To talk about gender pay gap?

[chopc]

My DD (12) is having a debate after Easter and she has to argue the motion "the world is biased towards men"

Discussing things with her got me interested and I just listened to a podcast about gender pay gap in Uber drivers. as per this women uber drivers earn less than men because they do less unsocial hours etc

The talk implied women want more flexible working/ less pressure etc than men

So should women get paid the same if they CHOOSE a different lifestyle

This is outside having time off for having a baby. It is difficult because some women are not able to breastfeed and are not able to pump so there will be discrimination between women if this was allowed to happen

However if an employee has a year off each time they have a baby, is it right they get paid the same as the male counterpart? This I am not so sure

I know this is in AIBU for traffic but would love to start a discussion on this topic as I think I have a lot to learn

@Lessthanaballpark amongst everyone I know I know only three career driven women. Two have kids and they share the load with their husbands and husbands are very accommodating of their needs to be away from the house. They try to balance it out. The third is childness (not by choice) so both partners have good careers.

The rest of the women have either given up their career by choice because they were happy to leave the rat race or they were employed in fields which paid too poor a salary

@tilder @ContentsMayBeHot thanks for those links. I am going to take a look

@Eleganz I will have a search for the article

Thanks everyone for the input

and I should be able to not lose out in any pay increments and perks even though my male counterpart has not had the privilege of the same leave or time away from work? How is this fair on the men?

I hope you are giving your “DD12” a far more balanced response, because to be honest, it sounds like you are just being a GF.

Views like yours are why the gender pay gap persists. Hopefully 12 year olds will learn and this will be less of a problem for her generation.

@tilder some good points for me to reflect on

OP you're conflating two issues and making the leap that the gender pay gap is purely based on maternity leave.

I have one child, took 9 months Mat leave 7 years ago. Since then I have changed role 3 times.

I have the exact same level of experience as my colleague who started on the same team as me 1 month before me. It came to light that he was earning 25% more than me, with the same experience and brand new into the company whereas I had 12 years service. It has taken a year and a half of negotiating and discussing with my direct manager and HR for me to get a 20% increase so he's still on more than me.

This is a US based company where 80% of the senior, exec and board roles are filled by men. Despite meeting the criteria of having enough U.K. based staff they do not publish gender pay gap reporting.

My maternity leave has had no impact on my current employment.

What about all the women paid less than men who have never or will never have children?

How long would you expect or tolerate maternity leave having an impact of pay, 1 yr after return to work, 5yrs after return, 10 yrs after return???

[quote chopc]@Niconacotaco the first suggestion is feasible IMO.

Don't understand the second pojnt about the man in the factory and the woman in the shop as they are different jobs

The third - any ideas how an employer would deal with it? Especially in a field such as law where there is a clear career path[/quote]
Good employers have policies and procedures in place to reduce the gender pay gap and also to ensure equal pay.

Equal pay - Job evaluation enables employers to identify jobs of equal value e.g. shop worker to stockroom workers to finance roles to legal roles etc. You then pay people doing work of equal value the same. This is what the ASDA case is about. www.personneltoday.com/hr/supermarkets-equal-pay-asda-supreme-court-ruling/

Gender pay gap - gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk/actions-to-close-the-gap

Your DD could look at some published gender pay gap reports gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk/viewing/search-results?t=1&search=&orderBy=relevance Perhaps look at a range of employers e.g NHS, M & S, Civil service etc.

@HalfShrunkMoreToGo that's outrageous

To be honest if both have exactly the same credentials wouldn't they come up against discrimination law?

Do you mind if I ask what HR or your employer had to say about paying the man more?

@Margaritatime thank you will take a look

“ So if a woman wants to take a year of maternity leave at a time, she should be able to do this without penalty.”

Do you really think I should be financially penalised for having had children?
I’m lucky that my manager is aware that part-time workers may need a little help with remaining visible to our senior leadership team, and is pushing for me to have opportunities to stretch myself and therefore get a pay rise (pay is performance related where I work), because I know that having gone part time post children it would be easy to be sidelined.

[quote chopc]@TheJerkStore so I could basically be an absent employee for several years and I should be able to not lose out in any pay increments and perks even though my male counterpart has not had the privilege of the same leave or time away from work? How is this fair on the men?

And having had three kids I have to say that once pass the first 2-3 months , my maternity leave was a "holiday" from work

I suppose it could work if they are able to take similar time off the job in later years without "penalty"? [/quote]
Women are still disadvantaged in the workplace. I really don't think we need to be worrying about men.

Again agree. But these days it is more of a choice no as in the UK women can choose same career paths as men?

You are ignoring the massive impact of societal expectations and stereotypes

OP look up the Asda court case. The gist of it is that shop floor workers (mainly women) are paid less than warehouse workers (mainly men). Yes these are different jobs so why should they get paid the same. But OTOH why should they be paid different amounts? The warehouse workers are not highly skilled, and you could certainly argue that it's more difficult and stressful to work on the shop floor (dealing with customers etc). Of course a woman could apply for the warehouse job so it's not necessarily direct discrimination. But it's indicative of how jobs done by women are systematically undervalued compared to jobs typically done by men.

Another vote for the Invisible Women book - its eye opening.

@chopc They flat out refused to discuss or confirm the salary my colleague was getting, saying that it was confidential and not my business.

I had to go through a long winded and detailed process involving re writing my job description, benchmarking it against industry standard salaries, justifying my experience and performance and so on, and even after doing all that I know that I'm still not on an equal footing.

