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?

Good point. But --
One's period varies from person to person.
Some women menstruate lightly. Or irregularly. Or not at all. Or use moon cups.
I had pain free menstruation when I was most into sports training.

I am a whisker away from reporting this as misinformation.

May I ask if you are a woman?

Would you consider assertiveness training? A woman colleague of mine benefited from this. She wanted to move up at work and earn more, and be heard with respect. All of which happened.

Not because women are naturally unassertive but because we need to be extra assertive against workplace and other bias.

Yes, Helena Kennedy in Eve was Framed writes about having family law cases offered to her and how she had to fight to get the experience and expertise in criminal law that she wanted.

I am sure similar things happen across jobs. Bias leads to self-fulfilling prophecies.

It is beyond depressing that these comments are being made, on Mumsnet of all places, in 2026.

This completely ignores the double bind. When women are assertive they get backlash for not being feminine enough. Men don't get that. They get slapped on the back.

tl;dr thread = it is natural for women to earn less because our bodies and minds want it somehow and also are special and delicate.

I think it's targeted.

Sometimes threads have incels and manosphere types educating us about women and our place and nature.

Sometimes there are what look like political lobbyists.

Not the same as trolls. More like sharks.

Exactly.

See also, when women of certain demographics fail to be submissive, they are stereotyped as bold, angry, or unnatural

But workplace training tends to produce 'acceptably assertive' women ime.

Agree about the double bind.

I worked in construction for nearly 20 years.

The first misnomer is that 'people get paid for danger jobs'. The most dangerous jobs ie the ones that end up in most deaths each year is agriculture. I believe this stat although falling, is pretty static over time.

The next is slips trips and falls from height. So in this scenario the farmers and then the roofers and scaffolders would be the highest paid people in the UK.

This is why drones have been so successful in the industry, taking the risk away from anyone inspecting at height, and why it now costs so much to erect scaffolding rather than just shimmy up a ladder.

The next misnomer is that women can't do the job. The job itself, the technical side, can be done by anyone who is capable and willing and good at their job. The problem comes in the macho culture that men have in which they are all too scared of saying 'it is too heavy' when it is, and just carry on to avoid being calling a wimp. As an example, 30 years ago when I was promoted, I found it annoying that a 30kg sample bag of aggregate was repeatedly being overfilled to 40kg or more making it virtually impossible to lift. So I ordered smaller bags. This meant a 30kg sample had to be put into 2 bags and even if overfilled, got nowhere near to 40kg. Everyone moaned about it, especially the older men. However every single one of them sidled up to me one on one, and said 'thank you, those bags do my back in'. The problem also comes that men will just load more and more on so that the standard becomes the norm that costs are based on. So for example carrying x tiles up to a roof will take longer if you take up less each time compared to the people who take more up each time. So in turn you WILL get paid less.

The reason why women leave is the same reason I left, you have to do more than the men to 'prove' yourself, or endure relentless bullying and jibing 'banter' and on long hot summer days, it is pretty relentless. You have to endure what they might call 'microagressions' these days of a sexual nature day in day out, about your body, your clothes, your PPE, your timing, too early 'she came too soon', too late 'get a test done love', just on and on and on. It is quite draining and no matter how many retorts you give back it never ends.

And then there is the weather. Out in all of them. You need suncream and a puffer jacket and high vis jacket and high vis vest and spare trousers in case you get drenched, and gloves, and a hat and, well, a whole wardrobe for a significant part of the year in the back of your cab. And when a bloke needs to borrow something he will go in and riffle through to get it, and then he finds some tampons. I mean, with 30 other blokes around that isn't going to be a lot of fun. Anyone who is concerned about 'looking good' not wanting broken nails, or rough tied up hair or looking like a drowned rat half the day really is not going to be happy on construction sites.

I remember one winter working on a road project, the snow was coming in off the coast horizontally, I had foil and bubble wrap in my boots, I had god knows how many layers on, Hood up, scarf on, had to keep taking my gloves off to do some pressing of buttons that were freezing up and writing down figures, all day long. Went back to the cold cabin for coffee, lunch and an afternoon drink. All day. And when I got home I had to listen to my house mate wanging on about someone daring to open a window in their office.

How weak do you think healthy women are? Also, you don’t need lots of psychical strength to be an electrician, plumber, plasterer etc. Stop perpetuating a misogynistic myth that women are weak.

My direct experience is that there is still an awful lot of bias in manual jobs about what women should or shouldn't be doing. I used to work in a plant nursery where there were definite 'male' and 'female' jobs. And some of the men's jobs would have been too heavy for me to do, or too heavy for me to do well/quickly/long term. But many of them were not. And there were some jobs I did which were actually very heavy, and although for various reasons they'd come to be seen as 'suitable for women,' they were just as hard as jobs men were doing.

And there is a lot of that. Women do jobs that are belittled but they are actually tough, heavy work. I agree that care work is an example.

My former boss, who had many good qualities and was in his 50s so not ancient, was quite convinced that women got paid less because women really wanted a nice predictable job that they could do around children, and men really wanted a career. The result was that men tended to get exposure to the 'interesting' or 'career building' bits of work, and women did not.

Both of these things are examples of quiet bias that I found directly disadvantaging (and annoying!).

No one doubts there are difficult parts to care work. But H&S re lifting heavy patients has eliminated the vast majority of that.

It's not the sane as a job that is physically hard for 10 hours every day!!

in hospital the HCA won't even help a heavier patient sit up in bed even if all they need is a hand.

early discharge care teams won't physically help a patient.

Right or wrong, women make damn fine snipers when the stereotypes are remixed another way.

The gender pay gap as usually written about is predominantly because more women work part time than men.

The gender pay gap by hourly pay is between different jobs as anything else is illegal.

So your family aren’t safety conscious and/or are on drugs so that means everyone is?
If you’ve worked in the industry yourself, you’d know how offensive your comment is that the reason such a high percentage of work related deaths is of men is because they don’t care about health and safety or they’re high or drunk.

🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️

There most certainly IS alot of proactive work to get women into construction. Has been for decades.

I worked on many of them in my latter days before retiring.

The problem is that once women are in those jobs, they tend to run away screaming unless they have ovaries of steel. There are a myriad of things that go wrong for women in construction due to the ingrained sexism in the industry.

You are talking sense on a thread where "throw any stereotype that will stick" seems to be the thread's purpose.

Thanks for talking sense.

Have you tried repeatedly lifting a float full of wet plaster up to a wall for hours on end?

It would wreck most womens shoulder joints because the muscles holding them together are nowhere near as strong as mens.

The women run away screaming?
Or the men's work culture is backwards and hostile and forces them out?
The men need to be socialised to keep up with workplace change.

It's also surely that women going into trades can have an awful time with the men. Who'd sign up for a lifetime of misogyny?

Have you ever loaded a bag of tiling adhesive into the back of a truck?

Now load 25.

Then drive for an hour and do a full day's work on your knees.

I think people are misunderstanding the gender pay gap. It's not about women bricklayers being paid less than male bricklayers for example.

It's about equal value jobs where women are paid less.

For example - a dominantly male warehouse job for say a large supermarket is calculated at a Grade 4 and is paid £30k a year

Said supermarket hires cashiers (mainly female) and job is advertised as a Grade 4, but the salary is £28k a year

That's a gender pay gap.

What a load of nonsense. The biggest chatterers I know are men, whether they are tradesmen or work in an office, they don’t stop talking. I’d happily sit at work and not chat.