To get my hair off with this paygap denier

[Jackfruitburger]

"I think men are more driven (in general) to get high paying jobs, whereas women tend to either do what they like doing (I.e making cakes and selling them, or run breeding and boarding kennels) or do something of service (teacher). I really do think it's innate."

Also her

"But I also don't see it as a problem that needs to be fixed - it's just the way we are and the way it is. Men and women are different."

I don't even have the words to argue back.

YABU OP, she's totally right. Literally the only women you ever see 'working' are making cakes or running boarding kennels. Those are the only jobs we women ever want to do. Haven't you ever wondered why you don't ever meet female doctors, lawyers, accountants or engineers? They're all too busy making cakes or looking after the cute fluffy puppies. I'm so surprised you've never noticed that before.

I'm a solicitor. Did GCSE's in 1988 (am 46 now). Always wanted to do this from age 16.

First few years are pretty much the same for m&f. However most of the people at the top are men. They're comfortable continuing to promote younger men who are like them, take clients to the rugby, cricket etc.

Some really struggle with the idea of anyone working part time or not "chucking all nighters" on deals. Most Working mothers have better things to do can't do this especially at the drop of a hat.

There is also still a big focus on how many hours' chargeable work we record rather than recognising profitability or efficiency. It's really backward in so many ways.

Hence -

more women than men becoming solicitors year on year:

since 1990 60% of new entrants into the profession are women,

50.1% of solicitors are women

but only 28% of partners (top rung of the ladder) are female.

Added to this there is a huge gender pay gap in the profession.

Gender pay gap isn't the same as breach of the equal pay act (equal pay for the same/equivalent job) but there is both in this profession in spades.

I don't agree this is because of women/girls are being pushed towards caring roles although my dad had a big influence on my career choice as he was the one to show me different career options rather than school. Clearly many girls want legal careers.

School were nice but gave no ideas of actual career choices for anyone just encouraged "clever ones" to stay on & do a levels and apply to uni.

I do believe some of the pay differential is because women don't demand higher pay rises like many men do, some is because firms pay what they think they can get away with and at my level women value having a job that vaguely allows them to work and have a family so they will not rock the boat re pay in the same way many men will.

I have seen first hand men being promoted through the ranks no issue but women doing more already have to fight much harder and clear more obstacles to get there absolutely no justification for this.

To a large degree you also have to play the political game to get on in this profession and some of us would rather stick pins in their eyes than do this can't do it due to dc's so just keep their heads down & accept we won't get the promotion and biggest pay cheques but it's worth it for a quieter life (clearly not a minimum wage job).

I had no idea when I chose this career (when my role model was Grace Van Owen in LA Law for those of you old enough to remember her!) that I would hit my head on the glass ceiling quite so many times in one career. Pay is just one aspect of this.

I was one of the first solicitors in my office to have maternity leave (ds is 5 not 20!) and I have literally paved the way for flexible working and support for those returning to work after me and managing work life balance/support in the office.

It's hard. And I wish I could find a job where I felt genuinely valued rather than constantly trying to fit my square peg into a round hole.

Also law firms would be much better places if they didn't just appoint partners (effectively the management) based on success in bringing in new business & recognised actual management skills this will never happen.

YABU, she's right.

There's far more to the 'pay gap' than is generally portrayed. I agree that women generally go for the more wishy washy stuff, or they step away from their career to have a family. You can't have your cake and eat it.

We were talking about this at work a while back when they published their gender pay gap figures. We are an engineering consultancy...and yes, shock horror, there are less women engineers. But there's absolutely nothing stopping other women from becoming engineers. And yes, the females in our team who stop to have kids don't progress their career as fast, but that's fair enough.

I think the push for women STEM ambassadors is insulting. If a girl isn't smart enough to engage her brain and realise that she is allowed to do a STEM career, then should she be doing it...I have no desire to be an ambassador. I'm not a role model...this is just my career. If some teenage girl wants to be an engineer, then great. If some teenage girl is too stupid to realise that you don't need a penis to be an engineer, then more fool her.

