I don't believe that women earn 75% less than men at a certain airline.

[Gromance02]

I just don't. Unless they are talking about completely different roles. Eg, pilots (generally men) compared to air stewards (generally women). I'm not defending the airline but I don't think they deserve this utterly misleading headline.

Obviously if a female pilot with exactly the same length of career with the same number of sabbatical/maternity/paternity leave as a man is on less than her male counterpart, that is wrong.

bingo you might get further in your arguments if you didn't sue the dated patriarchal vocabulary to describe jobs : these days it is head teacher and cabin crew. For many many good reasons.

But, anyway, if you watched the Easyjet documentary about trainee pilots there were a) young women and b) some had progressed from cabin crew and c) they had very few of the qualifications I believed were needed to be a pilot (degrees for example). They did have to shell out lots of money , though. It was not as I imagined. There were some insightful sections about how the experience was for a young woman who said people (including employees) assumed she was cabin crew.

use not sue ; sorry.

Good point kalapattar. I am concerned that most people's first reaction to this whole campaign is 'we demand equal pay' which is then countered with it being a legal requirement for decades and a manner of complacency setting in then. It is not okay. The question is why aren't there more women in higher paying roles to bring up the median? What happens that they fall by the wayside? I work in STEM and am currently pregnant with our second child. My husband will be staying at home after 4 months maternity leave to "allow" me some semblance of a 'career'. It is the institutional and societal bias that needs to change. He is not "allowing" me it, I am the higher earner, I am the more skilled. Unfortunately I am also female.

Wow!

Would love to work in your school, then.

This makes sense now as to why you think there is no gender pay gap in education (or that , if there is, it is somehow our fault), since you are one of the few who has bucked the trend. I'd like to say well done.

But , regardless of this, all airlines now absolutely insist on the gender neutral cabin crew as job title. This I know for a fact.

If I worked in your school would I be a schoolmistress?

Would love to work in your school

I wouldn’t, we’re all off on Easter holidays and she appears not to be.

Maybe not in the UK ?

@noblegiraffe

Not sure you know much about teaching

15 years teaching. Seen plenty of male headteachers and female headteachers who spend most of their time working, holidays working and evenings working - it's a massive commitment but well paid.

I know that there are many teachers who don't want that stress - and either work part time or don't commit themselves to the extra pressures of management because they want some family time.

Have you really seen plenty of female headteachers? We have quite a lot round me as we have lower schools where there are a lot (not paid much as schools are small) . Then in middle schools, far fewer. I know of one female upper school/ 11-18 headteacher of about 25 local schools. The head of the all girls school is a woman, but the heads of the two mixed private schools are men (and of the junior schools attached)

kalapattar how do you explain that female heads are paid less than male? Do female heads not have families to provide for?

I am concerned that most people's first reaction to this whole campaign is 'we demand equal pay' which is then countered with it being a legal requirement for decades and a manner of complacency setting in then

This. And then campaigns like "We stop paying women at this point in the year etc".

I have seen Jordan Peterson (the guy who was interviewed on Channel 4 news) who just ridicules the data - I would love it if he was just asked - yes, you're right, the data shows that generally men and women are paid the same for equal work in equal roles - but there are more men in more well paid roles and more women in lower paid roles - and how would you solve that?

That would stop him just talking about the statistics and then move the conversation on to the underlying issues.

how do you explain that female heads are paid less than male? Do female heads not have families to provide for

I didn't say they weren't paid less than males.

I did say that you can see why there are more male heads as a proportion compared to the percentage of men in teaching as a whole.

In general, given the level of experience, size of school, local authority - is there a pay gap? I know that heads pay can also depend on the size of school as well.

But of course there are going to be many reasons - especially if pay is negotiated.

No children at school

You just posted that today you dealt with two Y2 children and a banana

I think that teaching is a very 'fair' career with regard to promotion and pay based on merit / time served etc and I think the gap is due to choices.

This is obvious bollocks.

@noblegiraffe

You said that headteacher's pay varied between male and female.

Is there any data that shows the differences if you look at school size and school type?

I know that the pay scales for Heads varies depending on the size of school. A large primary school can offer higher pay scales than a small primary school.

I am sure you know Simpson's Paradox.

Is there any data showing a difference at the level of pay scales offered?

@noblegiraffe

They're the twins of a member of staff who was in school working.

In the interests of full disclosure, they're also not actually called Peter or Paul. One isn't even a boy!

Acceptable?

As for your assessment of my opinions, you're yet to say anything of substance or backed by fact.

Here you go, bingo, seeing as you’ve nothing better to do.

www.catalyst.org/system/files/The_Double_Bind_Dilemma_for_Women_in_Leadership_Damned_if_You_Do_Doomed_if_You_Dont.pdf

And teachers being denied pay rises due to budget constraints:

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/one-five-teachers-denied-cost-living-pay-rise

I didn’t realise your google had broken.

A nice unbiased piece from Catalyst there!

What bearing does the second article have to do with anything? We're all talking about the 'gender pay gap' here.

I suggest you read this

The second article was in response to your comment that teaching is a fair career in relation to pay rises based on merit etc.

Ah. I thought you would have tied in the topic of the thread and realised that I was talking about a fair remuneration and furthering of one's career regardless of gender; not a discussion about politics and education budgets or job satisfaction.

As a lot of poster have mentioned, it still happens that women are paid less than men doing exactly the same job with exactly the same qualifications. Yes, it's illegal, but in practice many companies forbid employees from discussing pay so the people themselves don't know about the disparity, and when the disparity comes to light companies usually have an endless list of excuses for it - he negotiated, she didn't go on this course, he has better contacts etc. What is actually happening is that the man is given far more opportunities to advance while the woman is ignored and sidelined.

My sister is in the process of leaving her job where her team (all women and very highly qualified) were being paid less than all the other teams (mostly men and much less qualified). When she asked about it she was given an endless list of bullshit reasons for why it had happened, but eventually they offered her whole team a 'promotion' to bring them in line with everyone else as they realised they could be in deep shit if they didn't. If my sister wasn't as ballsy as she is or didn't find out about the gap nothing would have happened. That sort of thing occurs in companies up and down the country - it's never done explicitly but many women are subtly aware of how they don't get quite the same support as their male peers and that slowly erodes their confidence and motivation over time.

It's worth remembering too that extensive research has shown that as a specific career attracts more women, the prestige and pay of that career tends to go down. I need to find a link for it, but there was a very interesting study into gynaecology in the US recently where it was shown that as more and more women became obstetricians and gynaecologists, it started to be seen more and more as a 'pink' profession and a waste of medical talent. Pay started to go down in a very visible and predictable way and it is now often derided in medical communities as a 'fluffy' specialty, despite being an incredibly demanding discipline - obstetricians in particular are surgeons who have to look after two or more lives at once, when one of their patients is often awake and in a lot of pain. Yet, because women do it (and are more successful at it, in general) it is devalued.

This article is a good summary of the devaluing phenomenon overall.

It's worth noting too that when more men enter a profession, the pay goes up. For example, computer programming used to be considered a female profession, akin to being a secretary and it was relatively poorly paid. When it became clear that money could be made from the job and more men became involved the pay increased substantially and women were pushed out of the profession (almost entirely in the UK).