Gender Pay Gap due to women's choices

[notjustapotforsoup]

it seems. Hmmm.....

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/8212662/Gender-pay-gap-down-to-womens-lifestyle-choices.html

I'll give an advisory note on the comments section, as usual.

[scallopsrgreat]

I don't think anyone can deny that Sam. But that's not what the Times article was really saying.

Here is the Times article:

The battle for sexual equality is over and the pay gap is down to women?s lifestyle choices, a leading academic has claimed.

Catherine Hakim, a senior research fellow in sociology at the London School of Economics, says women now have the freedom to choose between raising children and entering senior positions, and that tougher equality laws will not open any more doors for female workers.

She warns that many women who try to combine having children with top executive roles have only ?nominal families? with whom they spend little time.

Hakim will argue, in a report to be published early next year, that new government policies trying to promote equality are ?pointless? and based on ?feminist myths? that seek to continue a war that has ended.

Hakim came to prominence earlier this year with a study called Erotic Capital, which claimed that in today?s increasingly image-conscious society the most successful people are those who are most attractive in both appearance and manner.

She believes women are now making an active choice between having a family and entering senior positions.

?In Britain half of all women in senior positions are child-free; and a lot more of them have nominal families with a single child and they subcontract out the work of caring for them to other women,? she said last week.

In the report, she says: ?Equal opportunities policies have succeeded in giving equal access for women to the labour market.

?People are confusing equal opportunities with equal outcomes, and there is little popular support for the kind of social engineering being demanded by feminists and legislators.?

Hakim?s report comes as a government review led by Lord Davies, a Labour peer and former chairman of Standard Chartered bank, considers recommending that company boards should have to comprise at least 40% women. She also attacks moves to increase maternity rights, which can make female staff less attractive to employers.

At present only five chief executives of FTSE 100 companies are women, and only 12.5% of those firms? boards of directors are female. More than half of Britain?s 250 biggest public companies have no female directors.

Hakim?s claims have angered some experts and businesswomen, who argue that the government needs to do more to break down maleoriented ways of running companies that prevent women from progressing.

However, Hakim argues in her report ? called Feminist Myths and Magic Medicine, to be published by the Centre for Policy Studies ? that such moves for tougher equality policies are based on a ?flawed assumption? that the majority of women want equal access to top jobs.

In her report, Hakim attacks the claim that equality legislation has failed. She argues that the pay gap narrowed quickly in the 1970s after the Equal Pay Act was implemented, and since then there has been a ?stalled revolution?, because women have settled into jobs they actually want.

Other ?myths? she attacks include the idea that men and women have the same career ambitions and values, and that women prefer to be financially independent.

She also disagrees with the notion that family-friendly policies are profitable for businesses to pursue and essential to break any glass ceiling.

Nor does Hakim agree that women have a different, more co-operative style of management than men. She argues that there are no short cuts and that the price for success at the top for either sex is long hours and almost total commitment to a career.

Jessica DeLuca Moore, 35, a former consultant with IBM who founded Cult Beauty, an online beauty store, said she agreed that ? everything can?t be fixed with legislation? but disagreed with many of Hakim?s other claims.

Jetlagged from a business trip to New York last week and speaking as her stylist did her hair, DeLuca Moore said: ?Flexibility is what women need but you?re never going to become the CEO in a job-share.?

Poppy Pickles, 29, used to work at Sotheby?s, the auction house, before giving up her career to concentrate on bringing up her son and daughter. She said: ?It?s not surprising that women in government think careers are important, but most women I know place a lot more emphasis on other things.?

[sethstarofbethlehemsmum]

I can't imagine Xenia will be happy with the idea that she just has a 'nominal' family.

[scallopsrgreat]

First of all it says "the battle for sexual equality is over" implying that the pay gap has been annulled apart from those women who choose to work in lesser paid jobs . How much choice do they really have and is sexual equality all about the pay gap. The latter seems to be a very patriarchal view of equality.

?In Britain half of all women in senior positions are child-free" - no mention of how many men in senior positions are child-free. This also implies that the choice for a woman to get be a top executive is to be child-free. This is certainly not the case for men. So where is the equality in that?