There are a multitude of forces at work here. Biological, socialization from an early age, choices to stay at home with children, assumption that women at a certain age will take a career break (I know I fell victim to that one when I already had kids and no plans for more.) as well as good old fashioned sexism. There is no simple solution without a change in society itself.

"yes, the females in our team who stop to have kids don't progress their career as fast, but that's fair enough. "

I hope the same is also true of the males in your team who 'stop to have kids'...

I don't honestly why you need so much encouragement as a teen or young adult to become one of these male dominated career if you really want to tbh. I like maths, I like physics so I chose to study it.
I became an engineer because I know it's for me. I have only met very few females who really have interest in my field.

YABU

There's also the fact that a lot of high paid jobs require intelligence, and whether we like it or not a very large majority of highly intelligent people are male.

It's not all bad, however, the same tendency that creates that effect - of men to deviate more from average intelligence means that men are also much more likely to be idiots than women. Can't argue with the science there.

I’ve never met one of these women who desperately wanted to be a physicist/mathematician/engineer/brick layer but was thwarted, because any woman who desperately wants to do those careers - and they do of course exist - can do them and does. Maybe they face more barriers but if they want it enough it’s open to them. I have to say I agree with the woman above who said we don’t really need a bunch of people who aren’t that into it to be “convinced” just to equalise the sex ratios in particular jobs.

I can much more get behind the idea of paying better in the jobs women do actually pursue - but you have to contend with market forces there (though there’s approaches that help - unionisation, public shaming of cheapskate employers etc).

*iii) The very real discrimination women face in advancing their careers, e.g. 40% of hiring managers wouldn't hire a woman of childbearing age. Men don't have that sort of barrier to pay increases.

www.theguardian.com/money/2014/aug/12/managers-avoid-hiring-younger-women-maternity-leave*

But they don't know before they hire a woman. It's when they know you got a young family they decide for you that you can't commit to the job. Hence career gap to say looking after children is pretty negative on the CV.

"whether we like it or not a very large majority of highly intelligent people are male." Ooh, this is very interesting! Where can I find out more about this significant statistical difference between men and women, that results in a very large majority of highly intelligent people being male?

AssassinatedBeauty Why, from the Institute of Bollocksian Reasearch of course

OP, my favourite response to such bollocks is often...
“It’s ok to disagree with me. I can’t force you to be right.” with a winning smile.

On the bell curves of intelligence that I've seen, men occupy both extremes. Yes, the very brightest people tend to be men - but so are the least bright. (Also - how is intelligence being measured? Who designed the tests? There's probably a ton of social and cultural expectations at work.)

I work in a male-dominated field - IT - in a particularly male-dominated techy area (which I obviously rant about too much, as my phone is suggesting "male-dominated" as I start typing "ma...") You need a skin as thick as rhino-hide at times. There is a lot of the insidious, unconscious bias, like men being assertive and managerial, women being bossy and abrasive. I've been criticised for behaviours where male colleagues doing exactly the same thing aren't. Recruitment involves techy tests, which are basically pass or fail exams, but then I'very seen people rejected because they wouldn't fit the team, which often means, "not like us," rather than welcoming diversity of thought and everything else. Many of these things are tiresome, but not major on their own - but there is always something, and the drip, drip, drip, death by 1000 cuts - it is tiring fighting your corner the whole tim. Men mostly don't have to do this - if they want to sit in the corner and plod away till retirement, that's okay. They can be mediocre at what they do. Women can't get away with that.

And this all contributes to the gender pay gap.

YANBU.

I don’t really know or care whether men and women are on average drawn to/better at certain jobs. What I care about is that sex should never affect what options are presented to someone, and that traditionally masculine and feminine jobs be fairly reimbursed. With the amount of training, expertise and responsibility it takes to be, for example, a nurse and the low pay received in return, any fool can see there is more going on here than women being paid less because they like “easy” jobs.

I’m late thirties so I couldn’t say it this is still the case, but I very clearly picked up the idea it was charming for girls to be “omg totally useless!!!” at maths when I was a child. I remember having this exact thought, not just once but for most of my childhood and teenage years. Some of the barriers women face to equal opportunity can be quite subtle.

