To think Justine Roberts should not have written this in the FT

[FreeWorker]

Justine writes a comment column in the Recruitment section of the Financial Times section which most MNetters will not have seen as it is behind a paywall.

In her most recent article of yesterday she writes on the gender pay gap and I was astonished to read the following sentences:

"As far as I have seen, then, the gender pay gap has very little to do with discriminatory practices or policies against women."

"The second big problem is that women just do not seem to care as much as men do about salaries and promotion."

One commentator under the FT article called Ezra sums up how I feel.

"Some valid observations - but to say that the gender pay gap has nothing to do with discrimination is frankly delusional."

For those who want to see the full article you may be able to read it via the following link if you search for it via Google and answer a few online questions:

For the rest of the year your pay will be zero

The Financial Times is an extremely influential newspaper in business and Government circles and Justine is also extremely influential as an opinion former because of MN.

AIBU to think that the views Justine has expressed in this article do not reflect the daily experience of women at work? AIBU to think it also contradicts the thousands of posts about unfair treatment at work by women on MN that show discrimination is rampant and that women DO care about salary and promotion?

I have name changed for this post but am a long time male poster on MN and have had male bosses throughout my career who openly and routinely made discriminatory comments in meetings when no women were around to hear them. They knowingly paid women less and passed them over for promotion. I worked in an industry where virtually no women make it to senior positions.

The gender pay gap is always about discrimination in my experience.

I don't presume that's so but I know most couples when the first baby comes sit down and look at money ( wise them) and plenty decide as the wife's earnings are not enough to cover 1 or 2 nursery places she will stop work or go part time to keep her hand in at work. When men earn more than women that also happens. I am not saying it is wise and that it always happens but it is the sensible norm - you look at what the mortgage is, what money you need and wheher it pays to work or not.

I certainly agree that more women and a few men are moving to part time work and some employers to keep good people who are hard to find in their sector will change their hours to keep that person it can be a wise choice but I am glad it is not compulsory as some jobs cannot be done part time and sometimes the worker is not good enough to want to bother to keep by agreeing to a flexible working request.

We certainly discussed these issues as a partnership. Before we married we talked about who would give up work if that became necessary due to children (him) and at one point he nearly did because of poor pay but then his sector for a larger pay rise so it made sense to carry on. I also think families protect themselves financially and their children if they keep up two careers as who knows what will happen in future so it's best to hedge your bets.

I've really busted a gut to keep my (freelance) career going while being a parent. It's been really hard because DP has a full-time, demanding job, often works away and only gets limited time off so it's mostly me that has to cover school pick-ups, holidays, kids off sick etc. I would love to work more than I do. Yes I'd like a different work/life balance – one that involved more work! I'd be thrilled if I could just work normal 9-5 hours 5 days a week. I bloody love working and having that ability to concentrate and get in the zone. Work keeps me sane.

I know we could get more help in and use more after-school childcare but for various reasons that's difficult – DC have always been quite shy and clingy and are unhappy being farmed out all day, I made the decision to miss some work hours to accommodate that. I work at home so can catch up in the evenings and that's what I often do.

It's exhausting and many times I've thought that I could easily give up work and still pack all day every day with stuff that has to be done running a home and having DC. And we could afford it if that's what we wanted. But I won't do that because keeping my career is vital to me, and so is not falling into not doing paid work because I'm the woman. Instead I insist on DP taking his share of the housework and childcare when we're both at home, and on us sharing them equally. It's exhausting for both of us but the payoff should be that once DC are more independent, my career will still be there.

I do think it is better for women's long term interests to keep working.

And of course, the solution to that, is to ensure that ALL paid work should offer suitable hours/ days of work and flexibility AND salary and career prospects. Most women don't want flexibility rather than salary and career prospects, they want both. As do many men. And if men did as much domestic work and childcare as women do, capitalism would have restructured its workplace by now

I would love to see this. I hate the long hours culture.
Most of the men I know are pretty good at sharing childcare (running kids to school etc). But they are less good at organising the home and housework.
There needs to be more equality at home and better flexible working in all careers.

Having RTFT, deo, would I be right in thinking that your advice basically boils down to: behave like a man and pretend that you don't have children?

If so, that sucks. Talk about perpetuating the problem.

Slipp, that's very very sexist to say. Since about 1920 women have been doctors, lawyers and all sorts - they are not behaving like men. they are humans wanting a career. Why say that working full time in a job you like is behaving like a man?

deo, not at all. But you have said things like "two weeks off to have children", and advocated working really long hours as its no hardship. It has obviously worked for you and that's great - but it doesn't recognise that it won't work for all women, for all kinds of reasons. But your advice seems to be that if it doesn't work for someone else, they can't complain about their lack of career. Which I think sucks. If that's sexist, so be it

Apologies for poor syntax in post - typing on phone whole in bed ill, with my (lower earning) DH fending off the kids.