I would go elsewhere but honestly with the economy and job market as it is right now it would be foolish to give us the stability of having long length of service which gives a safety net in terms of redundancy.

I think you’ve proved the point there. You say your friends gave up work as they were in less well paid jobs. Men have higher paying jobs as proved by the pay gap. When a couple has a child it would make sense for the less well paid person to take that time off (whatever sex). Therefore this is most likely to be the woman because of the aforementioned pay gap. And on and on the cycle continues, unless the pay gap can be addressed. Also, maternity pay is usually better than parental pay or shared parental pay - another incentive for women to take the time off. Unless we address the pay gap, have equal parental leave, and make flexible working more acceptable, then unfortunately women are going to be unfairly penalised financially for having children. Or we have a scientific breakthrough that mean men can have children - then we can be assured things would change overnight!!!!

@chopc the point about retail vs factory isn’t the difference in hourly pay, it is the different approach to enhanced pay. One area of work counts weekends as unsocial hours and pays extra, and one counts them as standard and pays flat hourly rate. This perpetuates the imbalance in salary.
In terms of dealing with mat leave, Medicine has a defined career path and currently has more female than male students (I think). Lots of them have babies and go part time - I’m not sure how it is managed but I think they still have to complete a certain number of hours to progress so take longer to move up the career ladder.

Even if a woman never takes maternity leave, they are disadvantaged in the work place.

Also can you not imagine any other reasons that a lone woman might not wish to work late shifts as an Uber driver beyond family responsibilities? I'll give you a clue, they are more vulnerable.

The NHS changed its pay structure (for non-medical staff) about ten years ago because speech and language therapists took them to court for fair pay. They had to have degrees and be members of a professional society yet were paid less than plumbers, electricians etc directly employed by the NHS.
It’s very complicated but hundreds of elements have been scored including qualifications, emotional distress, use of different equipment etc and your total is meant to lead to equal pay. It’s not perfect by any means and my health board is a big fan of generic job descriptions I.e ICU nurses get paid the same as an out-patient nurse as their JD is exactly the same.
At least it removes unfairness between direct colleagues as a PP mentioned above. I know that I get paid the same as anyone else doing my role.

@yellowbluefish nope there is no biological need for a woman to be the default parent but it's a decision between the couple

Yes that was my point. Choices like these aren't made in a vacuum. Society puts pressure on men and women to behave in certain ways. In this case, mothers are pressured to choose work which fits around their children in a way which men aren't.

All my female friends talk about 'mum guilt' in the context of going back to work. You don't hear of 'dad guilt' in the same way because men aren't made to feel guilty about working after they have children.

Some assumptions, that seem not to be questioned, run through this thread:

Should a woman's value be measured in financial terms?

Is the world biased towards men (patriarchy) or money (plutarchy)?

The gender pay gap only disadvantages women and should be eliminated - are poverty wages OK as long as the genders are paid the same?

Does the world (which is the subject of the debate) end at the English Channel?

Do Matriarchal and Matrilineal societies exist?

@yellowbluefish just reading this thread - agree with you. No one talks about dad guilt.

@cyclewoman - agree your comment completely.

OP - if people are doing the same job to the same standard and quality then they should be paid the same, regardless of gender or sex. The pay gap exists generally because of societal conventions as well - women generally take a seat back in their career and may go back only after their children goes to school..this may not be entirely their choice- child care costs are expensive and there are societal expectations as well. Women should not be penalised for taking time to have children.

Even if a women does not leave work due to maternity/childcare, there is still a gender pay gap. Hiring processes, unconscious biases, tendencies to hire and promote ' similar' people ( and since senior management of organisations is mostly men) this will affect the pay progression as well. Unfortunately this is the reality at many workplaces.

Started watching the excellent Netflix video but was too sleepy to continue . Will watch the rest this morning

@Niconacotaco that's right, doctors would need to make up the hours and I don't know anyone (doctor) that has questioned this because they need the hose hours off training to be competent and for patient safety. Once fully trained, the salary can be negotiated in some fields eg GP.

However for the first time I am realising that a gender pay gap can exist in medicine as different fields have different earning potentials and I think certain fields such as surgery do attract less women. Previously I didn't understand the difference between equal pay and the gender pay gap.

Not sure about society expectations as I still think it's a choice if you adhere to it or not. And whom you chose to have kids with and what balance you have.

@CycleWoman will put the book on my list

I still can't get my head around how two people graduate at the same time and start work. Both get married and have three kids. The
Woman takes 3 sets of maternity leave. The man continues. We are now in year 8 if employment. You are saying that the woman should be paid the same as the man- they will be doing the same job. However salary and performance in that field is based on performance and results. This won't be equal. So how can the salary expect to be?

I don't know the answer to this

If a rule was brought in that maternity/ paternity leave can be shared - do you think it will even things out? Doesn't get round the breastfeeding because if you are like me, I couldn't pump much milk at all and would have hated it if I didn't have the option of feeding my child. Equally if I chose not to breastfeed, is it right I am penalised for this

@DressyGerbera noted snd agree with your last paragraph

@jcyclops don't know what you mean by poverty wages?

@yellowbluefish we are just wired differently. My DH was more career driven than me whereas I wanted to take a back seat. In fact I feel privileged to have been able to so spend so much time with the children.
Luckily and purely by luck, I am in a career which is not so affected by working part time or taking prolonged time off work . I didn't appreciate this when the career was chosen- I just thought that would be what I enjoy