To think people in gender pay gap discussions who say women should go into trades to get a higher paid job ignore that a lot of trades are physically too demanding for a large number of women to do (though of course some do and can)?

[QueenSophia]

In a lot of gender pay gap discussions I've seen here & elsewhere, people note that male dominated jobs like building, plumbing etc are higher paid than female equivalents like the 5 Cs so women could improve the gender pay gap by going into those.

To me this is unfair as it ignores that a lot of women are not physically strong enough to do these jobs long term. Obviously some can & that's great but a lot will not be able to. Just saying women who would otherwise go into caring, cleaning etc should be plumbers, electricians etc is not reasonable for many.

AIBU?

I think your premise is utterly wrong

most trades can easily be done by women. You need to be fit, to be on your feet all day but technology means you are not lugging large weights around or hammering endless nails wheee raw strength matters

what is noticeable though is that you need to be quite brave to enter some of the trades which are so male dominated and that does make a difference to how you feel entering an environment

😂

Even controlling for the male propensity for risk taking (which is also a known predictor of higher salary and another reason men earn more), they still take on jobs where the base rate chance of death is far higher.

A good example is warehouse work. Women complain they earn less on the tills, but they are far more likely to go home alive and/or with all their limbs.

Are you lost for words? Inarticulate?

Oh I’m far too fat and broad to be fuckable. Lifting weights just means I can eat pizza and my bones don’t crumble. It’s a nice satisfaction you get from lifting heavy stuff. I like spinning too but that’s a different kind of high

I've done all the invoicing and Vat returns for years because we are a team. Sometimes we've put me as employee and sometimes I've employed him depends whose working the most. Just because I'm good with figures and he's good with his hands doesn't mean I don't get 'paid'. That's a very sexist assumption tbh

Once the wages are the same men will be more interested in till work and be able to claim sex discrimination if there aren’t more men given work on the tills

Let's think about this a different way. Would there still be a gender pay gap if all jobs were performance related pay based on the amount of work acheived?

*achieved

Brilliant post.

I worked with the training board for 15 years. But I've never worked on a site and I'm not a tradesperson.

Why do you ask?

Your argument does not take into account the fact that only a few short generations ago men and women were both equally required to and able to do back breaking work in agriculture, mining,

Until 1842 women worked alongside men below ground in the mining industry.
They worked the same 12-hour shifts as men, often at the coalface.
There job often involved pulling full carts of coal through passages too narrow for ponies.

Mine owners employed women as they were able to pay them half a man’s wage. Sounds familiar.

The law banned women in this brutal industry but the fact remains that it's nonsense that women are unable to do extremely physically demanding jobs because ''biology'.

The real differentiating factor is social conditioning.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the ethnic pay gap in warehouse work and the construction industry. It's about 10% - same as the gender pay gap.

What percentage of that is down to propensity to take risk/biology?

It’s that childcare demands still fall on the woman.
The man’s job is more sacred and must never be questioned.
Whereas, the woman’s is a moveable feast, apparently.

All of these issues be it a refusal to engage with safety protocols or having poor mental health is down to the very toxic masculinity that prevents women from working in the industry
What a sexist and disgusting thing to write. Blaming toxic masculinity for a high suicide level, what else?

It's one thing to be a feminist but that's just pure male hatred. Shameful.

The gender pay gap is NOT about women being paid less to do the same job, the equal pay act 1970 and the equality act 2010 are there for that.

It is just basic supply and demand. The electronic assembly job, 9-5 in a warm factory will have people queuing up for the job, so they pay will be low. This is the same for admin roles.

The Ground work job, digging ditches in the freezing cold/rain is going to attract a much smaller number of people, these people can demand higher wages.
That is just capitalism.
If a woman wants to be a ground worker, she will earn that same higher pay.

The macho culture sadly is a factor - banter, bullying, reluctance to come forward for help - all recognised by the industry as contributors.

A terribly sad fact and not at all pure male hatred.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/aug/13/why-do-so-many-construction-workers-kill-themselves

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1G26MgqV5q9f267tCCsRZDq/mental-wellbeing-in-the-construction-industry-it-s-ok-to-not-be-ok

I used to do warehouse work, and I can attest that the majority of workplace accidents I saw were down to young men ignoring health and safety. For example, the young men who decided to have a race with some cages. They ran as fast as they could with loaded cages (see image of a cage for those who haven't used one, taken from an online stockist) to build up momentum and then leapt on the back and hung on. Very nasty accident resulted. I've also seen young men jumping over safety barriers separating workers on foot and vehicles to get to the canteen one minute faster. (So did management, and they were dismissed immediately.)

I never had a single injury because my manual handling was good, and every day and load was similar, so I could do it the tried and tested way.

At some point, I became bored with warehouses and decided to switch to the care sector for personal fulfillment. Wonderful, rewarding job, but I've strained by back in care once already through pushing bariatric patients up ramps.

I suspect care homes sometimes cut costs by not providing these. Otherwise why are people not using them? I care for an elderly relative and would have terrible back problems without the hoist. If care homes are nor ensuring these are used, that's criminal!

Are lawyers being replaced? I doubt barristers for one are.

Yes, I am no expert on trades and I know by experience that caring for an elderly person can be physically very demanding as well as mentally. It does vary based on weight for one - a lot of elderly people are very light due to muscle wastage ☹️- but also mental state : my relative is usually calm but when they were upset in hospital once it took 4 nurses to restrain them..

But I definitely think people are being unrealistic who claim caring is generally as physically demanding as building, plumbing etc

Absolutely true, all they do is gossip. I've never overheard another bunch of people so into each others' affairs! 😆

(Counter stereotypically, I haven't heard much sexist or crude chat, even when they don't know I'm hiding above them on a scaffold tower)

Perhaps, as a self confessed "no expert on trades", you don't really know what you're talking about?

Ground workers don't earn as much as electricians though (nobody earns as much as electricians on site), and electrical work is preferably conducted in a dry environment.

My job is half craft, half trade. I often do it on building sites. In my county, it's a majority female profession. Back in the day it was as male dominated as the rest of the trades though (and back in the day it was 100% considered a trade).

What changed? It nearly died out in the 80s, before being "rediscovered". Which meant that all the old boys had retired, there were no apprenticeships, and we all had to figure it out from scratch, meaning we were on a level playing field.No gatekeepers.