“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” an exasperated Rex Harrison used to demand in My Fair Lady. Well, then as now, one major reason would be because they get paid less. A report released by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)shows that on average, women earn 18% less than men.
How do they get away with it – the men, I mean? Think of it another way. Supposing we had a report which showed that Catholics earn 18% less than Protestants. Even in our divided world, there’d be outrage by all not just right-thinking people but by people who had even half a brain. Presumably women do the same work as men – and yet they keep being paid nearly one-fifth less. Or maybe they’re just kept away from the more high-paying jobs. It’s a testimony to the depth of political division here that women in different parties can’t bring themselves to reach out and work with other women – and men – to right this massive and obvious wrong.
The IFS also found that the big point in their career where women are penalized most is after they have children. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that over the 12-year period after having their first child, women get 33% less pay than men. Women miss out on pay rises and promotion: f you’re a male manager, your chances of being promoted are 40% better than a female manager.
I know a little of this close-up. It involved a young woman in England who had a highly prestigious job. She took a year out to have her baby. When she approached her firm to arrange for her return, she found that they’d shifted the furniture. Well, not so much the furniture as the terms of employment. Her old job had been eliminated. She’d now have to do a markedly different job, working with different (and difficult) people. And of course, there’d be no room for special agreements like working part-time or working on flexi-time: it was a take it or leave it situation. Still struggling with the massive change that a baby brings into your life, she quit. Admittedly she got a handsome departure handshake, but she still felt she’d no option but to quit.
So forty years after the Equal Pay Act, women are still at an appalling disadvantage. And class won’t save you either. For mid-level, highly educated women, the gap between women and men’s wages is exactly what it was twenty years ago.
Why don’t women form even a temporary cross-party alliance – and as I say there’d probably be quite a few men who’d feel as strongly about this injustice – in order to right a wrong that affects them all? Difficult to say. Probably because we’re too stuck in our ways. And maybe because, historically, the idea of inequality has been bred in the bone to such a degree, 18% looks like peanuts.
Some of it is simple misogny …an ingrained hatred of women or rather of women becoming as powerful as their male colleagues.This kind of patriarchal bullshit is taken to great extremes where men want to control women to such an extent that they are no more than propertty, chattels or breeding machines.That is happening right across the world even now ,but it even happens in local society where there are still many who think that a “woman’s place is in the home”.Some of it is the daft idea that women are almost a different species.The gender difference can be exaggerated in the “Men Are from Mars and Women Are From Venus” happy-clappy easy socio- literature.What’s forgotten is that relationships involve two people and if one half of the relationship is suffering socially , it also affects the other half.One example is that if a women is institutionally being paid less for doing the same work as a man , then that household’s earnings are also affected and so is the esteem of the female partner.Besides…it is blatantly unfair. Think of it simple in terms of the roles being reversed and there’d be an outcry.
The situation you described of the woman returning to work afterhaving a baby is well known. I also know of that personally .It’s hard enough getting back up to speed ,but there’s also the tug of a new-born child and all the additional expense and stress involved in that . The same household bills need to be paid. Some good firms are able to accomodate the idea that people will naturally have children and the normal order of things in the modern world is that it takes two wages to run a modern household. It’s a long way from the days when a man went out to work in the morning and the wee wife stayed at home and did everything else. If a modern family is to work ,men and women have to constantly exchange roles in the household and share the load .There was a time when men were practically helpless in the home .They didn’t know how to cook a meal . Those times are long gone .Simple technology has freed women to work alongside men .The only real difference is that a woman can become pregnant and carry the next generation in her womb.If a society is to be viable , allowances have to be made for this. Nowadays there is paternity leave for men .That is a great step forward for a generation.That would have been a real boon when my children were born.Equally ….equal pay for women should be simple good sense.The only sense where a woman might not be equal to a man is in terms of pure physicality, but how many jobs involve that kind of lebvel of physical fitness ,anyway ?
How many jobs? Off the top of my head, coal miners, oil platform workers, deep sea fishing, construction workers, fire fighting, refuse collectors, metal fabricators, farming.
Not one of those jobs couldn’t be done by a woman MM.
” simple misogmy”, dearie me ! Not according to Kate Andrews from the Institute of Economic Affairs.
But if companies can get away with paying women less why would they bother employing men on a higher wage at all?
It’s not completely clear (to me anyway) MM, but I’d think that it’s a general thing: women find themselves overall working in lower-paid jobs. I’m open to correction, mind…
I think the problem centres around child care Jude.
Woman due to having children and the extortionate cost of child care find themselves out of the workforce for 3-5 years during (mainly) there late 20’s early 30’s. This means they miss out on promotions and lose that time to acquire skills and experience needed to climb the career ladder.
I think it’s both a economic as well as equality issue that needs addressed. Losing women to the workforce due to the cost of childcare making work not worthwhile damages are economy as the government loses out on income tax from them. Staying in work also helps women remain more independent as they don’t need men to help support them.
