To think gender pay gap deniers are just sexist

[JumpyCastle]

Why do so many men like to say there isn't such a thing a a gender pay gap? We all know it exists throughout the world.

They often use the excuse that women are at lower levels of an organisation. Well why do you think they are ffs could it be because they are not promoted? I haven't seen anyone ever disprove it without loads of holes

If, from tomorrow, men were the ones having children, you can bet your rocks that maternity leave, career breaks and other related familial caring duties would be a huge priority

We'd probably see laws requiring "make up" bonuses for those who have had to take time out of the workplace; guaranteed conditions, and definitely we'd see equality in terms of who takes the parental leave for newborns and subsequent childcare days and emergencies.

The main reason for the gender pay gap is that boys are more likely to study STEM subjects at A Level and university (e.g. the split of men / women studying for a degree in physics or engineering is approx 80 / 20, and only 8% of students studying computing at A level are girls) and these subjects tend to lead to well paid jobs.

On the other hand, girls are far more likely than boys to study art or French at A level, which are less likely to lead to well paid jobs.

This is what we need to tackle to reduce the gender pay gap.

Too many people here conflating gender pay gap and equal pay.

Equal pay is about paying people equally for doing the same job regardless of their gender. Equal pay is a legal issue, it is illegal to pay differently due to gender.

The gender pay gap tho is more of a traffic light indicator and tends to be one figure for all women compared to all men in an organisation's workforce. It's most often driven by the way women are distributed within an organisation compared to men. It varies depending on industry, organisational structure and culture. It also varies on how flexible jobs are. Too many flexible part-time jobs are limited to lower salaries leading to over qualified and over educated women working for less money than men.
It's not a myth.

YANBU.

I hate it when people deny its existence.

With regard to the parental leave I believe that the statutory bit (the 39 weeks at £128ish a week) can now be split between both parents. I'm pretty sure this is available to all PAYE employees. Anything your employers offer above this to make your pay up to full pay or half pay etc. Is up to them and I guess they can decide whether they only offer it to women employees or give it to male employees too. I think the only rule with splitting parental leave is that the mother has to take at least the first 2 weeks after birth off for recovery.

boys are more likely to study STEM subjects at A Level and university

Also, at apprenticeship level, boys are much more likely to enter STEM occupations like engineering and construction, whereas girls are more likely to enter service sector occupations like social or health care, hairdressing, administration, etc. which are generally (not always) less well paid.

YABU - why should anyone be paid more when they don't work the same hours. Or have the same qualification or experience.

Women tend to work part time, more than men. For childcare, and such. So that's why it looks like it. It's been disproved many times over.

This.

So the Equal Pay Act 1970 was a waste of time, or after 47 years still isn't being fully implemented? IDTS.

The gap in lifetime pay is the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full time. It doesn't take into account differences in occupation, positions, job tenure, hours worked per week, etc. When you do take these factors into account, the wage gap disappears. For individuals, if you are a woman in a job where you are being paid less than a man doing the same thing.... do something about it. The law is on your side and has been for ages.

Sticking to experience rather than anecdote or less-than-impartial 'research', I can only recall one instance when I knew for a fact that a woman doing the same job as me (same job title, same duties, hired at the same time) was paid less, as I discovered on my last day with the company.

The difference between us wasn't sex. I'd done better than her at the aptitude tests we took prior to being hired but if anything she was a bit better than me at the job. We worked for a large hard-nosed financial sector company which paid everybody the least they could get away with. The woman had accepted their initial offer on being hired; I told them it wasn't enough, and got more. Her performance review had gone well but had not led to the rise she hoped for, even cost of living; I made it quite clear at mine it was money up or me out. I got one. I wonder if there is any conclusion to be drawn here.

And please avoid the word 'deniers'. It is merely emotive abuse, intended to shut down debate by raising an echo of 'holocaust denier'. People who do not share your views are perfectly entitled not to.

I think the main gap exists between the types of roles certain genders tend to pick. For example tradesmen (very few women pick these jobs for all kinds of reasons) are paid well now. Whereas secretaries etc are paid very badly. About the same level of skill, expertise and training is required for both.

