To be really annoyed and disappointed with Dh views on this

[fleec]

Dh just said to me that the gender pay gap doesn't really exist. He said that women choose lower paid jobs because it suits them . Also that women choose to slow down their careers because of children and that women have less assertive personalities meaning that they are generally suited to less senior roles.

I am fuming with him. I cannot believe that he thinks this . AIBU to think that we are all different and that you can't generalise in this way! I am not one who generally holds very strong feminist views but this has really got to me.

"Yeah? Ask him why the Queen in the series "the Crown" got paid less than the Duke of Edinburgh. .
The Queen ffs

Well Matt Smith was a hugely well known actor to draw people in to watch it when Clare Foy was relatively unknown? Why would you pay someone more who has had fewer roles"

That might have washed for the first series, but then there was Wolf Hall and a BAFTA nomination. What has Matt Smith done since Dr Who (don't get me wrong, I love him) ?

All of you saying about "what about childcare?" Etc you're agreeing with OP DH. Married couples make a decision about one parent being the lead in child rearing and this is predominantly the wife. This has reduced her earning potential compared to his but this is not the employer discriminating. Anecdotally I do think there is some sexism in pay but particularly in the upper end of professions but to say that all of the pay difference is purely because of sexism is not backed by the facts. Read the report about Uber drivers in the US where men earn more than women despite pay being calculated by an algorithm that gender has no influence on.

medium.com/uber-under-the-hood/unpacking-the-gender-earnings-gap-among-uber-driver-partners-e8f11df12045

Take no notice of the idiot , what a jerk.

Re: Claire Foy, I can only assume that she didn't play hardball after Season 1 (which is part of the conditioning that we return to over and over again in this discussion). Maybe she felt it was distasteful to complain when she was earning £30K an episode. Who knows.

They pay what they can get away with.

There is some truth in what he says. Much of it is down to what women choose and the fact that those choices are unattractive to many employers as they reduce the hours and/or revenue generation of that employee.

Less women joining STEM and other well paid professions. No one is stopping them. Yes maybe "society pressures them to decide against" such roles, but guess what, you don't HAVE to do what society expects. I didn't and I now earn far more than my husband despite him having a 14 year head start in the workforce.

More women joining typically low paid professions such as caring. Again, see above, no one forces them to. Those professions, whilst valuable, do not generate income or require a high level of skill, so they will never be well paid.

Women choosing to take a whole year of maternity leave. We shared ours equally (8 months in total) - SO many female acquaintances were horrified and declared they would NEVER share their leave with the father. As someone in a senior role, it is a huge pain when someone disappears for over a year (its typically 14 months once annual leave and a bit of parental leave is added on). The whole caseload has to be reallocated. Then typically after returning there is a second maternity leave within a couple of years and the merry go round starts again.

Women wanting to go back part time. 3 days seems to be the ideal. Nurseries and childminders operate 5 days a week last time I looked. I can only really speak for my job (litigation) but it is not a role suited to part time. Clients need to be able to contact the handler every day and if they cannot then colleagues have to pick this up in addition to their own caseload. Many employee overheads stay the same, however. The reason given seems to be wanting to "be there" for the children more. That is lovely but it is a CHOICE. A man making that decision would also find his career slows and his bonuses decrease.

Women doing restricted hours to manage drop offs and pick ups because they accept the father's job is more important. Solution - do not marry and/or have children with a chauvinist. I would rather have lived my whole life alone than do so. Also, see above, think carefully about your original career choice as when families do the maths, it will obviously make more sense for the lower paid partner to restrict their hours. Someone on another thread said she gave her husband pretty short shrift if he started suffering from "importantitis" - I thought that was awesome - more women need to challenge their partners like this.

Overall lots of women don't want to work full time and/or prioritise their career once they have children. You can say this is "socialised" until you are blue in the face, but it must have some basis in biology/nature. There are some of us who are less instinctively maternal than others, but we do seem to be in the minority.

Here is where I think the real gender pay gap lies:

1. Unequal pay for equal work (taking into account experience, skill, productivity etc) ...
2. Arising from assumptions by employers that ALL female employees will want to have children, take a year off each time, come back for only 3 days a week etc. (This happened to me both maternity leaves. I took 4 months and 5 months off respectively and was clear about my intentions. Both times there was an assumption I would "change my mind" and take the full year - my caseload was reallocated and I had to fight to get it back.)