I think the government should pay for 35 hours of free childcare for every child until they reach school age. This would allow women who wish to stay in work if that’s what they want.
Agreed. And if I was a woman, I’d be kicking the politicians’ door down in rage…
“Surely a case of lies, damned lies and statistics”
Scott
“I think the government should pay for 35 hours of free childcare for every child until they reach school age. This would allow women who wish to stay in work if that’s what they want.”
And what about women (or men) who don’t wish to go out to work but who view their work as raising their children; should they be paid 35 hours a week for minding their own child?
Well we could do that PF also. It wouldn’t cost anymore as the money that would go to the child care would simply go to the mother or father.
My only issue is that is it would be a huge incentive for the parent to drop out of work, as I imagine being with your kids and getting a good pay would encourage many to leave work for several years until there children were all at school age.
Unfortunately I think to pay the parent would defeat the purpose of the idea to give universal child care. We would still have women who after there children were all at school left missing out on all that time and experience in there careers that would lead to income inequality as we have it now.
It is also more economically beneficial to the country as a whole to have the parent in full time employment throughout the child’s early years in order to boost income tax returns and to keep tax returns higher in the future, as the parent will hopefully be better paid hence pay more tax.
” It wouldn’t cost anymore as the money that would go to the child care would simply go to the mother or father.”
The thing that concerns me about that is that I don’t think we need to be paying parents to care for their own children.
As someone whose wife made the decision to stay at home and care for her own children, and who then had to deal with the subsequent, “So you don’t work,” comments, when in reality what people meant was, “So you are not in paid employment,” I really do think that we ought to be promoting the care of our own children as a vocation of great value.
The thing that troubles me about this whole debate is not the problem of equal pay – differentials should be on the basis of merit and not gender – what troubles me is that is for some reason our careers and our economy appear to be more important that our kids.
” think the government should pay for 35 hours of free childcare for every child until they reach school age. This would allow women who wish to stay in work if that’s what they want”
I’m not disagreeing with you on childcare Scott but the Government doesn’t pay for anything, the tax payer does. So if you work and pay tax, then if you want “free” childcare for every child then its you and me who will be paying for it with increased taxes.
People seem to think the NHS is “Free”, its not, its paid for by the tax payer (and after my grandmother’s death 6 weeks ago I will never go near it again, my whole family is in agreement on that one).
People seem to think benefits are “Free”. Again, its not, its paid for by tax payers.
Well I’m not being accurate when I say the “tax payer” pays for the NHS, Benefits, etc in reality its Debt that funds all these things, unsustainable Debt.
Ryan
I’m sorry to hear about your Granny, my sincere condolences to you and your family.
Yes I’m happy enough to have increased taxes to pay for lots of thing. Better schools, NHS, Roads etc etc.
Where the money comes from or what we should tax more or spend less, in order to achieve free childcare…………well I don’t know haven’t really thought about it in that level of detail. That’s up to the goverment I suppose.
I think it’s a worthwhile thing to do though for both equality and economic reasons.
Sorry for your loss Ryan.
The current economic climate with free movement opening access to 500 million people is simply not suitable for a British style NHS.
It is not sustainable without investing huge sums of money which would I believe damage their economy.
A totally free NHS system is simply not compatible with current membership of the EU.
As I have said before, I would not be alive today had I been reliant on the NHS. More and more people are being forced to pay for private cover on top of paying for public cover.
The NHS is also not accountable. Many people have died accidentally from careless mistakes in our hospitals, and no action can be taken as it is supposedly a “free” service.
Not for everyone, I have paid into it every week of my adult life.
It is but a shadow of what it used to be and we should be more focussed on an Irish NHS to suit our own needs.
” we should be more focussed on an Irish NHS to suit our own needs.”
With the opening of the new cardiac catheterisation laboratory at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Dublin, we already are.
“With the opening of the new cardiac catheterisation laboratory at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Dublin, we already are.”
Does that not suggest that at the very least someone thinks there are savings / benefits in running public services in an all Ireland basis?
You do realise that this is not really the full picture. In the UK ONS statistics it clearly shows that the pay gap exists. Women out perform men in until they hit their 40’s then the balance goes the other way. Odd how that never gets much exposure.
If a man and a woman drive a taxi is the meter in the woman’s taxi set at a Lower rate than the man’s ? Just wondering.
“If a man and a woman drive a taxi is the meter in the woman’s taxi set at a Lower rate than the man’s ? Just wondering.”
Nope. I know this personally because I usually get a female taxi driver when I’m coming back with my groceries twice a week.
Ryan, Don’t you have a woman to fetch your groceries ? You’ll be telling me next you do your own cooking.
If a woman and a man go into a lingerie/cosmeric shop ………. Just wondering. I hold a door open for a woman, I change a wheel, I give up my seat etc. Should I not?
