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.

Applauds Preminstrel

I don't think the article is as bad as the initial quotes suggested, but the "man's world" aspect is not as clear as it ought to be.

At its starkest it can be summed up as men want to get on, women want work-life balance

Yes was going to say the above conclusion is disingenuous for all the reasons Preminstrel said.

I agree. There is equal pay for the same job. If men are on higher salaries it's because they have the job which entails long hours working away from home and so on. Some women are prepared to do this some arent. And a lot of men don't want these demanding jobs either. Which take over your life.

Also, it's not just men who reward men, it's senior women (not always, but I have experienced it).

Boss at my first company was a very dictatorial, frightening, and physically short woman. Very early on my immediate manager took me aside. She and I were both tall. She said "now if you want to get to where I am keep your head down and keep your nose clean and don't rock the boat. does not like women taller than her and it will be a struggle." I was shocked and horrified but OTOH I suppose she cared enough to give me fair warning.

And it was a struggle - others around me got promoted from starter level within a year, I was still waiting 2 years later. Even though they had no complaints, my boss told me I was doing very well and this was reflected in my results.

(Of course men taller than boss woman weren't a problem.)

What happened? Yes, I ended up leaving. I'm happily self-employed now. But it's a good example of how women are judged, discriminated against and sidelined for reasons that are nothing to do with their performance.

Sadly the number of people in this thread who haven't read the quotes at the top properly doesn't really help the discussion ...

Well that make a a lot more sense when put in context.

very little to do with discriminatory practices

followed by

The behaviours for which men are rewarded in the office (laser-like focus on their own projects; a willingness to tell co-workers what to do without apologising) are often frowned on in women

So employers reward men for behaviours and frown on women for the same behaviours...but this is not a discriminatory practice?

What?

For the time I was offered a repeat role representing the company abroad, a role I had recently completed, and I asked for more money since I was now more experienced (and the only one who had done the role to date) and I received a "nice try, but nope" and the job was then given to a man instead?

The time when I applied for a different role within the company and my line manager made sure to write to the interviewing manager to make sure she understood that I was pregnant and would be going on maternity leave. (Because my baby bump wouldn't make that obvious and naturally there was a risk I would withhold this abhorrent information, and he owed it to the interviewer to ensure she knew what a liability it would be to take on a pregnant woman.)

So I stayed in the same damn role and resigned after my maternity leave was over because clearly I was never going to be allowed to progress...No, no discrimination there, nothing to see, move along.

@Preminstreltension

tbh Justine, I don't think this was a helpful sentence:

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

You go on to cite a study that says they care about things like flexible hours. They care about those things because often they have no choice. Men don't need to care about those things because someone else is doing that for them. Yes women need to manage their lives and responsibilities first (while we wait for men to take on their share of responsibilities) but that's a million miles from saying women don't care as much about salaries.

Women are taking what they can get in terms of salaries but the fact is that men still reward people who look like them and women have to get along in this working world so they fight the battles they need to fight first.

Well I do see where you're coming from, and I thought long and hard about it, but I think it's essential to have honest discussion, if we're ever to change things. Insisting women's motivations are exactly the same as mens' when the evidence suggests otherwise is not helpful IMHO.

I don't really think any much changes unless and until men (obviously I'm generalising - as lots do) take on more of the caring responsibilities.

Women have to think about work life balance. I know two couples where the man got a job that means he literally doesn't see his children Monday - Saturday. The man didn't consider his children or work life balance so his wife was left carrying the can. On both cases my friends gave up work. What else could they do? Children need looking after!

Girls are conditioned from birth to be nice, be passive, be submissive, be kind, generous etc. If course we grow up to be undemanding in the workplace, including when it comes to pay reviews.
Sadly many of us think we're not worth it.

Commenting on the points raised without reading the article, I think both things are true - discrimination and 'appearing not to care as much'.

On the latter, I think and vaguely remember reading that women, on average, are less self-assured and pushy than men on average and that this results in poorer outcomes from salary negotiations and promotion opportunities. Women are not necessarily less ambitious in terms of aspiration but have less belief that they can, should and damn well deserve to get there fast - less arrogant / determined, depending from which postition you're viewing things.

Discrimination certainly does exist though - in two forms. The kind we're aware of and see played out on these boards all the time, in particular discrimination during and after maternity leave and against PT workers. Then the kind that is endemic, insidous, constant and we don't see - but the OP has seen.

Personally, I've worked in a field that is values-driven, not money-oriented at all, in the voluntary and public sectors and have seen very little if any direct discrimination. My experience of vol sector orgs who can't reward people with cash is that they try to be as flexible as possible in other ways and, it happens that people going on mat leave are often senior staff in their 30s whose skills and knowledge are valued, so efforts are made to accommodate PT working.

Coming from that fluffy world, I was quite stunned that of 8 people in my ante-natal group three or four were disadvantaged by re-organisations that took place while they were on mat leave (not necessarily discriminatory of course) but two were mistreated to the extent they'd have had a strong legal claim (both resigned / took redundancy offers).

That certainly made the point to me that it's easy to think everything is equal these days, until you have children.

As others have suggested the working world especially seems to work very much on a male model ... so still little flexibility for managing work/life balance and being able to respond to our other responsibilities such as care of children. I've found this seems to be the case even where I've chosen to work in early years or in schools where you'd think we could be a bit further ahead in understanding that many women have other responsibilities beyond their working lives that they need to fulfill too.
I think it's all about our roles and responsibilities and very little to do with inherent differences between the sexes.

Justine seems to make a reasonable case, reading her full article. Women often do rule themselves out of corporate roles, often for reasons they are reasonably happy with. Like spending time with young children.

