Pay gap - AIBU to have hope?

[Mackymacmacface]

So probably a pipe dream but I've just had a brainwave: for all the companies with >250 employees and who have dropped salaries to 80%, as and when salaries return to 100%, let's bump all the women up to 100% first for the remainder of 2020 and close that pay gap!! YABU = pipe dream

sorry what?

What pay gap?

What if there's no pay gap?

The average pay for women in my department is higher than men because our department head and 2/3 of our senior leadership team are women, as are most of the section heads, there are quite a few men in the lowest grade and everyone in the middle is paid the same.

@Barbara can I come work with you?!

If you are being paid less than your colleagues for the same job then you need to report, that's illegal.

So tired of all this pay gap BS. If women are paid so much less than men, then surely the workforce would be dominated by women? Businesses don't care about gender, they care about profits. Why do women think they are hard done by when comparing themselves to their male counterparts when they get a year off mat leave and often flexible working hours upon return? Most men are not afforded that luxury.

It’s not as simple as that, OP. The pay gap isn’t so much about women being paid less for the same jobs as their male colleagues (although this does still happen and is illegal).

It’s about the fact that professions which are overwhelmingly made up of women (caring, childcare, cleaning etc) are lower paid than professions overwhelmingly made up by men, because they are devalued. In addition, women are more likely to have had career breaks (because child rearing tends to fall to women), are more likely to work part time, and therefore less likely to be promoted. That’s why in a field like law you see that law graduates and newly qualified lawyers are made up of more women than men, but once you get to partnership level, it is overwhelmingly male dominated.

This means it isn’t as simple as just paying women more than men. It’s about tackling the structural inequality that means ‘women’s work’ is devalued, and which means women are seen as the default option for taking time out of work for looking after children.

It’s also important to remember that the pay gap increases significantly when we look at women of colour, because as well as the structural inequality of sexism, they face the structural inequality of racism. We therefore need to make sure we are listening to women of colour and amplifying their voices to ensure the work being done to challenge this doesn’t disregard the specific challenges they experience.

Excellently put @zscaler.