women dominated jobs and the glass ceiling (women being passed over because they might have children – ignoring childcare options they might take up or the possibility of partner care, this is a form of discrimination against the individual because of their gender) and also the mention of women being paid lower rates for the same work (the study covers the public sector).
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Exactly, but getting rid of the Equal Pay Commission won’t help debunk the myth that there’s a disparity between men and women in equal roles. It’ll prolong the argument, and basically says that National don’t wish to explore the issue, that they don’t believe there’s a problem and they don’t believe there’s any mileage to be had in even investigating it. It also says that National don’t believe there’s a problem because more women are taking up these roles – that there are significantly more men in higher paying jobs that allow the averages to be skewed to allow people to rightly say that women are, on the whole, paid less than men, work less hours and work lower paying jobs.
But National’s core don’t care, do they.
Which, Catherine, is why Patsy “patsy” Wong has been remarkably silent on the issue. Because it’s not an issue for National. Speaking up on the matter would mean that there is actually a discussion to be had, and although she’s Minister of Women’s Affairs, she doesn’t really care to discuss the issue. Because what ministers actually become is Minister for Myself and My Own Career Progression.
She speaks up, she gets whipped, she loses any chance of a portfolio where she gets to make a difference, one that National doesn’t see as a sop to political correctness.
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kiwireader – it’s not about having babies…its about the fact that PER HOUR worked the gap is 14% in the June quarter NZ Income survey.
dbuckley – it IS about equal work for equal pay and yes of course we should all be paid the same.
See, the per hour rate is the most telling and then if you take a look at the graduate statistics – over 60% of the graduates are women and at the end of their first year of working are paid 8% less than their male colleagues and the gap is a whopping 14% at the end of their 5th year.
This is appalling. We’re not even rewarding the wee cubs for their brains!
O my, and then when you take in to account income received from all sources (so this includes the women who are working part-time) the per week average income for women is 42% less than men.
Some of us bears know we need to close the gap for the productivity of the economy, some of us bears know we need to value all of our women workers and some of us bears are pressuring the Government to create a strategy to reduce the gender pay gap.
And us bears love the fact that Catherine Delahunty is advocating for the women of New Zealand…we send her our hugs.
Have a great Christmas with your cubs. growl, growl, grumble, growl
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MamaBear,
You have two people applying for a job and both have equal skills and qualification. The first is a straight arrow, always turns up to work on time, always has projects in on time, never takes a sick day. The second is a stoner and often comes in late to work, some times doesint come in at all, and has sick days reguarly. Which do you hire? Assuming no difference other than the traits mentioned, you would be insane to desire to hire the second over the first as the second is simply unreliable and posses a large risk for the business. It is that risk that means you would hire the more reliable individual at any given rate but, given an opportunity to pay the second less, you may go for the second.
I am not suggesting that all women are stonners, what I am suggesting is that there is a common perception that women are, on average, more risky to employ. The statistics back this up. A female is far more likely to get pregnant and as such is far more likely to require time off close to and close following a pregnancy; getting someone in to replace here temporarily is expensive, more so in more highly skilled professions. A female is far more likely to be the major care giver and as such take time off after birth and to take sick days to take care of their child and to have limited hours due to school, etc, etc, etc; more risk, more unerliability. It may be unfair to pay women less but it is also unfair to expect employers to pay them equally.
Perhaps the greatest thing that one can do to ensure the pay gap is minimised is to eliminate maternity leave and to allow employers to specify the use of contraceptives and forbid pregnancy or child rearing. But I doubt many would find that desirable.
Decreasing the risk associated with females is the only way to increase income equity other than using force and ultimately force will only result – as with the minimum wage – in greater female unemployment and thus wille effectivly be forcing women to stay in the home.
Perhaps there should be a female-only referenda on what balence they want to strike between maternity leave and pay equity.
So in summary: It is about having babies. Almost entirely so, in fact. There is also the fear of sexual harasment claims and the emotional variability perceived to be around mensturation, but those are relatively minor, I would imagine.
