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

@chopc
^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 am a manager. In my company, salary is set based on three factors, breadth of job, market value, time served.

So there is no performance/results element other than breadth of role. And that's because it's based on the equal pay concept of 'like work". If you pay differently you have to point to differences in the work. The job itself I would say takes about 3 years to learn but to some extent it's ever changing and every day is a learning day.

I have a fantastic worker who from day one could turn her hand to any aspect of the work. She came from a similar role externally. Her performance is amazing. But she's only two years in the job and has just gone on mat leave.

I have a 10+ years in the job male. Toward the end of his career. He's good, but in my opinion, not as conscientious or adaptable. He gets paid more mainly because of time served. My plan is to close the pay gap between them in the next few years on the basis that the lady on mat leave is more adaptable and covers a broader range of work that is more challenging.

By your reasoning, I should be paying her much less, but she's much more valuable to me.

We're also not talking about women not performing as well in the workplace. It's about making sure women are not disadvantaged for being, you know....a women. Ensuring women are not disadvantaged due to pregnancy and maternity leave is one way to do this

So would moving to a mostly performance-based assessment solve things?

As I said in a previous post m, I think employers are too quick to think ‘years on the job’ equal ‘good performance’. It’s a lazy way to assess employees.

Childbearing accounts for 80% of gender pay gap in Denmark .. being female the other 20%

I dont think most women choose less unsocible hours because of a 'lifestyle choice' though. They are forced to do so because men don't step up and do their fair share of childcare and house chores. I think the pandemic has highlighted that society thinks childcare still overwhelming should fall to women. There is not as much of a gender pay gap when you compare childless women to men

@UsedUpUsername

We're also not talking about women not performing as well in the workplace. It's about making sure women are not disadvantaged for being, you know....a women. Ensuring women are not disadvantaged due to pregnancy and maternity leave is one way to do this

So would moving to a mostly performance-based assessment solve things?

As I said in a previous post m, I think employers are too quick to think ‘years on the job’ equal ‘good performance’. It’s a lazy way to assess employees.

It would really depend on the job as sector though but I agree that 'time served' isn't always the most effective way to determine salary.

However, if you get incremental salary increases you still get these while on maternity leave.

This isn't a simple issue as there are multiple factors at play. Women as a group still face disadvantage in the workplace through a combination of structural factors and societal expectations and stereotypes. This is amplified for women with children.
Plus there are also companies who actively discriminate against women when they get pregnant and have children. Read some of the stories shared by 'pregnant then screwed' to get an insight.

The one thing I'm taking from this thread is for you to impress on your DD to do what she can to address the bias. Assuming she is hetro, to SHARE the household chores with her DP/DH, to SHARE both the costs of childcare and the practicalities (I dropped off / DH picks up from nursery - same with school), to SHARE parental responsibility for child sickness, appointments etc. I'm astounding sometimes on MN that women do all this themselves. Challenge the expectations.

Have read all posts with interest @TheJerkStore

Sorry posted too quick. Read posts with interest @UsedUpUsername and everyone else who contributed

@JamMakingWannaBe if my DD is a reflection of her generation I don't think she will have any issue. Without batting an eyelid at the age of 12 she thought it's ok for a woman to get a day off every month due to terrible period pains but not the man as he doesn't have it. And they should be paid the same as it's not her fault.

When asked she felt DH and I are equal partners and she is not treated differently as she is a female child .......

Yes I know I need to stop thinking of my own situation and think of the wider world because I have been fortunate just by chance because I didn't think of any of the gender issues etc when making decisions but it has worked out ok for me

Why would a man need a day off a month for a period he doesn't have? I'm not getting your reasoning there.

FYI invisible Women is only £1.99 on kindle at the moment!

By your suggested logic, those with chronic illnesses or disabilities should also get paid less?

Thank you @heymammy

Yes, my students (16-18 year old young women) sometimes express the opinion that none of this will affect them. At which point I sometimes start a discussion about who does what in their household.

If we had true equality, it wouldn't be a constant battle to get even the blokes who think of themselves as feminist to do their fair share of the less appealing tasks (DH did do more than his fair share of homeschooling...he was one of only 3 dads who participated at all, based on the class WhatsApp and the only one who did most of it. He's also the only dad who's ever been a class rep). And he still does way less than half the jobs and has experienced no career issues from 'active dadding' at all. I had to take a huge pay cut to get the same flexibility and even in my relatively enlightened workplace they expect full time hours for part time pay.

I would also be fascinated to know whether the two women on our senior leadership team at work make the same as the men.

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

The same happened to me before I even had maternity leave.

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

Which puts women in the position of having to raise a discrimination case in order to secure equal pay. Something that follows them wherever they go and impacts on future job prospects. In my industry everyone knows everyone.

Do you mind if I ask what HR or your employer had to say about paying the man more?
In my situation they made many excuses, each one I challenged. They even threatened disciplinary for the way I discovered the pay gap, apparently I had looked at confidential information. In fact, my boss had inadvertently left it on the photocopier. In the end they agreed they would do something about it then wriggled out of that when the last recession hit and they had to make pay cuts.

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?