@AssassinatedBeauty Google is your friend here.

On the bell curves of intelligence that I've seen, men occupy both extremes. Yes, the very brightest people tend to be men - but so are the least bright. (Also - how is intelligence being measured? Who designed the tests? There's probably a ton of social and cultural expectations at work.)

Well tests are fairly rigorously conducted so as to avoid social and cultural expectations having an effect on those, but yes for sure they can have an effect on the development of individual women, and it seems likely they do.

It's not something to be ashamed of, in any case. I actually think it's a development in our species' long history that makes sense - raising DCs is hard and the consequences of failure or mental insufficiency by women (more generally than just our social context) are that the tribe or species dies out. So women not being idiots seems like something nature would select for.

In a modern context, there is the possibility this will change, and there's absolutely no reason outliers at the upper end can't be world leaders in their fields. It's just that until it does change, an absolutely 100% equal utopia would still see men represented more at the highest level in technical fields.

Sorry, I didn't really mean technical fields, I meant technically demanding fields.

We can blame all sorts of things and I suspect there is a bit of nature and a bit of nurture but...not choosing a high paid pathway given reasonable Brain is a choice. It has been since suffrage was achieved. Harder for women, more naysayers perhaps but certainly not impossible.
I’m the wrong side of 55 and count amongst my female friends 3 GPs, an obstetrician, a urologist, 3 solicitors, 2 barristers, 2 CEOs of sizeable companies, an ex investment banker, a helicopter pilot, a farmer, a garden designer, several headteachers, a publisher and a property developer. Women certainly could enter medicine, law, banking and join the men’s world from at least the 60s. The issue for women is doing this and raising a family - the expectation that women remain the mainstay of the family.

And yes, the females in our team who stop to have kids don't progress their career as fast, but that's fair enough.
That's fair is it? Because women make babies on their own.

This is one of the arguments in support of 'closing the gap' that I agree with least.

How does it work in practice that a person is not penalised for taking 1/2/3 however many years off of work, particularly in a fast-moving field i.e. tech? What if you were a mobile app developer and you took 2 years off - how would an employer be expected to equalise the skills and value between the newly returning employee and their colleagues?

If it takes 5 years on average to become a senior developer, and this pays a higher salary, was the clock running during mat leave?

If you were to eliminate the parental-leave penalty, how would you remediate the effective penalty that this is transferred to their colleagues in continuos work i.e. their salaries are not higher for having not taken 2 years off work?

Is this not a bitter pill to swallow if maybe you're infertile, or you've decided you don't want kids and so you're devoting your life to your career?

They can be mediocre at what they do. Women can't get away with that.

I work in IT in a very specialised field and I don't see this at all, I do agree that its male dominated but it isn't a case that males get away with being mediocre.

Baring very specialised areas everyone has to keep upping their game and continuous learning new languages, processes etc .

Every company I have worked for have been gender neutral in their truthfulness in cutting out deadwood .

It’s not as if there’s no choice in the matter. You get women like that yahoo woman who go back to work after a couple of weeks. SAHDs exist and if it’s important to you to have a family and get ahead in a career you can always pick your partner with that in mind. The fact that women don’t want to do that and generally want (with help) to take the role of primary caregiver doesn’t seem like some terrible injustice. What’s wrong with wanting different things? I have no doubt I could make a lot more money if I was focused that way but I want to be with my kids instead and realistically will probably never do more than casual work even when they’re older. It would be nice if all careers had great work life balance with flexitime and plenty of leave available for family commitments and there was no issue for anyone but I don’t think that really needs to be sold as a woman only thing - men don’t want to spend their whole life at work either.

Why is it so controversial to say men and women are different? We're mammals. How can women not be more nurturing and attached to their children? The clue is in the name : ''mammal''. Have you ever watched a nature documentary? Of course males are more competitive and more aggressive on average, otherwise they stand little chance of passing on their genes. Males fight, dance, sing, croak, gather shiny things, build amazing structures just to have a chance to mate with any female in their species. My favorite is this little fish who has become a better artist than most humans in order to attract females.

Just look at this little guy!

