A question about the gender pay gap

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The gender pay gap has been in the news recently and I have a question about it.

When it is quoted that women get paid 80% of what men get paid is that a direct comparison? Does it mean that Jane from accounts gets paid £80 to Jim from accounts £100?
Or is it that all the working women get paid 80% of all the working men, and therefore not taking into account that men tend to occupy the top jobs with women taking the lower paid or part time work.

No axe to grind, no comment to make, I just like to have accurate facts.

Asian men tend to be clustered in relatively high paying jobs because of immigration policy that requires immigrants to have a certain minimum qualification, salary to gain immigration status.

White men are unlikely to be being discriminated against once educational qualifications are taken into account.

My my. There's a revelation. Asian men on average get more than white men because they tend to be in skilled, higher paying jobs. So I assume what you're saying is that it's not for, if you'll pardon me quoting gender pay gap presentations, the exact same work?

It's quite a revolutionary idea you're proposing, to compare like for like rather than an across-the-board mean.

WM - I don't understand your post. Can you explain a bit more?

However, it is a well known long term trend that in the USA white male worker pay in middle and low income jobs such as the typical manufacturing blue collar worker has stagnated in nominal terms and fallen in real terms for the last 30 years. New economy IT workers and white collar jobs have tended to increase pay in real terms.

That accounts for the relative difference in pay of white men versus Asian men. Simply because Asian men are less represented in the blue collar traditional US jobs that were the mainstay breadwinner jobs in the USA in the 1950 - 1980 period.

I will absolutely get slated for this but I think way too much is made of the gender pay divide. Yes there is a huge problem if women are paid less in like for like roles a huge problem. However the current patriarchal system of 40+ hour working weeks with 10 hours of commuting for 2 parents in simply not conducive to raising children. The fact that women are sticking 2 fingers up to the world of work and looking for accommodations to be made is a good thing. It will be better when more men can partake in more flexible working too. Money is not the be all and end all of success, a happy work life balance is far better. Less hours, and so be it, less pay and more family time for both working parents is a far better change IMHO.

I'm not understanding either WMittens - you brought the Asian men up? Was your 20% for like-for-like or as I had assumed, just in general (which could be entirely explained what Free said)?

I think a lot of the like-for-like problem is that it's only such a very small view of the problem - just look at jobs like primary school teaching, nursing, hell, checkout staff - in each case, men advance faster, and are more likely to be found in management roles, while women spend years doing the rest of the roles (1 man at DS1's school. The headmaster. He's been in teaching less than 5 years, vs. many, many years of experience for some of the female staff).

It seems trivial, but for example, when I applied for a job at Asda (new store, just put in a general CV for a job) I was straight away shuffled to a checkout/customer service role. The men were shuffled towards grocery and shelf stacking. The shelf-stacking roles had greater scope for overtime, a higher starting wage, and because they were also performed outside of opening hours, a bigger chance to get salary multiples for unsocial hours.

My previous job had been at a PC World, where I was the only female member of sales/technical staff. The only other women working in the store were, yup, all on the tills - I significantly out-earned the other women for the same hours because I got commission.

Like for like would only give you a good picture if everyone had the same shot at the jobs.

anothernumber - I assume you still think that men and women in the same job performing at the same level of output should be paid the same amount per hour of work though.

If a woman is working genuinely 30 hours (e.g because she wants more time to look after her children) and a man 40 hours in the same job then yes she should get paid 25% less in total but the same amount per hour - surely?

I think a lot of the like-for-like problem is that it's only such a very small view of the problem - just look at jobs like primary school teaching, nursing, hell, checkout staff - in each case, men advance faster, and are more likely to be found in management roles, while women spend years doing the rest of the roles

I agree with this - even in female-dominated sectors, the few men are often still the managers. I don't think this is because there are no competent women.