You are suggesting performance is necessarily impacted by maternity leave. I was out performing my male colleagues before my mat leave and continued to do so after I returned. I was running the same number of projects on a part time basis as my colleagues were on a full time basis. During my leave, I had finished a job related qualification where I studied in the evenings and at weekends when OH was home to look after DD. So in fact, I returned to work more qualified to do my job than my collages who didn’t have the qualification. But you think I deserved to be paid less?

@MintyMabel sadly I know of other women who are in exactly the same position. This is all before having kids.

One thing to bear in mind with wages though is that the best way to get the most money is to change jobs regularly. It seems that businesses are much more happy to pay top dollar for new staff than reward current staff. I wonder what the statistics are like in terms of job hopping between men and women? It wouldn't surprise me if men change jobs more often than women and that this is down to the structural inequalities we know exist.

We all should not be accepting that this is just down to inequalities around maternity as it starts before that. We should be demanding that our employers seek to address what makes it much more likely that women's wage growth won't match men's even before children enter the equation.

It wouldn't surprise me if men change jobs more often than women and that this is down to the structural inequalities we know

On returning after mat leave, about six months in we had appraisals where I was ranked as excellent. I had a with my boss, asking why if ranked excellent, my salary was below average. He gave a load of waffle, but interestingly, as part of that chat he let a little gem slip. "We do know that women returning from leave are more likely to stay with us as they value security."

One of his points was that I'd been with them for 11 years so naturally my salary wouldn't necessarily be the same as someone who has just joined. I suggested maybe I should go and get a job offer that would push them to match it. He suggested with a new baby, maybe I wouldn't get the flexible working I was after from another company and I should take that in to account. Also, they might say no, and well, did I want to move and risk being "first in" to another company if they made redundancies. He did everything he could to not raise my pay, and to stop me leaving.

I left soon after for much higher pay and better flexibility.

In a unionised environment in the public sector dominated by salary scales and increments, let's take a man and a woman: both start work on 1.9.2010 and work for three years and increment twice. In the next four years the woman has two periods of maternity leave and continues to increment. At the end of year 6 having taken five increments each they are both receiving equal pay as is correct.

Three months after the woman returns to work an internal promotion is advertised. Both male and female interview. It is likely the male is able to evidence answers by drawing on complex and recent experience the woman may not have had. Add in a little unconscious bias and the man gets the promotion. This adds to the number of men at the next level up and contributes to widening the gender pay gap.

Hopefully the woman will be successful next time but by the time next time comes she may have put her career on a back burner, accepting easier projects, etc, due to school runs and childcare responsibilities.

It is changing but changing slowly. As a 60 year old who retrained at 43 my career was on hold for years. Women can have it all but they can't necessarily have it all at the same time if they wish to be at least 50% responsible for caring. Oh and I have also been lucky in that dh and I were the first born to mothers in their early 20s and have not yet had any significant elderly care in the mix.

It’s sex pay gap, not gender pay gap.

The words are used interchangeably now, but they don’t mean the same thing. When you’re talking about the differences between males and females it’s sex, not gender.

It is still formally referred to as gender pay gap @VestaTilley - Google it. It is the difference between men and women based upon the gender with which they identify but limited to male and female. Reporting the data otherwise would be disproportionate.

@RosesAndHellebores

It is still formally referred to as gender pay gap *@VestaTilley* - Google it. It is the difference between men and women based upon the gender with which they identify but limited to male and female. Reporting the data otherwise would be disproportionate.

But it’s not a legal requirement to collect data based on gender identity.

I don’t identify as any gender on our works employment systems.

How is Pip/Phillip Bunce’s mega salary dealt with to ensure it doesn’t skew data?

@VestaTilley

It’s sex pay gap, not gender pay gap.

The words are used interchangeably now, but they don’t mean the same thing. When you’re talking about the differences between males and females it’s sex, not gender.

It's gender pay gap.

Sex tends to be used when describing biological differences and issues and gender is used when we're discussing social constructs or socially influenced phenomena.

Women being behind men in terms of progression is at least part biological, as per the many examples on this thread.

I don’t subscribe to any gender ideology. So how should my employer consider me in the data?

And again, I raise the Pip/Phillip Bunce scenario. I’m guessing he gets his male derived salary even on his lady days.

Women being behind men in terms of progression is at least part biological, as per the many examples on this thread.

But biology isn't having an impact on someone's ability to do their job. Biology doesn't explain why men are paid more than women. It's the social constructs, societal expectations unconscious (and sometimes not so unconscious!) biases that are at play here.

I don’t subscribe to any gender ideology. So how should my employer consider me in the data?

How do you want your employer to consider you? 🤷🏼‍♀️

The thought that I would have to renegotiate flexible working is certainly putting me off changing job. I'm a teacher and schools can be pretty backward. For example some have a blanket rule that you cannot take on a promotion or be head of department if you're not full time (no matter what the position is objectively regarding whether you can do whatever it is). I would gladly be full time if it didn't mean 60 hours a week in most places.

It is likely the male is able to evidence answers by drawing on complex and recent experience the woman may not have had

Utter nonsense. Equally the woman could have spent any spare time doing CPD, making sure her skills are current, reading up about the latest innovations in her role and is better equipped to lead the team in the future.