A bit of help/ hand hold/ moral support?

Yeah so potentially some of the things that apply to women with children apply to women without children. And on the employers side a childless woman of 35-40 is highly likely to go on mat leave anyway so that may affect how they are treated.

It's also a bit of a weird assumption that childless people have no caring responsibilities.

None of it is simple, and much of it is weighed against women in ways you might not initially think about.

That's why it's so nuanced. Deniers will say it's because women choose. Without ever looking at the reasons why.

I think some of it is that men are more likely to ask for a payrise. Not that this is an excuse because it is surely fairly easy for companies to make sure pay reviews are legitimate.

I've been thinking about this. Men can do this for a large chunk of their life, because promising things isn't an issue for them.

As a woman in my 30s (OK, not for much longer, but I was once) - I didn't have the bargaining chip that my DP had - he could negotiate and walk away - but if a woman in her 30s does, then she's also risking her maternity rights. It's a whole extra level of risk for her.

I was freelance, so actually it wasn't a problem for me once I got to my childbearing time, and, now I am senior I will put my own job on the line to get fair treatment for female staff (although I still cringe at thinking a chilly server room - as the only lockable, private, room in the IT Dept, including offices for senior staff- was OK to express in). Because if I've hired someone, it's because they're good at their job, and I want to keep them and they probably enjoy their job, so I'll bend over backwards and pay them well to keep them.

None of it is simple, and much of it is weighed against women in ways you might not initially think about.

a quick Google tells me that the average pay of a logger is 25k. What's disturbing is that anyone would actually read that without thinking wtf....

Here is a nice blog outlining why people think it's a myth. Including the oft repeated fact that men deserve it because their jobs are so much harder and more dangerous
www.google.co.uk/amp/blog.acton.org/archives/92915-yes-the-gender-wage-gap-is-still-a-myth-and-a-potentially-dangerous-one.html/amp

I think some of it is that men are more likely to ask for a payrise. Not that this is an excuse because it is surely fairly easy for companies to make sure pay reviews are legitimate.

There is also lots of discrimination in the workplace against mothers (I would like to say parents but it's mothers) - it is really hard to progress as you can't take flexible working agreements into another job. Plus while men are seen as being more responsible once they have children for women it is a workplace hindrance. But that doesn't explain that childless women also are affected.

In my experience, and speaking to friends, employers will come up with any number of excuses to explain away discrepancies, rather than take a look at themselves and admit to being sexist.

No pay gap? Computer weekly doesn't agree, going by their report a couple of weeks back, in which they find women in tech are, on average, paid less than men, regardless of skills and experience. (Also, I am clearly in the wrong bit of tech, if that's the average salaries.)

www.computerweekly.com/news/450425816/Average-female-tech-salary-less-than-males-regardless-of-role-or-experience

I've a question actually. I've seen comments online - by men ofcourse that the pay gap has been "disproven" completely.

Does anyone have any idea a. What they might be talking about and b. A counter argument to whatever it is ?

PricklyBall, sorry you're going through that. Appreciate there is a difference between what the law says and what happens in practice.

My place doesn't have pay grades as such, so it's a bit more transparent. I actually earn more than my male colleagues of the same level, because I'm good at my job and bolshy in my pay reviews.

Sporadic, there is a pay gap in terms of like-for-like.

I can't go into detail right now re. my own case because it's going through court right now and things are at a delicate stage, but yes, it's "the same jobs" not just the nebulous equal pay for work of equal value. And my union who are fighting this for us won a similar case at a similarly large employer a few years back. My previous job (academic), the government itself published figures showing a pay gap in universities, not just in terms of "more professors are male", but in terms of men getting paid more than women in every single jump up the pay scales - within lecturer A, within lecturer B, within senior lecturer, within the professorial scale.

To fight this, you need a variety of things:

1. to be part of a big group - it's going to be next to impossible to prove in a small employer if you and the man are, say, the only accountants.

2. to know you are unlikely to be the victim of reprisals as a result of bringing the case (remember, claims for damages for unfair dismissal on the grounds of sex discrimination are still capped, which is why so many women still continue to be sacked for pregnancy: firms just factor the cost of the discrimination case into their business model).

3. to be unionised, so you have a union to back you in doing the legal work.

4. to have male colleagues who care enough to allow their own confidential pay details to be put forward as comparators.

So unsurprisingly, it's a hard case to bring forward. Not because it doesn't happen. But because structurally it's hard to have all those conditions in place.

