Perspectives on the sex/gender pay gap

[JackNicholson]

Sorry to state the obvious. I don't know a great deal about this, and know you lot will educate me...

So it seems to me that Jordan Peterson (who sometimes does and sometimes doesn't have good points) has a good point on this - men and women are just attracted to different jobs. The sexes are different (as we on this board well know) and, on average, more women are attracted into (e.g.) the caring professions, and more men into (e.g.) the financial sector. So then a key element of the pay problem is that the caring professions (for example) are woefully underpaid. The sexism isn't (just) necessarily in opportunities for individuals per se, it's in the fact that sexism is so hugely ingrained that it's in all the pay structures to the core. Is this where most of the work should focus? Nursing strikes, etc.?

The financial sector is parasitic in essence, and caring for vulnerable people must be one of the most important jobs there is.
How have we got to a place where people who are attracted into the former are some of the most powerful in society and people attracted to the latter are shat on repeatedly from a great height. Again, this is so obvious, but it makes me so fucking furious at the moment.

First off, I loathe Jordan Peterson.

I agree that men and women are generally attracted to different jobs, though it is hard to say why that is, nature or nurture? Really, not much time has passed since many jobs were off limits to women. How many generations might it take to get rid of the ingrained expectations in society?

However, the main issue in my opinion is that anything that women do is given low status in society and in a capitalist society low status = low/no pay. Women do huge amounts of unpaid labour (caring for children, elderly/ill relatives etc) and low paid labour (again caring for children, old and ill people) that is actually very important work in a society.

I therefore think that the sex pay gap is not very useful as it looks women simply "choose" the wrong jobs and "choose" to take time out to have children, when actually women contribute just as much, if not more, to society as men do with these choices. It's simply not recognised in a capitalist society.

It's also interesting to ask Why do women tend to some jobs not others

And it's not that caring roles are undervalued . History shows (example computing ) that if men started to take such roles more often, wages would increase

What about the fact that the gap only appears after age 30, i.e. when people start families? (I think that's true?)

That makes me think that this is first and foremost an issue about how we support families and make it possible for women (in particular) to maintain a rewarding career post-kids - and for men to have more flexibility to take on more caring responsibilities.

I think I heard that men tend to be at the extremes - the highest earners are usually men, but they are also disproportionately represented in the lowest-paid, less skilled and most precarious jobs, so at the bottom of the social scale you're likely to find unemployed men supported by employed women. Anyone else heard or read this?

Last night, I read this very patronising post on LinkedIn from a female scientist. Apparently, there is not much need of a Women in Science day anymore because we have already achieved equality and because she ‘can’t see how men and women around her are different’. pissed me right off. Thankfully, a few men got angry enough to tell her off and point her politely in the direction of data. Her position of privilege was evident and she gathered a few responses from men who were fully in her favour too. It’s so sad to see how there are so many blind spots still.

Agree with MidgeDude. Also, when men do go in to female dominated fields/activities, it's given higher status. Think male chefs, head teachers, make up artists, hair dressers etc.

A) What about considering that women and men are conditioned into choosing jobs - how many less academically inclined girls are advised to do manual skilled jobs such as plumbing/carpentry/electrician (which earn a decent wage and have scope to start your own business and therefore earn more), compared to boys? Then sexism tells us women should be naturally nurturing, which is bollocks, so we are pushed towards caring jobs instead.
B) When women enter an industry in large numbers, and particularly when they start to outnumber men in those roles, the value of the job starts to go down. So even if you make what should have been a good choice, institutional sexism gets you both ways.
C) you mention the financial industry. That industry in particular rewards the ability to be present at your desk late into the evening, schmooze clients and bosses, and generally have no other life. Women are less likely to be accepted by the mainly male bosses, more likely to be loaded with grunt work like admin, and less likely to be invited on the schmoozing jollies. Then if they have kids it’s game over for any kind of after-work high jinks and for staying at your desk until 10pm. So again, the fact that the workplace is set against women is problematic. If you knew that this might be a factor, would you choose a banking career? Who would want to pick a career in which you were guaranteed to become a second-class citizen once you had kids? Not such an equal choice after all!

All excellent points....