?Flexibility is what women need but you?re never going to become the CEO in a job-share.? - why do men not require flexibility when they have children. Surely if there were equality then parents would require flexibility.

Sorry but this really wound me up when I read it. That's the last time DH buys the Times!!

[scallopsrgreat]

Indeed seth!

[sethstarofbethlehemsmum]

the Times (and Sunday Times) seems to have become very actively sexist recently, as if they are actually trying to be. It's worse than the more overtly right wing Telegraph.

[slug]

Flawed logic, and blaming the victim. The pay gap becomes obvious in womne's early thirties. At that point, many women have not yet had their families. In fact, a fifth of working women don't have children ever. Yet the pay gap still affects them.

[scallopsrgreat]

You are right seth. The Telegraph certainly has its moments, but their reporting on this compared with the Times is definitely less inflammatory.

[coldtits]

Women have babies. everyone knows this. It's ingrained in the nation's psyche.

When employers think about employing women, they have to think about someone who migh perfectly legally vanish for a year, 7 months after starting the job. Then could come back for one day, and then disappear for another 9 months, and then, technically, could continue to do this forever.

Now we all know that most women do not do this. But (the balding middle aged male managers will cry) they can....

[anastaisia]

"I really feel the only way we will see equality in the workplace is to ensure men have equal rights with women when it comes to flexible working hours and maternity/paternity leave"

I think the only way to sort that out is to improve EVERYONE rights to flexible working and not just parents. For anything to ever really change the entire culture of workplaces needs to change. It shouldn't matter what an employee wants to do with their time if they can still get the work that they are paid for done. It could be parenting, laying in and working better of an evening or wanting time off for a hobby :)

[sethstarofbethlehemsmum]

StrawberrySam - of course they delegate childcare, but then men have done so (to wives) for centuries and no-one refers to that as having a nominal family, do they?

some have small families, some don't IME.... Xenia has 5 IIRC; Nicola Horlick has quite a few too doesn't she?

anyway a small family is not less of a family than a large one. We wouldn't go onto the one-child family threads on here and tell them they only had nominal families, would we

[msrisotto]

Strawberry - I read Scallops comment about how many male CEOs had children to illustrate how having children doesn't hamper the success of male business people but it does female. I don't have stats to back this up but i reckon it's be a reliable bet that more males in senior positions had children compared to the women. That's how this 'women's whoice' thing doesn't equal equality - because men get to have children AND successful careers.

[scallopsrgreat]

Strawberry - as msrisotto said. That's what I meant.

[HeroWantage]

Do non-senior women who work long hours also have "nominal families"? Or are they somehow exempt from this horrible slur?

Agree that the key way of improving a woman's lot at work is to increase paternity rights and flexible working for all - and to somehow undermine the long hours culture that the UK has developed.

And a 10% differential in pay is definitely still worth fighting for, in most people's experience...

[sethstarofbethlehemsmum]

the term 'nominal' very definitely implies it - it means 'in name only' - and you said the point is valid!
I think a researcher who uses this term is a deliberate controversialist tbh.

[ISNT]

Oh dear.

So she is saying that we have equality, as women can now choose whether to have a good career or have children. Riiiight. Not much of a choice, is it.

And can I just give a double, jaw dropped "WTF??????????" to this gem:

"She also attacked the idea that men and women have the same career ambitions and values and that women prefer to be financially independent."

What a complete arsehole she is.

[HerBeatitude]

Oh she's a twat, a bog standard sexism denier.

The patriarchy will always find an idiot woman who will bleat their sexist bollocks for them.

[Sequins]

I only got as far as boggling at the maths of:

?In Britain half of all women in senior positions are child-free; and a lot more of them have nominal families with a single child and they subcontract out the work of caring for them to other women,?


If 50% are child-free then it means 50% are not. Of the non-child-free, some will have 1 child, some more. How is that "a lot more of them"?

In my office the senior men subcontract the work of caring for their children to their SAHM wives, usually ex-wives!

[radioblahblah]

surely her point that women make a choice between career and family is exactly the point! because the option of having both in any meaningful way still does not exist