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When I was at school (school C year I think), my math teacher left. Before he was replaced we had relief teachers and when the new teacher came she only stayed for a short time before she left to have a baby. This meant more relief teachers and disjointed teaching. I was the student rep on the BOT and sat in on the interviews. I felt betrayed. No one noticed a bump at the time of interview, but I think she must’ve known. I think it’s illegal to ask if she were pregant at the interview. Perhaps we should have asked if she knew of any reason why she wasn’t going to stay for the rest of the year?
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I mean, that’s it, isn’t it – don’t employ women, they might get pregnant.
Well done. A century of progress eliminated in one fell swoop.
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As condescending as the suggestion that women are “risky” employees is, I agree with you that some employers follow this line of thought. However, I disagree with you that “decreasing these risks” is the only way to increase income equity.
Everyone benefits from women having babies. Obviously only women can have babies, but this shouldn’t mean that women have to choose between child-rearing and having a career. Allowing employers to make the use of contraceptives mandatory and eliminate maternity leave is the worst of a range of possible solutions. This logically means that women who decide to have babies must do so at the expense of their careers.
Employers should be more accommodating of female employees who decide to breed, not less so. If this comes at a cost to the business, then perhaps there should be mechanisms in place so that this cost can be reimbursed by the government. Or perhaps employers just need to suck it up and realise that if they want a future generation they need to treat mothers more fairly in the workplace. Unless, of course, you (or they) are advocating a return to the pre-feminism state of affairs. A refusal to hire a woman on the basis that she might decide to have children is discriminatory and should result in prosecution.
Also, most women are perfectly capable of controlling any “emotional variability” which accompanies menstruation in a work context. If this misperception is a reason for refusing to hire women, then, I repeat, it is discriminatory and should result in prosecution.
Worried about sexual harassment lawsuits? Easy! Make sure that your staff do not sexually harass women! If they do, fire them!
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Unfortunately, what Sapient says is fundamentally correct, at least under our current (market based) system.
For an employer, taking on an employee is a very risky proposition. There are significant costs associated with recruitment and training, depending on the position. Replacing an employee for any length of time is highly undesirable.
It is almost entirely about pregnancy. We should be thankful that unlike the US, employer provided healthcare is not a significant part of the total cost of employment, where this cost is approximately 35% higher for women (which is in itself again partly due to pregnancy). Thus we see that there are legitimate ways that government action can reduce the effect of maternity on pay. Other ways no doubt exist, but we have to be mindful of the effects like those ‘wat dabney’ brings up. The market is not so easily tamed, and self-defeating policy serves nobody.
Point of interest, I wonder if you could potentially lie to a prospective employer about being infertile. Surely they couldn’t then turn against you as that would be an admission of discrimination?
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user_name, I think the key words in what you say are “at least under our current (market based) system”.
There’s nothing inevitable or unchangeable about this system, and I think it’s more easily tamed than you do!
Also, I should say that the use of the word ‘prosecution’ in my other post was not strictly accurate. The point remains, though, that discrimination should result in a judgment against the employer.
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Mcol,
Yes, it may be condescending but that does not take away from its factual accuracy.
Yes, society presently benefits from women having babies (though it does not have to be that way, in fact a infertile population has all sorts of conceivable [no pun intended] advantages). An advantage to society does not, however, mean that a private company should bare extra cost. There is absolutely no reason that employers should be more accommodating simply because breeding grants a benefit to society as a benefit to society is not a part of the purpose of companies.
I agree that eliminating maternity leave is undesirable, and compulsory contraceptives less so, but one must realise there is a trade off between wage equity and risk. The only way I can think of which would equalise the income is for the state to make up the difference and this imposes significant costs on the tax payer. Though it does take account of the need for babies.
I agree that most women are capable of controlling the emotional variability that some experience, it is not, however, my view that counts. If you re-read you will see I never stated that I believed they were unable to in fact I believe I said ‘the apparent’ or ‘the supposed’ or something along those lines.
Fire those whom harass or may harass? Now, I wonder why that is so hard…
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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wat – let’s ignore those women who don’t get degrees because they only focus on work until they have children and return to education later or in a secondary income sort of way. Ignore the women who leave work to have kids “reason” for the pay discrepancy.
MamaBear
“Over 60% of the graduates are women and at the end of their first year of working are paid 8% less than their male colleagues and the gap is a whopping 14% at the end of their 5th year.”