(@ButWhatAbout, I'm no fan of Jordan Peterson either, generally, though I think he does serve a purpose by asking interesting questions sometimes)

Whilst women want kids more than men and that necessitates a break from work, I think you're always going to see some gap.
I've never had a desire for kids (touch wood) so it would be very difficult for a partner to convince me to take a career break to have them.
In terms of the gals between industries, you can't really deal with that without convincing girls to want something different from life to their mothers and grandmothers. Anecdotally, here does seem to be some success on that front.

How does that square with professions seeing a reduction in pay and status when they move to becoming female dominated?

@DedlyMedally even if it's true that women want kids more than men do (I'm not convinced, though we obv have a biological clock to hurry things along), these children have fathers. I don't think it follows that the mothers' career should be impacted more than the fathers'. Maternity leave gives you a job to come back to, so there's no reason why that should spell an extended career break for the woman.

A woman's career will always be impacted by pregnancy and childbirth

At a minimum a woman will take one to two months off each time. That's long enough to lose out on a promotion opportunity. I know. Might not be much on an individual level but across society it will show

Returning to paid work that quickly is great for capitalism, but I don't think it's so good Biologically , where having a year off makes breastfeeding much easier to manage , and if you had a difficult birth a few months physical recovery isn't unreasonable

I agree @midgedude, I took a full year off, as the law entitles. What I didn't do is quit my job to supervise the toddler years full-time. A man can just as well do that part. (Or paid childcare, of course).

Fair point that even a few months might mean missed opportunities.

The problem with the “women are attracted to different” jobs argument is I’ve seen it deployed as a means to argue that there’s no discrimination against women in the workplace. This is the conclusion of the author of the slate star codex blog, for instance.

I have two sides with the argument itself. First, what is the explanation for the different interests? The most common explanation I’ve seen is that men are attracted to ideas and systems and women are attracted to jobs with people. But my concern is this is not so much an explanation as a post hoc justification. The slate star codex says that men prefer being surgeons because it’s more systems like and women prefer being gps because they get to interact with patients. But no mention is given of the obvious variable, which is it’s harder to take time off to have kids if you are a surgeon. Also, men dominate in fashion, makeup artistry, cooking, consulting , and judging. Are these really systems based jobs? Women dominate in factory work, textiles, and farming - that has nothing to do with people!

If we look at jobs where we expect women to excel we see male domination. Women are super interested in makeup, fashion and hair styling (if we look at how much they spend) but the heads of every major makeup company is male. Midwifery, another area of women’s work, is dominated by men in the top echelons. If “interest” were the sole variable at play here we would expect to see women dominate and be in positions of power in their domains. But it’s just men. So are women only interested in jobs in certain areas when they are underpaid? Surely not.

My second criticism is it ignores and cannot explain the fact that women’s “interests” have magically changed in a short space of time. The slate star codex guy, for instance, argues that women just aren’t interested in computing science because it’s so systems based. But women were the early pioneers in inventing programming and computing! Also from the 40s to the 50s the vast majority of programmers were women. Software engineering was regarded as women’s work because it was repetitive, tedious and dull. By the start of the 1960s 80 percent of computer scientists were women and this dropped to 50 percent by the 70s. Today it’s 20 percent. So did women magically over time become less interested in a field they helped to invent? No. They were pushed out. In the late sixties men realised that there was actually a lot of money and prestige to be had in computing so they wanted that for themselves. This wasn’t done in secret . You can see posters and adverts from the 1970s encouraging workplaces to fire their annoying “gossiping” female staff because their female voices were annoying and you had to have a bigger pool because they had babies. And so the male nerds took over computing, and today they wring their hands and say that women just aren’t interested in tech and so what can we do? No discrimination here!

[quote bourbonne]@DedlyMedally even if it's true that women want kids more than men do (I'm not convinced, though we obv have a biological clock to hurry things along), these children have fathers. I don't think it follows that the mothers' career should be impacted more than the fathers'. Maternity leave gives you a job to come back to, so there's no reason why that should spell an extended career break for the woman.[/quote]
Motherhood necessitates time out of the workforce. All else being equal, if someone is about for the full period of maternity pay and their colleague is not, their colleague will have had that much more experience and opportunity.
I don't think that's unfair. I'd expect the same if the person decided to take a sabbatical for the same length of time. We're talking about choices after all.
Maybe the father will not be impacted, but that's how it evens out, in theory. One parent may be impacted but the other is able to continue with their career unimpeded. Those additional resources should ideally flow through to his partner and child.