Anyway, there are some things that just cannot be helped.

• Only the woman can get pregnant and breastfeed. This is a very bonding process that can make it agony for the woman to be parted from her baby - even I with my heart of stone experienced this.
• The man in a relationship is typically older than the woman and has had a head start in his career.
• The woman tends to be the one who wants children more and part of the deal seems to be making more of a career sacrifice. My husband agreed to have children mainly because I wanted them. He would have been happy to be "just us" forever - I wouldn't.

Despite the above, if I had a magic wand and could change into a man, I wouldn't want to. I love being a woman, I loved being pregnant and having babies and spending the first precious months with them. The pay gap isn't the most important thing sometimes.

Perhaps Matt Smith wouldn't do it for any less.

Matt Smith has done loads since Dr Who , several films and theatre plays, also Tv he is much more well known than Claire when the Crown started and personally l don't see a problem.

So if it is n’t down to choice what us it down to ?

If there was no gender (actually sex) paygap then those men who stayed at home with small children would be equally “penalised” on their return to the workforce and the pay drop that happens as a profession changes from being a “Man’s Job” to a “Woman’s Job” wouldn’t exist.

I've yet to read anything that suggests that men who take paternity breaks face lesser return-to-workforce penalties than women, all other things being equal. Do you have some evidence for this?

Ah, Jordan Peterson: "The stupid man's smart person"

www.macleans.ca/opinion/is-jordan-peterson-the-stupid-mans-smart-person/

Ask him to explain why in my current role we are 2 women and one man. The man was given the team leader position and several thousand more in pay despite have zero experience in the role despite the fact he is at the same level as my other colleague and I actually DO have experience. I had to train him (and continue to do so) to the point where it affected my output. And yes I did make a point of telling HR about this but they just don't care.

I like Jordan Peterson. Even when I disagree with him. I think most of what he said in that video above is true, but the interviewer tried to put a spin on it which wasn't there.

Ask him to explain why in my current role we are 2 women and one man. The man was given the team leader position and several thousand more in pay despite have zero experience in the role despite the fact he is at the same level as my other colleague and I actually DO have experience. I had to train him (and continue to do so) to the point where it affected my output. And yes I did make a point of telling HR about this but they just don't care.

You'll find very few people in the 'questioning the pay gap orthodoxy' camp who truly believe that sexism and misogyny don't exist. Rather, it's about examining pay disparity at population level.

Freakanomics (podcast based on the book) recently covered a really interesting study into the pay gap. It was based on Uber drivers. The way they work meant that it removed all the usual factors that might explain a gap. All drivers choose how much they work, when they work, the allocation of jobs is based on an algorithm which was tested to be gender neutral.

They expected there to be no gap, or even maybe on favour of women. But no, they was a gap, in favour of male drivers at almost the average amount.

Many studies allow for all sorts of factors, like part time work, different industries etc. The website where businesses have to declare is interesting. Every single one has a gap in favour of men. Both in the highest paid and lowest paid jobs.

And we can't just explain it away as "choices" because it isn't a completely free choice. When I returned from maternity leave (full time) I was asked numerous times what days/hours I would be working as everyone assumed part time. Dh has never been asked if he is going part time to look after the kids.

'I do all the childcare and sick days in our marriage. Not because I have a vagina, but because my DH earns 3x what’s I do so it’s folly for us to lose a day of his wages rather than mine. He earns 3x my salary not because he has a penis but because he is highly qualified and very experienced in a very well paid field. Incidentally, it is one in which there are fewer women. Again, this disparity is not the fault of the institution he works at, it is because the education system is still failing girls in encouraging them to pursue certain fields.'

You also realise, Fenella, that as more women enter a particular field, the pay and prestige for that field goes down? I'll have to find the study but when women started to dominate obstetrics and gynaecology in the US, that specialty started to attract lower and lower rates of pay. It's now seen as the 'woman's specialty' and considered a waste of medical talent (despite being quite lucrative and respected in the past). In computer programming, women were originally the main people who worked at the sharp end, dealing with the machines, understanding how they worked, inputting programmes, because it was considered to be a clerical job, along the lines of being a secretary. As soon as it became clear that there was money to be made in computers women were very decisively pushed out of the field, to the extent that the UK actually lost its leading position in the area during the 60s and 70s because the knowledgeable women were effectively barred from participating in favour of much less experienced men. Companies were willing to effectively shoot themselves in the foot to prevent women from progressing and gaining any sort of power (which they would have had if they were the only knowledgeable ones).

