How come we are not discussing the terrible gender gap in UK?

[Miggsie]

I thought that the doyens of Mumsnet should really look at the report about UK dropping in gender terms.

Despite girls getting good grades at school and going to university, we still have a shocking pay gap and women in their 50's fade away in terms of senior posts.

Why?

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8327895.stm

Also in the Independent.

bil was commenting on how much bin men get paid - i remember this being said to me a lot - the fact that bin men get paid a lot of money

but one was advertised on the council website for something like 15k (S.E)

thats not really a lot of money

The erroneous perception is that "anyone can be a bin man". It's not true - you really need to be strong. But that is just about the only qualification needed for the job.

I have loverly bin men ( the recycling bin men are fuckers though)

an average bin man earns 30k according to the BBC

Unions claim an average bin man's salary will be cut from £30,000 to £20,000

i think we are looking at this the wrong way round.

why reduce the amount bin men get paid?

why not increase the amount carers get paid?

why don't we sanction and value that more in society?

well the idea Custy is that they will be making things fairer, which means re-distributing the money

there isn't extra money

well then i agree at 30k they do get paid a lot of money

I agree, Custy, that "caring" (which covers a massive spectrum of activities) is poorly valued and poorly managed in an institutional setting (care home).

Wealthier old people employ live-in carers who get much better pay and conditions - on a parallel with live-in nannies, who are much better treated than childcare workers in nurseries.

in comparison, the average care-worker earns 14k

bet the birmingham council chief exec isn't giving any up

in my kingdom, i think 20k is a fair reflection on bin mans duties and they will be paid accordingly

Interesting that South Africa features so high. When I worked there, there was a real drive to recognise and appreciate women in the work place. As a result of that, a lot of women (in the company I worked at) held onto very senior positions. In addition to that, there was a lot of support for women running their own businesses.

I think the barriers to returning to work are higher here - commutes are generally very long, childcare is expensive and people tend to work ridiculously long hours compared to other countries I've worked in. And there is definitely a male old boys culture here that you don't really see in many other countries.

Well of course that's one of the reasons why many men have traditionally felt ambiguous about equality - because it implies a levelling down of their wages, not a levelling up of women's.

Leading to a situation where both parties have to work full time, in order to earn the same as one person's full time work earned thirty years ago.

And do you order people to be binmen in your kingdom, custy? What if the binmen take their skills elsewhere, to building sites for example, where they can earn more money? Will you force them to be binmen for £20K even if they can get a job on a building site for £28K?

foxinsocks - completely agree that long commutes and high childcare costs are highly incompatible with dual-career families. These two factors are a real issue in the UK.

I think your just thinking of yourself pushing your wheelie bin outside slowly, taking it to the truck, loading it on and taking it back to the curbside again

Binmen are usually very fit having to work at a very fast paste. I erge anyone who thinks being a binman is an easy job to go out there and do their round for a day, i think they will find it's alot more physically demanding than just pushing the bin to the truck! I think ignorance plays a big part in peoples views on this one.

Having lived in a care home and my mother working with elderly people all her life, i know that it is hard work, just not in the same way as working on the bins.

I know that both are hard jobs, i just hate to see people saying working on the bins is some sort of easy task and not to be taken seriously. Pay cuts, really? I know there are people out there working in offices who are overpaid doing a fraction of the work the men do on the bins in a day.

an unskilled labourer at 28k?

not likely

one needs certain skills and qualifications to work on a building site.

if one shovels shit around on a building site ( labourer) one would get paid maybe about the same.

besides, when did the unskilled uneducated proletariat have much of a choice to pack in one job and saunter to another?

Depends where you live. There are lots of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs in big cities across the world, and men go from job to job depending on market conditions.

'The decision about whose body is actually going to carry the baby, give birth and breastfeed isn't (yet) a joint one, however smile'

Absolutely true. But it is entirely possible to do all of the above without taking years and years out of the workplace, or sacrificing senior positions. There is an element of choice here. I did all of the above three times, which is more than average,and it hasn't rendered me incapable!

Hmm, they might have difficulty getting work on a construction site in the current climate.

All the builders I know are in the shit at the moment. Even with the Olympics coming up, and all the regeneration going on in Kent, where I live, building work is in v. short supply. My next door neighbour has only had one, three week job since last February.

yes dh has just finished working in the construction industry for a uk wide firm, so i am quite certain that it isn't as easy as you are saying anna.

I have to say that I agree with Anna here that sexism is not the main thing to blame. I worked in London for a long time, both in the public and private sector (city job); I regularly performance assessed people (or assisted in the process), and in my experience sexism is not more pervasive than, say, racism. I have seen, say, non-drinking men being discriminated in the City much more than women!

If you were good you are good - male or female did not matter. Actually, in some cases (e.g. a particularly public or senior appointment), being a woman was an advantage, as organisations in general like to be seen promoting women to high places.

The gap IMO is more on the practical aspects already mentioned in this thread - the choice of going P-T after mat leave or whatever. Even women who could easily pay for childcare 24 hrs a day still chose to work shorter hours. Even if their DH was happy to be a SAHD, how many wold really give up the chance of being a SAHM or the main carer? I only know of one woman in RL who has gone down that route and the discussions I see on mumsnet seem support this view.

So before blaming men - I would like someone to calculate the average women salary once you take into the account the childcare hours they do on top of their jobs. Probably impossible, but I am pretty sure that the pay gap would be much smaller.

If we want to become more Scandinavian - well as parents we have to bring up our boys and girls to think in that way. And comparing to the previous generation, I believe we are doing a better job, and I hope the trend continues...

I agree that right now, building work is in short supply. But it won't always be - hence the reason that jobs that require similar qualities (brawn) need to pay similar rates when the market is competitive.

but one could use the supply.demand argument for any industy.

And will the building site have a great final salary pension scheme when they hit 60?