Greenpotato - oh god yes. :) I have been working on a project with a colleague. We have worked on this project equally - 50:50 on the writing. He distributed a lot of it last Saturday, to a committee which needs to review what we have done so far so that various decisions can be made. He did the distribution because I was traveling on Saturday and he didn't finish his last bit until after I had set out. As is often the case, several members of the group have emailed back to say they are on it. As is good manners, they have said thank you for your hard work so far (these people are not, incidentally, in any way, senior to us. They are from bits of the organization in different parts of the world). The thanks thing is purely a manners thing. The one woman on the committee apart from myself gave rather gushing thanks to my (male) colleague. The two men who have responded far thanked both of us. At this stage in my career I think it's hilarious, and so does my colleague. This woman SO has form. But we are both aware that that sort of 'erasing' of a female's involvement in a crucial task for our organization could have a significant detrimental impact on a less senior person.

Hello Justine,

Yes, discussing that issue may be useful and interesting. What we are flabbergasted about though, is the suggestion that discrimination does not exist. Would you explain that please.

So are you trying to say with this part below that the problem is not with workplace "discriminatory practices or policies against women" but rather a bigger society wide problem Justine? Because if so, I have to disagree with that sentence. What you have described is the very definition of discriminatory practices and the fact that the problems stem from society at large does not negate the fact they are discriminatory practices. Employers can do many things to change discriminatory practices via policy. I do agree there needs to be a societal and cultural shift, but stating "the gender pay gap has very little to do with discriminatory practices or policies against women" is just not reflective of many, many women's lived experience.

As far as I have seen, then, the gender pay gap has very little to do with discriminatory practices or policies against women. There are much deeper forces at work, among which are the conflicting signals women receive about how best to conduct themselves. The behaviours for which men are rewarded in the office (laser-like focus on their own projects; a willingness to tell co-workers what to do without apologising) are often frowned on in women. But failure to display them means women often miss out on promotions and higher pay. Unfortunately that is not the half of it.

The last sentence of that paragraph above is The second big problem is that women just do not seem to care as much as men do about salaries and promotion. As it stands I fundamentally disagree with that statement both as a woman and an HR professional. Women very much care, but the trouble is the way we express it and have been taught (by society) to express it causes us problems. If you had said "The second big problem is that women appear to just not care as much as men do about salaries and promotion" and then added something like "because they don't tend to ask for pay rises or demand pay to reflect the job done like men do and cannot afford to take as many risks because they are often penalised by the biological inevitability of reproduction and the associated impacts imposed on them by employers and society" then I would have agreed with you there too. Tossing that sentence as fact without evidence or subsequent discussion was not the best thing to do, in my opinion.

Another thing I've observed is that companies often have a dinosaur-like approach that tends to disadvantage women, even when it also disadvantages the company.

Flexible working, keeping everyone to shorter working hours, retaining good staff etc are in a company's interests and this has been shown over and over again. Yet many bosses still have that attitude of "promote people who stay late and appear keen and pushy" "get rid of women who get pregnant" "don't allow flexible working, part-time hours or working from home even with good, trusted employees". That makes me think there is actual, active misogyny at play though again not always conscious.

It wouldn't be surprising if men at some level want women out of the workplace, and some very senior women who have made it to the top also want other women out of the workplace. If that can happen, the threat to/competition for their jobs is reduced. It's easy to see women as the most dispensable when they are the ones who tale mat leave, are less pushy and easier to abuse.

Wow.
That's just bollocks.

Agree preminstrel

It kind of smacks of 'well you're your own worst enemy'.

In the early part of my career I didn't want a work life balance, I wanted to get on. I was called "ambitious" (not in a good way trust me) when I took risks and was constantly told I was "efficient" at my (entry level) job. I did it so well they worried the office would suffer from promoting me, you see. A colleague who was not as "efficient" as me (male) was constantly being remarked on as "having potential" and "going places".

A level above me, two women asked for a pay rise and got a small one. A man was then hired on less experience and more pay than they had got, including the recent pay rise. When they protested, they were called "ungrateful". Both were single with no work life balance issues.

Now I am older and do need flexibility, that's a challenge too - but actually the whole thing has been an issue from the moment I graduated - a full 12 years before the arrival of my first child.

Ultimately until men do a lot more at home things won't change. The women earning lots end up out sourcing so much of the responsibilities that would generally end up being 'her lot'. I can almost guarantee even in households with two high earners where the vast majority of the grunt work of cleaning and child care is done by 'staff' I bet its still the woman organising the cleaners and the nanny.

I don't think Justine is right, and I don't think the available evidence supports her statements, and I especially don't think statements like that are helpful in the current discussions (as they will be taken up and used as a stick to beat us with)....

...but I think she has every right to write it and have it published wherever she pleases. Justine has done a great deal to give other women a platform for their opinions, even ones I bet she profoundly disagrees with, and it would be the height of hypocrisy if we were to say that hmmm, no, she doesn't get to have and publish her own opinions, too.

There should be no forbidden opinions. (There should be forbidden acts, but no forbidden opinions.) If we think Justine is wrong then we ought to state our evidence to the contrary. (Except I can't just now as I've been diddling about on the internet all morning and really ought to get this actual work finished, soz...)

Justine, you contradict yourself and I'm disappointed.

Generalisations like "men want" "women just don't care" are bullshit, frankly.

And you have pointed out how women are punished for displaying the same behaviours as men, but you don't recognise this as a discriminatory practice.

I'm so disappointed at how you've analysed the reasons behind the gap and come up with "women behave differently, they don't want it as badly as men, so they get what they deserve."
and
"women prefer work life balance, so they're probably better off anyway"

Whereas I come up with "men get rewarded for stuff and women get punished for the same stuff and this is discriminatory"

This has thrown me that you think this way. You need to read a few more employment discrimination threads from mumsnetters and have a second think, frankly.