You also realise, Fenella, that as more women enter a particular field, the pay and prestige for that field goes down?

I've read this too, but I think it's a bit besides the point: no one here is arguing that we live in a society where women's work is considered equal to men's.

You can't fix a culture than values men's professions by forcing companies to pay OBGYNs more than the market dictates, it could be fixed only by a culture that expects parity.

At this moment, I don't see the majority of feminists acknowledging what women's role in this shift might look like, because we have been taught that feminism is about a women's right to choose her life, her career, her reproductive destiny, etc. Men have a far more narrow version of life choices.

I hope you have a good bottle of wine at home, you’re going to need it tonight after telling him he’s wrong and why, whilst he pats your little wee wifey head.

Sorry that you are married to a dimwit, OP.

The gender pay gap clearly does exist and it's not just related to the fact that women are more likely to take maternity leave and work part time after having children as even those who work full time on average are lower paid.

Even the part time work is often not really something women "choose". I worked part time when my children were small because it didn't even cross DH's mind that he could do that. As a consequence, he has been rapidly promoted in his career whereas mine stalled which I resent. He argues that we could have both worked have full time but that would have been extremely unfair on the children (we both worked long hours) and it also would have been incredibly stressful for me as it would have been a constant battle to get him to do his fair share at home, particularly with regard to the "mental load".

I think that until society treats men and women equally with regard to childcare and also treats part-time workers equally with regard to promotion, nothing will ever change.

You also realise, Fenella, that as more women enter a particular field, the pay and prestige for that field goes down?

Yes, this has certainly happened in my profession. It used to be male dominated and higher paid. Now it is female dominated, pay has decreased and (surprise, surprise) even though there are fewer men proportionally, they tend to take the majority of senior roles.

Omfg... gender pay gap is unequal pay for EXACTLY the same role. Not for different hours. Cant believe people STILL cant get that through their heads

I am in a STEM field myself and I have encountered:

• Being told that they wouldn't interview someone for a promotion until they had been in the company a year. The person hired was male and had been there for a month.

• Being told that I need to shut up when being assertive making valid points (e.g. a one size fits all approach to customer service would not work for our customers and they would complain a lot. They did). Not one man ever got told to shut up, they all got praised for speaking up.

• Asking for training on a specific subject I had a passion for. A training slot came up and it went to a man instead who said he wasn't even interested in that career and wouldn't apply for a job if it came up. When this was brought up I apparently should "stop being difficult" and he was told "it might still be useful for you"

• Average promotion times in the company was 1 year. It took me 2. It was not my worth ethic as we worked on stats and I was outputting twice the average. Fortunately the hiring manager for the promotion was a fantastic manager so offered me a different job that skipped a level.

• My male counterpart got an award for great ideas. All of which were mine. Every time I came up with something he was praised within minutes for it. He is lovely though, he corrected our TL every time and tried to make sure I got credit but to no avail.

• A man (with client experience but no industry experience) was hired at DOUBLE my salary (I'm still not quite over that) and I spent the entire time I was there having to train him.

• Being told that although I'd made X amount of money for the company, I was performing at an unsatisfactory level because "on X date last year you wore something pink which we feel is inappropriate"... in a smart casual company where men wear shorts and flip flops. Not to mention I don't even own anything pink!!!

• The majority of redundancies made were women. Most of the men that were made redundant were hands on fathers.

I am well shot of that place though, they treated staff appallingly in so many other ways. They banned pay rises, offered the legal minimum in all benefits, insisted on unpaid overtime (you have to stay but because it's optional we won't pay you. -- Can I leave then -- No)

Fortunately I'm now in a company that treats me very well, doesn't seem at all sexist, offers inflation based pay rises to all and most importantly I used my redundancy to put down my share of a house deposit on a beautiful family home as my first home

I worked part time when my children were small because it didn't even cross DH's mind that he could do that.

Mine also made assumptions but i made sure it DID cross his mind.

Its a pain that we have to do that in the first place but if we want equality we have to challenge such attitudes. We can hardly place all the blame on employers if we are unwilling to address the issue with our husbands.

Well this is your opportunity to show him that women REALLY don't have less assertive personalities! Where the fuck has he come up with that ridiculous notion from?

Men are taught to think that way all through their lives and we're taught that when we're assertive we're not being assertive we're being bossy