Yes freeworker that is what I meant by

Yes there is a huge problem if women are paid less in like for like roles a huge problem

But that does not account for all of the gender pay divide. I personally believe that as feminists we need to challenge capitalist labour policies which to my mind were suited to traditional patriachrachial societies with men providing and women keeping house and child rearing. Without employment flexibility child rearing and family time is incredibly difficult in 2 parent working households. These flexible jobs are largely being persued by women and to be honest valuing your family and having time with them and valuing a career is better IMHO than saying we want to keep up with men in a world designed by men for men.

anothernumber - so I think what you are saying is work needs to be more flexible AND men need to share more of the work at home and childcare.

Yes I agree. I am a man and gave up full-time work for the last 13 years and shared home and childcare with my wife. However, attitudes to me changed overnight when I did so - but that's another thread.

There are two questions here that are being conflated.

a) ensuring equal pay for like-for-like work which I normally understand to be what the 'the pay gap' is about; and

b) ensuring the total lifetime earning power of women compared to men is not compromised by the traditional social structure of 'men at work' and women being forced to be in the home looking after children.

The gap is calculated on a full time equivalent basis so the part time element does not have such a marked effect. There still will be an impact though because part timers tend to get paid less when proportionately compared with full time.

The national pay gap is a very rough and ready calculation and can't compare like for like. An accurate pay gap for the UK could only be done by all jobs being analytically evaluated and assigned a job size, which could then be used as the basis for the calculation. Which isn't going to happen!

I'm not denying there is gender bias in pay, I'm just saying that we can't be sure of the scale.

The gap is calculated on a full time equivalent basis so the part time element does not have such a marked effect. There still will be an impact though because part timers tend to get paid less when proportionately compared with full time.

Thank you.

That is the other side of the coin freeworker men should consider embracing the idea that valuing family life and the work that goes along with that holds equal value to what is your earning potential. You are obviously well ahead in that game.

One big step to address it would be forcing employers to publish their grades/scales. There's too much secrecy about this. All this using existing salaries as a basis for working out what to pay you in a new job perpetuates the discrimination, because the woman may be getting less and won't know what her counterparts are on. Problem is of course that the salaries will be commercially sensitive. However this approach works well in the public sector.

MuchasSmoochas - "However this approach works well in the public sector."

Publishing payscales only gives the illusion of fairness.

The way that discrimination occurs in the public sector is either men are at the top of each pay grade and women at the bottom, or women are held back and move slower through the grades than men. As described in posts above.

The only way to eradicate pay discrimination is total pay transparency. All pay published.

It is already published for directors on boards and I therefore see no reason why it cant be done for lower level workers.

Commercial sensitivity is a fig leaf. Every employer recruiting a worker asks what the worker was paid at their previous employer. There is no secrecy between employers about pay - its only secrecy between workers that employers like to protect and maintain by arguing 'commercial sensitivity'.

However, I agree that basing a woman's pay on what she was paid at her former employer perpetuates pay discrimination.

But IT is mostly better paid than nursing, mostly because men do it.

(referring to why IT pros get paid more than nursing pros)

there could be a lot of different factors for why two very different fields have different pay rates.

There is a great deal of commercial sensitivity about pay in particular industries between employers.

The public sector pay gap is significantly lower than the private sector which must be due to the use of job evaluation as a basis of pay and grading.

Publishing payscales doesn't prevent dirty dealing (conscious or unconscious) by employers, but it does make it a little easier to figure out that you're underpaid - like the female managers in my first job, who were actually below the minimum for their band. Because the bands were public, they could put pressure on for this to be corrected.

Similarly, once I realised the men in the dept didn't do anything more complex or technical than I did, because I knew everyone's grades, I could work out from gossip & grumbling what they were paid - e.g. grumbling about not getting a rise this year despite good performance = top of band. Then I complained, realised after a few months that they were just going to carry on inventing reasons to underpay me, so went elsewhere for a fairly hefty payrise.

e.g. grumbling about not getting a rise this year despite good performance = top of band.

Or grumbling about higher rate tax. Quite a few of us have never had to worry about higher rate tax bands.