And most graduate women don’t have children until their 30’s.
This speaks to discrimination a glass ceiling – to those who “might” be later child bearers. This discrimination in promotion in their 20’s and 30’s raises questions as to whether they should continue to commit to career when they do have children – even when they can afford nannies, would they bother if they have been passed over in favour of men a few times already?
Then there are skilled social workers, childcare (which is a now graduate position by the way) and nurses – all graduates.
The reason these human interface jobs have attracted women workers is obvious (and as they were historically seen as women jobs and women were secondary providers they were underpaid). Why are they still underpaid?
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For example, if it was easier for men and women to work 20 hours per week, then raising children and going to work could be shared equally, and women would not be disadvantaged with respect to men in the workplace.
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SPC,
Yes, it is discrimination. I have always held that it is such and have been up front about that.
The word ‘discrimination’, though, is thrown around as if it is always a bad thing. The employer discriminates between a skilled worker and an unskilled worker, the employer discriminates between a straight arrow and a druggie, and the employer discriminates between a male and a female. It is both rational and necessary. Were the employer not to discriminate it would pose potentially massive costs for the employer and the employer should not be expected to chop of his own hand for the benefit of another.
Social workers, childcare workers, and nurses may be graduate jobs but there is still the matter of supply and demand and so long as an excessive amount of people are ‘graduating’ in these fields the pay will remain low. As a side note, I shared a lot of my papers with social workers as a result of my branching out, in my experience the vast majority are absolute idiots whom I wouldn’t pay even the minimum wage.
~
Samiuela,
No, not mostly. It would go away slightly. I have argued that it would help previously but given the cost of maternity leave and pregnancy leave there would still be substantial costs even if all else was equal. I do favor the Swedish approach where there is a set number of months of maternity leave which must go to the male and to the female and then a smaller number which is discretionary.
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Sapient,
discriminate v. 1 (often foll. by between) make or see a distinction. 2 (usu. foll. by against or in favour of) treat unfavourably or favourably, esp. on the basis of race, gender, sexual preference, etc.; accused of discriminating against women.
I got that out of the NZ Oxford paperback dictionary. There are two ways in which we talk about discrimination, and you are incorrectly conflating the two so that they both have the moral neutrality of the former definition.
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So, women are more or less on a par with children and criminals? That was the argument for not giving women the vote in the 19th century!
As Mamabear said somewhere up there, we are talking about the unfairness of the PER HOUR rate being lower for women in many jobs, not the number of hours or the time off to have children (who normally have two parents I believe?).
As for employability, that is not something you can generalise about either – when Sapient was going about which was the more desirable employee, the reliable versus the stoner, I thought for a tiny second that he was going to conclude that as women generally are less likely to stoners etc … but then I remembered that this is Sapient, rigid and reductionist as he is, mistaking these for logic.
An employer near here once said to me he preferred to employ women to drive his buses because they were reliable, punctual and didn’t think they knew everything – if something went wrong with the bus, they’d ask instead of doing a botched fix-up on it. I don’t know if he paid them the same though.
That stupid argument about ‘might bear children’ (shock, horror!) falls right over as soon as you are dealing with single career women, women who have been sterilised or have passed menopause or those who simply do not choose to have children. What about the maths teacher who left in one of the earlier posts – instead of blaming the pregnant teacher who stepped in, why not blame him for leaving before the end of the year? He set up the problem for the students, not the replacement.
I haven’t seen a single sensible or sustainable argument about why I should be paid less than a man for the same or equivalent job.
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Mcol,
Not really, if I was making a comparison of banana and peach vs male and female then I would be conflating the definitions. I am using the second definition in both instances. When we discriminate against druggies or criminals we are disadvantaging them in just the same way as against women.
~
Janine,
I said ‘all else being equal’. Of course, in the real world not all things are equal. There are a number of traits that women tend to hold as a result of socialisation and hormones that make them far better in many roles. Bus drivers and truck drivers are such an area. I know that in the Alberta iron sands, and many mines, they hire women drivers because women are more careful with the machinery. In general the skilled jobs, and that is what is really relevant, are where being female is of negligible difference.