Or men. Your post refers to women which is sexistl. Full time hours may not be what all men want either. We need to be gender neutral.

What I don't want is young women conned into thinking if they are just about never at work they will have a great career. By all means be hardly ever at work but you won't get as good at work and you won't earn as much. Take that choice if you are male or female but don't be conned into thinking someone who has spend 5 of the last 5 years working full time will not have more experience than someone who has had 3 of the last 5 years not working whether looing after a child, walking across the UK on foot or in bed doing drugs.

I just want women and men to make informed choices.

It's a tricky question. There's more of a culture encouraging men to seek promotion and prioritise their careers than women, and a culture encouraging women to facilitate them. Where I work it is 90% men and many of them have stay-at-home wives looking after the kids and the households. It's hard for women to compete with that, since far, far fewer men are prepared to be a stay at home husband supporting their wife's career.

I just want women and men to make informed choices

I see what you mean with this but I agree more with slippy

Your advice seems to be "to get ahead at work you need to act like the perfect "often male" employee"

So no time off for your kids, be available as much as possible, lean in etc

Well some people want more balance than that - both men and women (although at the moment women seem to want more balance as they do more home drudge type of work).

I don't think this "ideal worker" model is good for either men or women.

Oh FGS Deo give it a rest. What you actually mean by saying that we must be gender neutral, is that we must accept the structures and values which were designed in society which is NOT gender neutral but is one in which women and what we do is valued at a lower rate than men and what they do, and we must just try our best to fit ourselves into those structures.

But we don't want to do that. We want what we do and who we are, to be assumed to be as valid and valuable as men and what they do and what they are. That means that when we become mothers, which is something men cannot do, we want to function as the mothers that we want to be, not the mothers you keep enthusiastically telling us we need to be to function in the workplace.

That means that for most of us, going back to work full time when our babies are 2 weeks old, is a non-starter. If you want to do that, knock yourself out, no-one is in favour of a law to stop you doing that. But for the rest of us, we are not even remotely interested in that model of motherhood and we want time to enjoy and bond with our babies. And we don't want that time to be at the expense of functioning fully in the workplace when we re-enter it. The workplace needs to acknowledge that we are one half of humanity and 80% of us become mothers and it must be designed for that huge proportion of people to function as well as the others who don't become mothers.

It's simply bollocks to pretend that if we take a few months out of the workplace 2 or 3 times in a working life, that has got to mean that we can never expect to catch up. When men take time out of the workplace (sometimes for much longer periods than any woman takes for maternity leave) to do things like start their own business, go travelling, take a sabbatical, because they've been ill, etc., the figures show that within five years, they catch up with their peers. Because nobody tells men that they can't expect to take time out of the workplace and never function again within the workplace structures. The reason women are being told this, is not because it's inevitable and fair and reasonable, it's because , duh, sexism. Sexism which women like you validate and perpetuate with your endless blathering on about how women should leave their babies and go back to the workplace 2 weeks after they've given birth. Give it a rest FGS.

deo, please can I ask who looked after your children after you went back to work?

www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/lean-out-the-dangers-for-women-who-negotiate Apologies if this has already been posted.

Actually, slip, I think that's not a terribly helpful comment on several levels.

Firstly, DG did not necessarily behave like a man. Men don't generally have to branch out and set up on their own to circumvent the glass ceiling. They get natural promotion within their firms, they tend to be able to slug it out in the traditional way rather than having to think laterally about how to achieve what they want - this is because the system works in their favourite rather than due to any innate sex based characteristics.

Secondly - being successful and doing well is not 'behaving like a man'. This attribution of characteristics that are generally associated with 'success' to men and those that are generally associated with 'lack of success' to women is both sexist and demonstrably based on false assumptions.

From this thread and others in the past it's clear that DG did not expect or push her husband to sideline his career to facilitate hers. Many partners in my firm, of a similar age to her, have SAHM wives (who had careers and prospects of their own, degrees, professional qualifications etc before marriage). It's clear that DG did not adopt the prevalent approach of her time to the question of who works and who stays in the home.

I agree with a previous poster that DGs charge out rate looks low on the face of it - but then, she gets to keep it all. She's not contributing to massive firm overheads. And I suspect she has much more chargeable time than partners in firms. It's also possible she isn't working in the most lucrative fields of law anyway.

I agree with DG on this. I gave up work in my early 30s when I had my DC. Friends who like me have 3 DC have had 3 year long maternity leaves and an average of 10 years of part time working. That is a long time out of the workplace in comparison with someone who has remained FT plus.