10 years ago this gap was much, much less than it is now. I was earning roughly the same as a carpenter 10 years ago, now they earn 40% to 50% more than me.

Whollyfather you are talking about EQUAL PAY not the gender pay gap.

So the Equal Pay Act 1970 was a waste of time, or after 47 years still isn't being fully implemented?

Er, no. As multiple posters have already explained, the gender pay gap is not the same thing as the issue covered by that legislation. It's a broader issue with a lot of driving factors behind it. You can say "but if you account for all those factors causing it then it goes away" if you want, but you're massively missing the point - it's still a gender pay gap if it's driven by, e.g., women being less likely to actively seek promotion, rather than hiring committees being evil moustache-twirling sexist villains.

(although, points for starting a paragraph with "sticking to experience rather than anecdote..." and then immediately giving us an anecdote!)

the problem with the gender pay gap is some of the comparisons

eg people think bin men and dinner ladies are equal jobs so should be paid the same never mind the massive amount of unsoicalable hours that bin men have to do in comparision to dinner ladies?

My friend who dated a bin man had to be at work at 5am and had to work holidays etc

So while there might be a averge pay gap overall you need to read the data more closely if you compare the amount of hours worked you find women on averge work less hours then men (due to the fact the majoirty of part timers are female).

So be carefull when reading the facts as they can be misleading.

but most of the analysis looks at average hourly pay, not total annual pay which might reflect differences in number of hours worked.

Gender pay and equal pay are two different legal concepts (i.e. They both exist).

Equal pay is comparing the salaries of comparable jobs, e.g. Same level.

Gender pay is comparing the average salaries of both genders within an organisation and will demonstrate more than likely that males dominate in senior roles.

The questions we should be asking is why is that the case. A quick look on some of the threads on here will show that a great many women sacrifice their careers by taking a break to raise children yet very few men do likewise.
Why is this the norm? Why do females repeatedly do this- is it due to deep routed societal expectations? If we really do want equality do we want to stop this being the norm ( it isn't the norm in the Nordics).

For the gender pay gap there is no easy solution and we do have to take a big hard look in order to resolve.

And no I don't think this is the sole preserve of females to address but all of us.

'The difference between us wasn't sex. I'd done better than her at the aptitude tests we took prior to being hired but if anything she was a bit better than me at the job. We worked for a large hard-nosed financial sector company which paid everybody the least they could get away with. The woman had accepted their initial offer on being hired; I told them it wasn't enough, and got more. Her performance review had gone well but had not led to the rise she hoped for, even cost of living; I made it quite clear at mine it was money up or me out. I got one. I wonder if there is any conclusion to be drawn here. '

Yes, Wholly, the conclusion, which has been shown by a very large number of studies, is that women don't and aren't expected to negotiate for higher pay. Studies have shown that when women do negotiate for higher pay they're seen as aggressive, abrasive, overly confident. It can damage their career prospects significantly.

Those who are saying 'if pay is unequal do something about it' have clearly never worked in a private sector organisation. In most companies it's expressly forbidden for employees to discuss pay and so women can be paid less without them even knowing it.

I am involved in Gender Pay Gap calculations in my company and I've seen part-time vs full time mentioned a few times now.
I'd like to clarify that the number of hours worked per week is completely irrelevant, the gender pay gap figures are derived from hourly rate only.

I know, most you just have to watch everyone do a complete 180 when your provide them with the studies that women in there 20's are earning more then men.

Suddenly the same arguments used for it not being 100% correct are the exact same reasons why the other way is apparently sexist.

Because men and women get paid the same for the same job. No serious economist believes this nonsense.

The pay gap myth is leveraging external factors to bemoan meritocracy.

Because many women have gaps in their career due to taking time off to have children? So men have more experience in the role due to length of service. If I took a couple of years off throughout my career to go travelling or whatever and a colleague did not, I would not expect to be on the same money as them. This actually happened to me but the other person was a woman. Didn't occur to me to question it.

Thank you for the various explanations of EQUAL PAY and THE GENDER PAY GAP

Its really clarified it for me

Ive never understood why people argued against the gender pay gap but its clearer now