I have worked in many jobs where high reliability is unimportant and in every such job women have made up the majority and have been paid equally to the men. It is only when you get to skilled jobs, where reliability is important, that a difference appears.
If a female is steralised then I see no reason to pay her less, if she made that clear at a job interview then I expect she would be paid the same. Single career women still get knocked up frequently in my experience. Someone whom has passed menopause should theoretically by paid the same due to the same risk but in the real world she would likely of missed experience either due to the glass ceiling or to raising children and would thus be paid less.
As to the teacher, yes he set up the problem. She most certainly did not help given that another teacher could have been found if not her.
Then you have not been reading. You simply do not want to acknowledge it since it goes against your ideology. Further more, I am not justifying the treatment but explaining it; some of that which is held in the family trust is an almost entirely female dominated area of industry where females are given great preference and paid far more than minimum wage with only on-the-job training (or a 6 month course
).
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MamaBear:
This simplistic arguement fails for the reasons I note above.
If we assume that “at the end of the first year working” means the obvious, that is this is a like for like comparison of kids that have just fallen out of Uni and into their first job, so they are all the same age and of the same experience, then there is just one reasonable conclusion – the girls are choosing lower paid careers than the boys. Like (for example) nursing instead of police. At this position in most peoples life the questions of pregnancy etc just dont arise.
Its not reasonable to suggest that the job makeup of the male / female job entrants are the same, and that the girls are being paid less than the boys for exactly the same job. There is not the statistical rigour there to back that assertion up.
And why did I say “nursing instead of police” – See page 419 of this transcript (416K PDF) which notes that although a first year nurse and policeman have similar jobs (measured using a job evaluation system) the two careers pay vastly different salaries.
The question of whether a policeman should have a greater or lesser or identical salary as a nurse is not one that is in the bailiwick of the Pay Equity unit. But it is an interesting question…
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Lies damn lies and statistics. I would like to see what a full disclosure of what data the 12% pay gap is based on. Seems to me to be a pretty good achievement under our present economic system. Let’s concentrate on specific cases of unequal pay and not waste effort on theoretical inequities.
Also there is no such thing as pay equity under a capitalist system. Why doesn’t the garbage collector get the same hourly rate as John Key? The garbage collector is very important. A better comparison – why doesn’t a bus driver get the same rate as an airline pilot? They both have the safety of their passengers in their hands.
E
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The airline pilot vs bus driver one is easy. It is supply and demand; the airline pilot requires years of training and tens of thousands of dollars. The bus driver requires skills that the vast majority of the population has.
The cop vs nurse one is somewhat harder.
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How wrong you are Sapient – the bus driver has to and can, give change. I’ve never seen a pilot do that !
Most people would be in the same boat as the pilot.
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The cop vs the nurse isn’t somewhat harder…
the cop trains (while being paid) for 3 months….
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Sapient,
Even if the pilot has skills which are rarer than the bus driver’s skills, why should the pilot be paid more? Supply and demand has always seemed like a rather weak justification (to me at least) for paying some people more than others. I am well aware of how supply and demand operates; I just don’t think it is a fair way of deciding what pay rates should be.
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kiwireader – can you turn your razor sharp mind to explain why women who dont get pregnant and dont have babies are still paid less than there male counterparts in most cases?
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I wonder how many passengers travel on a bus driver’s vehicle during their average shift, compared to how many passengers a pilot carries on an average shift?
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Greenfly,
True, I forgot that most pilots never graduated primary school.
~
Merlinnz,
Thats why it is harder. The nurse trains far longer and at no pay. Both are on the receiving end of a lot of stress, both are professions full of idiots with the rare intelligent person, both are high risk, etc, etc.
Perhaps ’substantially harder’ would be more accurate.
As to womens pay, you must have not been reading. It is not that they have gotten pregnant that matters but that they may. Thus women whom do not get pregnant, unless actually unable to, still present the same risk as those whom may.
~
Sapient,
I can not argue on its fairness as our fundamental axioms regarding ‘fair’ differ too much.
I will say though that there needs to be some moivation for someone to become a pilot other than a love of the job given that one must train so extensively and pay absolutely massive sums of money. Bus driving is not so much a career choice as a “oh, crap. I dropped out of school and need a job but have very little qualification other than my ability to hit only half of the people on the road when I drive.”