And btw if you want to see what men and women really want just look at the nordic countries where gender equality has been pushed more than anywhere else in the world and anytime in history. Very low full time work percentage of the female population, very low participation in engineering and sciences, very low numbers of women executives... they call it the ''nordic gender paradox'' because the social engineers and other ''scientists'' expected outcomes to be equalized, not get ''worse''. Year after year, study after study, these countries are the happiest in the world.

nordicparadox.se/

As for male/female jobs, I've seen plenty of women laying bricks, digging ditches, collecting rubbish and sweeping streets even at 3 AM in the morning... ironically, this has never happened in the UK in all my years there, it was all in countries where the word ''feminism'' is never even mentioned, never mind having its concepts implemented into society. My own '' backward'' country (Romania) has a majority of female engineers, lawyers, notaries, doctors, judges (75% of judges are female compared to a paltry 30% in UK) and I have literally never heard the word feminism here. The one time I remember a hint of it on TV was when Costanza claims he celebrates Festivus and his boss replies ''feminist?''. You go to a school pick-up here and it's 90% grandparents, being a SAHM for years (and even working part-time to a great extent) is almost unheard of in an urban, middle class setup. The pay gap is 5% and lowest in Europe, a percentage the UK and even the nordics can only dream of. Benefits and public healthcare are beyond a joke and divorce laws are terrible for the lower or no income partner. This is how you get women to ''act like men'', you remove their safety nets instead of adding extra ones like Sweden. Also why east-euro countries have the lowest fertility rates in the world. So eventually you wipe out an entire ethnic group but hey, equal outcomes!

When did it become so politically incorrect to claim anything we are or do is nature instead of nurture? Not saying everything is anything close to 100% is nature but to just outright dismiss it seems incredibly ignorant at best.

I see someone mentioned the issue of men dominating both ends of the IQ spectrum. I highly suspect this to be true, men have very extreme outcomes in society compared to women. Executives vs inmates, Nobel prize winners vs Darwin awards winners etc etc

There is some data out there but since academia (at least humanities ans social scineces) is almost completely controlled by the radical left, research that can show that biology is not a patriarchal illusion is not exactly encouraged.

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/dr-paul-irwing-there-are-twice-as-many-men-as-women-with-an-iq-of-120-plus-426321.html

*All the research I've done points to a gender difference in general cognitive ability. There is a mean difference of about five IQ points. The further you go up the distribution the more and more skewed it becomes. There are twice as many men with an IQ of 120-plus as there are women, there are 30 times the number of men with an IQ of 170-plus as there are women.

I don't know why this is, all I can say is that we have a huge amount of data.

In my 2005 paper in the British Journal of Psychology we looked at 22 surveys sampling 20,000 university students. In 21 out of the 22 studies males always had an advantage.*

*The results of both studies were a shock to me. I find prejudice abhorrent. I've always taught sex differences from a left-wing point of view, that women are every bit as good as men. My findings don't fit my view of the world at all. Girls often do better than boys at school. There has to be some female compensating factor, most importantly the ability to process speech sounds, which means women read faster and more accurately and have an advantage in basic writing tasks. And women work harder than men and are more conscientious so they do things technic-ally correctly. Men are often quite original but deficient in what is technically demanded.

Historically women have been discriminated against. They've made tremendous progress and some people feel findings like this are a kick in the teeth. I have sympathy for that, but only people who know virtually nothing about IQ tests claim they have a cultural bias. All IQ tests are thoroughly tested and adjusted for bias, so if anything IQ tests are biased in favour of women not men.*

The issue for women is doing this and raising a family - the expectation that women remain the mainstay of the family.

This is one big issue - career progress is bound to be hampered by a choice many of us will make, and actually society still believes women have the housework gene - that's something that can change.

I think an absolutely equal society would still see different levels of men and women going into (and excelling at) different careers at different levels in terms of the general population, so I couldn't see that as a measure of equality. As long as everyone at every level has equal freedom to pursue and excel at their chosen career according to their merit, that's fair. The trouble is it's difficult to reliably measure whether that's happening.

I genuinely thought this was going to be about expensive high denier tights