I personally think it's scandalous that 47 sodding years after the equal pay act I have to go to court over this. And I also want to know, given how many of these cases I personally know about, and how many I read about in the papers, the official stats get massaged to make it appear as though there is no sex-based pay gap. Because out there in the real world, there sure as hell is.

And nothing gives me the rage more than the "this is a white middle class feminist non-problem". It affects all of us - both practically (I am a single parent trying to support my child on what is basically the national median wage, not a huge sum of money), and as a matter of principle (we live in a capitalist society, and if you insist on paying women 10% less than their male colleagues, you are in effect telling them "we as a society think you're only 90% of a person, not a whole person.")

EBearHug found at her company that there was an actual gender pay gap for the same job didn't she?

I know when I've been hiring I've had HR people try to pay a woman I was hiring less than the published salary for the job, but not suggest it for the men I hired.

I also know that this study shows that it exists for hiring stanford study - so I can't see why it wouldn't continue after hiring.

The gender pay gap is real.

<a class="break-all" href="https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html?_r=1&referer=www.reddit.com/r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/comments/651k3l/when_the_only_other_lgbtq_person_in_your_office_a/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html?_r=1&referer=www.reddit.com/r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/comments/651k3l/when_the_only_other_lgbtq_person_in_your_office_a/

There isn't a /pay/ gap in the sense of 'women are paid less than men for doing the same work', which has been illegal since the 70s.

There is, in practice, an overall earnings gap between men and women. It is complicated and down to a number of factors, including career breaks to raise a family, going part time, ability to pick up overtime at short notice, the unequal provision of parental leave, and salary negotiation. This last one doesn't mean women suck at negotiating or are too meek and nicey nicey at interview, they are up against institutional sexism and it may well be a safer strategy not to push to go in at the higher end of a pay grade. There's also the slightly woolly definition of 'same work', which no doubt is what BBC execs are relying on to justify the enormous salary gap between their male and female presenters.

Personally, I think feminists sometimes do ourselves a disservice by talking about the 'pay gap', which is easily refuted - it's the earnings gap we should be looking at.

Emoticon fail.

Was it Teresa May? Or Katie Hopkins? (Grin)

GiantSteps

The gender pay gap is complicated. Which is why some people refute it.

They are all sorts of different strands. Yes women who have children suffer 'the mummy penalty', but women of the same age who don't have children also suffer the same penalty.

Women's jobs are undervalued and under paid. Raising the next generation is done for free! Part time work is often the only option for the caregiver, which is almost always women. So to equal that, companies would have to increase paternity leave and encourage men to be caregivers. Something that society resolutely refuses to do.

It's not an equal pay gap, it's a gender pay gap. And yes many companies still routinely pay women less than men for the same job. See the BBC, headteachers.

It's worth googling to get a handle on it. Or, do an advanced search on here with gender pay gap as the title. Mumsnet is the best for advice!

As for living under a patriarchy. Two women are week are killed by their partners. Not men. One in five women have suffered rape or sexual assault. Not men. Women are killed, purely for being women.

98% of sexually violent crime is committed by men. Not women. 90% of violent crime is committed by men. Not women.

When women together to talk about issues that affect them, it is protested violently. By men. Those very same men say they deserve it.

Men and women are socialised differently from birth. See the BBC programme no more boys and girls.

The girls said the only thing they could do better than boys was look pretty. By seven years of age they had low self-esteem.

So girls jobs were hairdressers and housewives, boys jobs were astronauts and presidents. This is what the children thought.

Well done for taking it on. People can blind you with what sounds like a sensible argument. But the more you read about it, the quicker you can formulate your thoughts and it becomes more automatic.

Yes, any young woman who is complacent should take a long hard look at Trump's America. Gorsuch would like to repeal Roe vs. Wade, contraceptive provision has been explicitly excluded from many company healthcare insurance policies (but not viagara), numerous states have come up with various wheezes to get round Roe vs. Wade (e.g. insisting abortion clinics have "admitting privileges" at local hospitals), women are prosecuted for endangering their foetuses...

Also, console yourself with the thought that karma may well come back to bite her. She will be middle-aged one day, looking at her male colleagues and thinking "what the fuck?" If she's really unlucky, she'll have been sacked for getting pregnant (happened to at least two friends of mine), passed over for promotion, marginalised after maternity leave. One of these days, unless she's happy to be a Stepford wife, her whole comfortable set of illusions will come tumbling round her ears after crashing into the immoveable object that is the real world.

I'd file it under 'can't argue with stupidity'. Chin up, she's the unreasonable one.