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Sapient – I don’t envy pilots their salaries, only their colour vision. The sunsets they must see (from up there). Bus drivers, otoh, must miss most of the displays and should perhaps be compensated for that.
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- “I don’t envy pilots their salaries, only their colour vision. The sunsets they must see (from up there). Bus drivers, otoh, must miss most of the displays and should perhaps be compensated for that. ”
There you have it in a nutshell.
Free-market salaries reflect an infinite number of intangibles – including the availability of resources, all the alternative uses and demands for those resources, and the fact that different people have vastly different preferences and priorities.
You value looking at sunsets and would seek a premium for not getting that as part of your job (or, to put it another way, you’d accept less cash in return for good sunsets.) Good for you, but for many other people it’s not even a consideration. They may, for example, look for high job satisfaction, or something part-time near the beach so they can go surfing; or maybe they’d forego those rewards entirely just for the highest possibly cash income.
Since we are all so different, and our circumstances are as diverse as the individuals themselves, it makes no sense whatsover to claim that a particular salary is “fair” or “unfair.”
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Sapient
I have been reading. Just because an argument appears well worded and thought out, doesn’t change it from being vacuous.
It is not only that women “may” become pregnant that impacts their lower pay. It seems churlish to suggest it does. In fact I thought some here were being deliberately obtuse.
Men are more likely to have a heart attack and be dead by 45 than women, yet resources and time are put into them before that time only to risk losing all that well trained knowledge????
Some men in the workplace, employers/managers simply don’t value women as highly or as equally as men. They may dress it up in other factors but there is no sensible reason to pay women less because they might get pregnant when men are more likely to change jobs than women, more likely to be dead than women and so on…
My comment about nurses was tongue in cheek. Both teaching and nursing are female dominated. Policing is still male dominated. All three are public service funded, therefore market forces, supply and demand do not apply in that sense. However the pay and pay for training disparity cannot be overlooked.
Ironically men value nurses less than police, even though they will need nurses much more often than a policeman.
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And nurses also have to deal with abusive, violent people in emergency wards.
One positive thing that has happened over the years is that the pay scales within such professions as teaching are now the same (the glass ceiling is a whole other discussion) – I can remember when they were not. Back then, men teachers with the same qualifications were paid more than women, simply because they were men. I think the argument went that they were the breadwinners…
That changed because enough people bothered to argue about it. Fairness is an issue still, despite free markets and the rest of it.
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Janine
The inequity in schools still remains the disproportionate number of Heads who are male in relation to the overall percentage of male teachers in the profession. It is changing. Women are patient… compare with the reaction and action when boys lagged behind in schooling, it was like a national crisis, compared tot he decades of under educating girls…. I’m certainly NOT suggesting we ought not address boys lagging merely pointing out another factor that drives inequity in the workplace
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Merlinnz,
It is not my position that potential pregnancy is the only cause of pay inequality. It is my position that, via perceptions of greater associated risk, the potential for pregnancy leads to women being perceived as more risky and thus less valuable.
If, or if not, the potential for pregnancy actually makes women more risky is irrelevant. It is the perception that matters.
I have provided a non vacuous argument backed highly by psychology and, its derivative, economics. My argument relates to rational behavior in the face of statistically supported heuristics. You have yet to provide me with a single argument as to why women should be paid the same rate as men. Instead of constantly dismissing my arguments with piddly little statements of no consequence or justification I ask that you provide your own arguments. Don’t relate them to some idiotic notion of ‘fairness’.
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Janine asked
“What about the maths teacher who left in one of the earlier posts – instead of blaming the pregnant teacher who stepped in, why not blame him for leaving before the end of the year? He set up the problem for the students, not the replacement.”
I think (from memory) the original teacher void was because the first teaher had a stroke.
When writing my experience I was tempted to bend the truth a little and make the original teacher a woman. Would you still have suggested blaming her?
Mostly you have to work for a decent length of time in a job before you’re eligable for maternity leave. But teachers can accumulate time from previous schools. From a student point of view, this seems wrong.
For the record, Of course men and women should get paid the same for the same job.