Don’t forget the chilling effect of a permanent frost of middle aged men doing the recruiting and promoting in professions like finance. I have worked all my life in the City and there is no good reason for women not to be as well placed as men that isn’t structural. The hours, the boys down the pub, the macho bullshit, the perception that women are not as logical and the dreaded mummy track.
Research shows that women asking for a pay rise are treated the same as men
hbr.org/2018/06/research-women-ask-for-raises-as-often-as-men-but-are-less-likely-to-get-them

DeadlyMedally

But in what way is it fair that women in general are penalised for birthing and caring for the next generation of humans that we all need to be born in order to pay for and care for us all when we are old? It's not taking a sabbatical.

We need to not look at this at an individual level and say that women simply "make choices" that mean that they have less power and money in society when women as a group are the only ones who can birth all the babies.

The idea that the additional resources should flow through the partner means that women should always be reliant on a man to financially provide for her. Surely as feminists we want women to be liberated from relying on men, having to stay in destructive marriages unless they want to live on the poverty line?

@DedlyMedally what does that have to do with which partner in a couple is keenest on kids? If the man was keener on the idea than the woman, would/should that make a difference on whose career is impacted? I don't think so.

@SorryPleaseTryAgain
The idea that the additional resources should flow through the partner means that women should always be reliant on a man to financially provide for her. Surely as feminists we want women to be liberated from relying on men, having to stay in destructive marriages unless they want to live on the poverty line?

This is our current situation and the benefits system picks up those who fall through the cracks.
If we're talking solely about careers, I think men and women who choose not to have children will be loathe to accept being penalised to accommodate women who wish to become mothers.
I think the options are really that women stop having kids or convince all father to take equal amounts of paternity leave.

@bourbonne
If you were to manufacture a situation where men's choices were to have no kids or take a hit to their career to raise them, possibly relying solely on their partner for financial support, relatively few of them would feel the compulsion to have children strongly enough to take that risk.

Society doesn't really HAVE to compensate women, because women will have kids even of they know their earning potential will suffer because of it. We know women will do this because that's our current situation and most women do.

DedlyMedally

I agree that that is how the current system is set up. I, however disagree with the current system, as it inherently disadvantages and exploits women for their reproductive capabilities and caring roles in society.
That is part of why I am a radical feminist.

I don't think I believe that. I know plenty of men who were super keen to have children. I'm sure there is an evolutionary argument to be made for it too, if we want to get all evo-psych (which is almost certainly a bad idea). The idea that men don't want to father children would make our ancestors, and various people around the world today, howl with laughter.

The only fact we actually have in all this is that men don't have a biological clock ticking, so they may feel less urgency. That doesn't mean they would actually forego the chance altogether.

(that was to @DedlyMedally)

Fair point that even a few months might mean missed opportunities.

I have a friend who was put at risk of redundancy. The reason wasn't that she was worse (she was better), but that her (male) line manager had scored her 'zero' on several competencies because she'd only returned from maternity leave two months' prior and therefore there was 'no evidence' of her meeting those criteria in the last 12 months, when she had mostly been on ML. Then one of her colleagues quit, suddenly the company needed her and she was a 'high achiever' again. She left, with a pay cut, for a more secure civil service environment. So it's not just about missed opportunities, it's about active, pervasive discrimination on return to work.

I don't think it's a coincidence that many senior women either have no children, or if they have children have SAHD, nannies or other domestic help; IMO and IME it's not possible to thrive at both raising children and having a highly-paid career by yourself. The men that I see in very senior well-paid positions (with the possible exception of some companies with an aggressive focus on welfare) are always 'on' - they are available at 7am, at 9pm, over some weekends etc. If someone suggests drinks after work, they can take immediate advantage of a networking opportunity. They don't need to leave a meeting bang on 4pm (ditto).