Someone mentioned the cost of child care, what about the value of a mother carrying for her child, any thoughts?
Caring, not carrying.
According to Milo Yiannopoulos: “No serious economist takes this sort of stuff seriously”. I really couldn’t make a Judgement because I don’t know much about the subject. Do I believe its down to Misogynists? No, I don’t buy into buzzwords. Not everything is down to someone else’s prejudices, I believe that’s just a cop out or just jumping on the bandwagon. Isn’t there minimum wage laws? Wouldn’t it be illegal for a woman to be paid less than a man if they are doing the same job? How many women have took their employer to court for getting paid less than what they should be?
I’ll try to put the video below but there was claims of Misogyny because there was a lack of women in Science. But then it was revealed that very few women actually took Science subjects because they are difficult, most Women would rather do University courses in other subjects like Law or Business instead of Physics or Chemistry. Indeed now days there is now MORE women than men going to University. Is that down to Misandry? I know for a fact if there was more Men going to University than Women then it would be described as Misogyny. Its all ridiculous. When I was doing my Psychotherapy course, more than two thirds of the class were Women. Was this down to discrimination against Men? Of course not, it was simply down to more Women choosing to do the course than Men and I didn’t feel “intimidated” because I was one of the few Men there nor did I think there should’ve been more Men there taking the course, gender was irrelevant. But I know if it was a majority Male class some people would’ve had this weird idea of getting more women into the class because Gender IS relevant to them.
I don’t buy into these buzzwords like “Racism”, “Islamophobia”, “Misogyny”, “Homophobia”, etc. Of course such things exist but I believe they are used at every opportunity to drive a political/social agenda in the West and especially to silence opinions opposing that agenda, aka the “Your a Racist!” argument, which is no argument at all.
I’m not denying there isn’t issues in our society and they need fixed but the West is by far the best place in the World to live for all peoples. Try being a Woman in Saudi Arabia, China, South Africa (where 40% of all women are raped at least once in their life), Mexico, etc then come back and complain about Western Society.
Happened to find oneself last week, Esteemed Blogmeister, in an unusual environment: out of one’s comfort zone, a shopping mall.
And as one’s finer fifty-percent on a whim suddenly decided to infiltrate a parfumerie of some renown one was left outside in Jack Lynch-mode. (Acutally, make that one’s far finer fifty per cent, on the highly unlikely chance she might might eavesdropping on this blogsite. Better err on the side of Les Dawson).
Discovering the task of standing idly by a tad on the monotonous side one soon morphed into Desdemona Morris mode. And engaged in a bit of Womanwatching. Just to see what percentage of the passing women, on a whim, succumbed to a sudden imposition of overtime on the olfactory nerves.
At the entrance to the shop there was a table artfully laid with a variety of perfume bottles. Nothing so crass as ‘Sample Me !’ was advertised, as that would have been an exercise in superfluity. That uncanny phenom, the female instinct, ordained things thus.
And here’s the interesting stat: of the 87 percent of the footfalling females who stopped to sample freely, an uncanny 87 percent failed to progress any further into the parfumerie. Yet, as one’s nose noted, with no exception each and every one of this latter 87 percent of the original 87 percent walked away smelling sweeter. And if the collective smile was anything to go by, feeling sweeter too, bless them.
Leading this mere male observer to make this profound observation: women is a different species, alright. Mother N has seen to that, fair and equal dues to Her..
One mentions this, EB, as a general observervation, as one is not qualified to speak on the specific topic du jour. Apart from mentioning that any posish one was ever employed in, and there was a variety, the ladies always bagged an equal amount of swag as the lads.
What bugs one though, or at least takes the rug from over one’s lugs, is the increasing insistence that the ladies do, or at least be seen to do, what was hitherto considered primarily a lad’s jobs.
The most obvious example is in the area of sports broadcasting. It started in the States, where the rise of the Dworkin Class, was most meteoric. Nowadays if one spots a fellow in front of the cameras of a USA sports programme one is duty bound to make a double take. Things isn’t far behind on this side of the broad, Atlantical ocean.
Harking back to one’s occasionally less than stellar careers it has never, EVER been this feller’s experience to overhear his female colleagues discuss anything remotely sporting among themselves during caffeine free coffee breaks. Unless the sniffing of samples of free perfume be classified as a sport.
All was well in the world, one always assumed, and Goddess was in Her heaven.
But that was then, and this is the her and now. How come ?
Accompanying this unnatural reassignment of labour is the marked absence of a particular m-word which may or may well give a clue to this peculiar how-de-do.
THE CASE OF THE MISSING MIS
Concerning missing words one’s in a quandry
Not, to top a list as long as a Chinese laundry
Wake up, my lad
This ain’t no fad
Move over misogyny, make way for misandry.
Panic over. It appears women in the North of Ireland don’t suffer from a gender pay gap after all. Well according to the BBC anyway. Trend shows women in Ni earn more than men.