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Merlinz – yes, that disporoportion of male principals is the ‘glass ceiling’ effect and it exists across the whole range of professions and industry, as well as politics. It’s a related issue to that of pay equity.
Would I suggest blaming the teacher who left if it was a woman? Since blame was raised about the second teacher leaving but not the first, I was just commenting on that anomaly. If you are going to allocate blame at all for teachers leaving, then yes, if a teacher just walks out, they create a situation.
But, as you showed, both had valid reasons for not being able to continue – that happens. Why ‘blame’ either of them in those circumstances? The discussion was about pay equity and the example was given of a woman teacher who left being a reason that women should get lower pay – the old ‘unreliable’ argument. A man who drinks, plays rugby, drives carelessly etc seems just as unreliable to me as a woman who might (or might not) get pregnant – they are just different human circumstances and you shouldn’t judge an entire gender and its worth from the actions or accidents of a few.
I’ll say again, if I’m doing the same work as a man (or its equivalent – real contention there!) I see no reason why my pay should be lower.
All the reasons advanced about why women on average get lower pay have been about either individual circumstances or the kind of work being done, not about their femaleness as a factor. Femaleness should not BE a factor, yet somehow it still is, especially in the private sector I think.
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Janine,
Heuristics; general rules of thumb. Actuality matters not.
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Except that actuality is what affects people and the discussion here is the continuing inequity of reward for labour based on one’s gender. Of course there are explanations of why this is traditionally so – but those are not excuses for continuing to do it.
Time some of you moved into at least the 20th century, if not the 21st.
Given the bigger issues facing the planet, I know some of you wonder why we bother to discuss this kind of issue. For me, it is less about money and more about fairness in general.
Colin James wrote an article about Copenhagen in which he summarised the overall idea being one of global fairness, the recognition that all humans are in it together and we should try to enable survival across the globe, not just for rich nations.
I know that for some of you that fairness is irrelevant, yet it is part of what makes us human. Like teaching small children to share their toys so they get in the habit of thinking of others, pay equity is one of those issues that remind us not to be greedy. To be fair, in short.
Anyway, that’s enough from me. I have other things to think about. I hope the New Year is a better one for the planet in general and for all those who struggle to survive in particular.
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wat dabney
“In all my work years I have never come across any instance of females being offered less than their talents commanded.” SEE BELOW.
“Free-market salaries reflect an infinite number of intangibles – including the availability of resources, all the alternative uses and demands for those resources, and the fact that different people have vastly different preferences and priorities.”
This is the real world. My wife is contributing to the 12% pay gap by only working 3 days a week as a pharmacist, because the hourly rate is enough to make an average income. Perhaps this is another reason, apart from caring for children, for the pay gap. That is more women have a sensible attitude to a work life balance than the average competitive male.
Janine
1 “I haven’t seen a single sensible or sustainable argument about why I should be paid less than a man for the same or equivalent job.”
Yes but that is not how it works when things like years of experience and qualifications are considered relevant.
When I was working in a library of mainly female staff there was not pay equity there. Joan was hard working took no days off sick and did work beyond required but was paid less than others because she only had a Library Certificate instead of a Diploma. From my observations she did the same work and did it better but this worked against her because those with Diplomas kept putting her down presumably because being good at her job threatened them.
And then there was Anna the secretary who was brilliant at keeping the library running with supplies and orders, plus maintenance of the equipment to the extent of doing minor repairs on the photocopiers. She was the lowest paid.
2 “An employer near here once said to me he preferred to employ women to drive his buses because they were reliable, punctual and didn’t think they knew everything – if something went wrong with the bus, they’d ask instead of doing a botched fix-up on it. I don’t know if he paid them the same though.”
Under human rights legislation this is illegal discrimination however as a bus traveller I agree with the employer. Also if the employer didn’t pay the women the same, or paid them more, it would be illegal under equal pay legislation.
Samiula
“Even if the pilot has skills which are rarer than the bus driver’s skills, why should the pilot be paid more?”
There are some reasons but none justify more than six times the pay.