My concern with my own DDs is that they are not steered towards "family friendly" careers like eg teaching / medicine which are actually anything but and relatively poorly paid for the level of qualifications required. If they want to teach / doctor for its own sake then that is a different decision and one I would happily endorse.

On charge out rates when I was working freelance I was able to charge about a fraction of my employed rate and still earn twice my former salary (accountant but similar professional set up to law). DG is happy to outsource the drudgery of her homelife but no longer employs staff to outsource the drudgery in her worklife. I cannot bring myself to outsource my homelife but much preferred my worklife when managing teams of juniors with admin and technical support to do all the legwork.

Thank you for the link slipperyjack. This is just the point I was trying to make up thread.

I'm not down on Deo either. But I do think Basil makes some good points. Why do we have to accept the existing work place structures, customs, and practices as a given?

SlipperyJack - the New Yorker article you linked to is excellent.

I especially nodded my head to this:

"Women who don’t negotiate may not be refraining because they are shy. They may, instead, be anticipating very real attitudes and very real reactions that are borne out, time and again, in the lab and in the office. Often, leaning in has an even worse effect than saying nothing. "

That is absolutely why women do not negotiate in my experience. Trying to negotiate with an employer (almost always represented by a male manager) just brings down a heap of resentment.

I will go further and say that even if an prospective female employee does negotiate better terms before she enters an organisation and the employer does agree reluctantly to some of her negotiated requests, for example because they are desperate to get someone at short notice, that will only store up trouble for the future after she has you joined the organisation and next pay, promotion and bonus round will be when the consequences are felt. No promotion, no pay rise and low bonus - puts her back where you would have been had she not negotiated. Worse still she may find herself selected for redundancy.

Women quickly learn what works and what does not. Men rarely get treated badly when they negotiate and as a result gain confidence in dong so at repeated encounters with employers.

Women need to be clear. Discrimination is never their fault and it is never because you did or didn't do something.

Interesting article slippery but I agree very strongly with the quote below.

“You need to signal concern for the broader organization: ‘It’s not just good for me; it’s good for you.’ ” This would be true for men and women imo.

Also the last time I negotiated hard I went with the tack "there is no point in even making me an offer unless it fulfills ...". That worked very well but did risk them having had a higher opening position than I anticipated.

Agreed with much of that UhtredRagnorsson (love the name, OMG just discovered The Last Kingdom, isn't it fab? ) but where I disagree with you, is that doing well and being successful is not behaving "like a man", simply because success has been constructed as being "like a man" in our society and very few women have been allowed to alter that image of success. It doesn't mean men are naturally programmed to do better and be successful than women; but it does mean that they are operating within work, domestic and social structures which imperceptibly guide them towards success while women operate within the same structure which imperceptibly guides them away from success. And getting back to Justine's point, this is not because anyone is consciously discriminating against women and exercising positive discrimination in favour of men (although obviously that is still happening on a much larger scale than meejahland wants to acknowledge); it's because the discrimination is so built in to the fabric of that structure, that we can't see it's there.

It doesn't mean women can't be successful; it just means that the structure which opens the door for a man, keeps it closed for a woman and so she then has to find a different route to get to that success place. She may have to go round several routes and through different doors and go down a few notches before she gets to the same place a man just walked through in a straightforward manner (so on the whole, got there quicker). And because they're at the same place, the meejah says: "Look, she got there, that proves it's all equal, the reason the others aren't getting there is because of their choices" and then no-one needs to recognise that the men were allowed to walk in a straight line while the women had to negotiate obstacle courses with dragons along the route.

That NewYorker thing really does show it doesn't it - men get higher pay because they negotiate, women get resentment and the reputation of being a difficult bitch if they do.

And so they don't. And then we can all sit back and say "women's choices/ women's behaviour", "if only they'd do like men" etc. etc.

And then we don't need to worry about systemic sexism, so they can carry on shafting us.

I don't know enough about DG's personal setup to know if she sidelined her partner's career, or whatever. Like I said, it's worked for her - great. But in my lived experience (and it's only mine, insert whatever disclaimer you like here) it will not work for most women. It's not sexist to say "women" because that's who DG is aiming her advice at.

I agree with askbasil that DG appears to be operating within the current workplace structures, which have not evolved to be beneficial to women. Obviously someone who has taken 2-3 years out on maternity leave will be less experienced (purely in terms of hours in the job) as someone who hasn't. But the alternative, within the current workplace structure, is to not take any time out at all, and to basically behave as though you don't have children. Which, as I believe I have already said, sucks.

Wow basil, cross post and a half! (Hadn't seen yours before I posted mine.)