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!

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

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).

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

Do wives, not husbands, adopt?

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

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.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

I guess all we can do is outlive you then…

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

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.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

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

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

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%.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

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.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

Janine,

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.

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.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

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.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

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.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

Janine,

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.

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.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

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

Like or Dislike: 1  0 (+1)

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.

Like or Dislike: 1  0 (+1)

Janine,

Heuristics; general rules of thumb. Actuality matters not.

Like or Dislike: 0  1 (-1)

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.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

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.

Like or Dislike: 1  0 (+1)

Merlinnz,

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????

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’.

Like or Dislike: 1  1 (0)

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

Like or Dislike: 2  0 (+2)