The successful co-operative community Mondragon, in Spain, started out with a pay differential of three times on the basis that a cleaner only does work while they are on the job whilst a manager will be thinking about and/or reading work related material away from the job. Since nobody can work more than 24 hours per day 3x was the ratio chosen, however I have heard that it is now up to 5x.
My conclusion is pay equity is a dream because of our economic system and the values of most people,; and that’s not just employers.
This is not saying we should not expose cases of unequal pay for equal work and use equal pay legislation whenever appropriate.
E
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Janine,
Yes, it is actuality that effects people but to judge actuality takes much time. Should an employer be expected to lunch with a potential employee for a year before they employee said potential employee?
Heuristics are incredibly useful. Yes, they will be wrong in some cases, but that is their nature as a generalised rule. The better formed a heuristic is, the less it will be wrong. Heuristics are the single greatest part of human cognition; they break what could take a year down to a few minutes based on experience. Heuristics may result in a lack of fairness in some cases but it is preferable to the massive inefficency of not using such.
Do you have children? If you do, and if they are before the age when they leave home, then you are of a far greater risk and thus far less deserving of equal pay provided that, if you have a partner, your partner does not do the majority of the caring or you do not have a full time carer.
Heuristics may be unfair and in some cases pay inequity may be unfair but in the vast majority of cases pay inequity is perfectly fair on both sides.
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WE can also get into the definitions of ‘risk’ and ‘deserving’ of less pay because of the very masculine perception that being female is risky for business – but that world-view is precisely what got us into this situation in the first place. Men run things and like to do it in a particular way, therefore any different world view is a risk and a threat to the ‘right’ order of things.
History is littered with this kind of thinking and it led to, among other things, slavery and oppression. One of the reasons I am a Green is because part of our purpose is to challenge conventional ways of seeing the world. Who would have thought that there are still some male dinosaurs in this party, still applying the same old ‘logic’ as though the world and its people operated on logic.
I don’t have a definitive answer to this particular conundrum but I do know that applying the same old rules keeps you in the same old place.
I’ve just been reading a Prospect article on how taxpayers have been bailing out the finance institutions to the tune of trillions of dollars so that the bankers can carry on just as they have always done. The writer, an economist, points out that it won’t work. It won’t work because, ultimately, the unfairness is so ingrained that the bankers just don’t see it. They just keep applying their theory regardless.
So, don’t talk about my being risky because I might have children – what about these guys being risky, with ALL our money, because they see the world in that business-type way. They are a much bigger threat to our collective economic well-being than an extra 12 percent for the women.
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Janine,
But the world is an inherently logical place. The world does operate on logic. Even the smallest child does apply it. That different people have different logical capacity is irrelevant to if they attempt to use it in their life.
It can be good to challenge the status quo, there can be much benefit to be had. You have challenged it here, I have challenged it in the past, but the status quo in relation to pay equity is desirable. Yes, a male may have a greater chance of having a heart attack and never coming back to work, but the cost there is nowhere near as great as for a pregnant mother, nor is the probability. With a fatal heart attack the only costs are those incurred in replacing the individual, with pregnancy there is maternity and pregnancy leave, there is keeping the job open, there is alteration in hours, there is increased unreliability due to child commitments, there is having someone replace the individual during pregnancy, and there is having to organise people to replace the individual when they must take care of the child.
The greater the risk posed by ovaries and a womb, the less pay that one baring them will receive in professions that demand reliability. If you increase maternity entitlements you increase the risk and decrease the wages. It is the same as employment as a whole. If you legislate pay equity then instead of a pay difference you get massive female unemployment.
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Janine,
WTF? You really don’t understand anything do you?
Yes, they pose more risk for all of us, but we are not hiring them are we? A female gets paid lower because she poses greater risk for the person/company who hires her; bankers pose a far greater risk on the whole but that is a risk incurred regardless of if one hires males or females.
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Yes, ‘we’ are hiring them – via our taxes.
Yes, I do understand quite a lot, including being employed at a lower rate than a man doing the same job for no other reason than gender.
Having a child is not comparable to having a heart attack – without them there is no future work force and quite a lot less industry all round.
I am not questioning the existence of logic, but the KIND of logic applied by male employers and politicians which sees having ovaries as a risk and discounts other qualities not understood by men. It’s selective logic, coming from a world-view that can be challenged and should be.
That’s it from me on this – we will have to agree to differ.
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Janine,
We do not hire them, the banks hire them. What is paid from our taxes is not wages but ransom.
Gender makes very little difference to pay rate other than that incurred as a result of homophobia. It is sex that matters; two very different concepts. Gender is psychological while sex is biological. Sex, being biological, creates very real differences and very different risk profiles. You are not paid differently because of your sex but because of what you being your sex entails.
Having a child is comparable to a heart attack as each pose risk. Besides, it was you whom brought the heart attack up as a risk factor in the first place.
Having a child is not some grand service to society; it is a service to the self. You don’t have a child because you think “oh, if i have a child it will be good for society”, you have a child because “oh frack, the condom broke (or in your case; oh that bastard, he must have deliberately sabotaged the condom so that he could fertilise my eggs!)” or “I want kids”. That it happens to provide a benefit is irrelevant. In fact, if we there were far less women having babies then the world would be far better off. Reduce it to a 20th of the rate as at present and the world might not be quite so fracked. Having a baby is not a selfless act for the good of society but a selfish act that hurts society.
Your logic is even more selective than the logic you claim these men posses. Women too employ women at lower rates. Asians tend not to employ third generation Asians. It is not all out-group discrimination but rather a logical appraisal of perceived reality.
As I have said, you have not provided a single arguement as to why women should be paid the same or more than men across the board or in such a way that the 12% average pay gap becomes 0%.
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Sapient, you may think I am a pedant but an inequity is never fair viz;
inequity.
lack of fairness or justice : policies aimed at redressing racial inequity ; inequities in school financing.
A pay difference for the same job may be fair if the employer has higher costs for different employees doing the same job. An inequity cannot be fair by definition.
Janine you say “So, don’t talk about my being risky because I might have children – what about these guys being risky, with ALL our money, because they see the world in that business-type way. They are a much bigger threat to our collective economic well-being than an extra 12 percent for the women.”
The problem is we would have to change our economic system and the associated values held by most people, including women.
I still like to see what the 12% figure is based on. To quote another statistic, 70% of the wealth in U.S.A. is owned by women. It could be similar here because women inherit the wealth from their high achieving husbands who die earlier. So why worry about overall pay equity when the overall wealth inequity is very much in favour of women? I know of six women much better off financially than me because their husbands have died. I chose to be a tradesman their husbands were either in a high paid profession or were in business. And one of them was a greedy banker!
E
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E-Prophet,
Indeed, valid point. The use of the word is not correct as the difference which induces the non-equality is non trivial. It is a non-equality rather than an inequity. It is perfectly justified.
I actually wrote a reply soon after your post appeared but it has not appeared so I must have hit preview instead of post. It covered some detail of just why females are so much more risky.
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I guess all we can do is outlive you then…
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Janine,
The the fertility rate in NZ is about 2. Assuming 2 children per female there is half a year of paid leave, up to two years of unpaid leave, and 10 paid days off each pregnancy prior to each birth or non-birth (average of 2 stillbirths per female as well so 40 days extra of days off). Additionally, most of the same applies for adopted children. That is a massive cost to employers. Add in the cost of keeping the job open for those time periods, for finding a temporary replacement, and of unpredictable days off due to child caring and you have even more costs. Add in the likelihood of shorter, and more restrained, hours and you then have a far less useful employee. Females pose a greater risk to an employer than a male does, especially since there is bugger all one can do to make sure they wont be breeding or adopting.
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Do wives, not husbands, adopt?
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Greenfly,
Both adopt, I am not sure if singles are even able to. lol.
The time off though, is granted to the carer; almost exclusively the female. Though, the distinction is decreasing I believe(a good thing too).
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Is this a fact or an opinion, that generates a wide discussion?
And if you are not happy with your salary, how about starting your own business! I feel like people are just making up excuses for their financial crisis!
I do know a lot of women, making over 80K a year and you will never see them say anything like that!
Are there any places that this probably occurs? Probably! Are there any places where this doesn’t occur?Of course! So unless every single woman gets outside and says “Yes there’s a gender pay gap” even the successful women, I will take this as just an opinion!
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