Yes, women are paid less - but it's their choice

What is the point of having a Women and Work Commission if their reports are going to be ignored by a total fantasist? Can't he even look around himself? Does he really think that the women around him choose to be paid less for working just as hard, at (or frequently above) the same level of skill? Women want to make up the overwhelming majority of the people in poverty? Yes, some women may choose to work part-time because society has backed them into a corner, but that seems a poor excuse for paying them vastly less per hour than men who work part-time. How could anyone keep a straight face while maintaining that women get a fair shake in engineering? There are many more women in medicine these days -- but in the best-paid parts of medicine? Are women teachers so much worse at teaching than men, to explain why the lesser number of men colonise the better-paid posts? There are a huge number of experts who can discuss this properly. Please go out and find one.

Posted by T at 7:11pm on July 29, 2009

Is it possible that men tend to be better at the things needed to be effective in many senior roles in industry and commerce? Clearly we are different, so that must be possible. That is *not* to suggest men are better or more important than women, just perhaps different in ways such that men are more likely to succeed in particular situations. Please note I said "perhaps"; I don't know. Baroness Prosser said (BBC) industry was missing out by not fully exploiting the talents of women. Implicitly she says managers are incompetent. I wonder if it they or she who is incompetent? It is difficult to imagine seriously a large number of incompetent managers lasting long in a fairly competitive economy. It is different for politicians. http://www.pressbox.co.uk/cgi-bin/links/page.cgi?g=detailed%2F56026.html;d=1 What does "equality" mean when talking about women and men, who tend to be different? Nothing...it is just a catchy spin word. It often seems to me that many people think there is a thing called "women" and a thing called "men", when we are all individuals.

Posted by TomNightingale at 11:08am on July 30, 2009

Like the author, I also find the "women make x cents for every dollar men make" argument distoring and frustrating. It's frustrating because it posits a world that will never exist, one where female cashiers, dog-walkers, and cleaning staff are paid the same as male accountants, engineers, and managers. That's what happens when you lump everyone into two gigantic groups, average out one characteristic of the groups, and conclude inequality based on that average. What's more frustrating, though, is that this argument glosses over REAL discrimination that is still taking place in the workplace. Somewhere in the western world there might be a female computer programmer with advanced development skills and 10 years of experience who, as a result of discrimination, is being paid less than a male computer programmer with advanced development skills and 10 years of experience. This apples-to-apples comparison of workers of different genders with similar experience and skills IN THE SAME INDUSTRY is what needs to be highlighted, although I grant that it's not as facile and catchphrase-ready as the "x cents per dollar" argument.

Posted by Clarence Ewing at 4:14pm on July 30, 2009

As a senior female person I agree with Neil Lyndon's comments absolutely. The arrant nonsense about the male female divide in the work place is long past its sell by date. Women are not in any way inferior to men, but we are different. Most women, while they would would like some sort of career, also want to be mothers ( and dare I say wives, without being scalped ?) The smart ones realise that they are not superwomen and can only do both part time. You can't eat your cake and still have it. Those women who are career centred and decide that this is the life for them make it all the way to the top when they are focused on doing so. Stop the 'men have it all' complaints. It is no longer so and we shall soon see a generation of completely emasculated men if we don't.

Posted by Yolande Agble at 10:43pm on July 30, 2009

The numbers debate is one thing; the argument that the author chooses to explore on the basis of that is disturbing simply because it ignores the reality/realities of the working world. A young woman I know has undergone years of hazing as one of a handful of women in her engineering class at university -- hazing that only those women were subjected to. How do you think she feels about her profession of choice? How eager do you think she will be to recommend to younger women in school that they pursue this is a career? In the professional world, where promising and talented people are 'spotted' and 'groomed' for promotions, collegiality and the ability to work with others in a team is often valued. Who makes the decision about what constitutes collegiality and teamwork? Well, the people at the helm -- mostly men. And those aren't qualifications that can be neatly boiled down to a set of measurable skills, alas. The definition could involve the ability to play a great round of golf, and sit around discussing cricket while tossing back some beer or whiskey. (Think that's reasonable? Well, flip it around, and imagine how you'd feel if you, as a man, had to pass such collegiality challenges as participating in a book club discussion about Pride and Prejudice?) How many men are sent to an overseas posting on condition that they promise not to have a child? (I was, as recently as 1998, even though no woman in my department had ever taken more than six weeks' maternity leave, and the post was in a 20-person division with plenty of people able and willing to chip in when one of our male colleagues took two months' PATERNITY leave.) A woman who, on a single occasion, leaves early because of a sick child, isn't being professionally responsible or can't be trusted to put her career first (or if she fails to, she is an unnatural mother); a man who does so the same # of times is an ideal father. All of these are great pretexts for men in senior positions who aren't as comfortable working with women as colleagues saying 'no' to moving them into key roles. That is still seen as a risk by many men. I still routinely visit offices where all the professionals are men (the world of finance) and the only women are support staff. Don't tell me it's due to choice or a lack of interest; I also know women who've started their own hedge funds and financial businesses out of sheer frustration with the way things operate today. Oh, and I also know a woman who worked on an auto assembly line, and quit after the company refused to pay her what the two guys doing the exact job she was earned; she had trained both of them, and now earned 30% less. Choice, my rear end. Women too often have negative choices; to leave hostile work environments, to tolerate inequitable treatment (including salaries), to forego marriage and children because nothing less can prove their commitment, or to accept being overlooked for promotions, etc. They don't CHOOSE to earn less.

Posted by saraband at 2:08am on July 31, 2009

The crux of all this is that true equality demands truly equal ability and adaptability. As an example of what I mean, the Civil Service tends to discriminate in favour of women when it comes to posting moves. A man is expected to uproot hos whole family to a new area: a woman is not, on the grounds that her husband's work means that he can't do so. There are many instances of women playing the weak, helpless female to avoid some unpleasant task. So let real equality mean just that. HH

Posted by Herbert Hatley at 11:56am on July 31, 2009

Women are kept in the lower ranks because of the Old Boy network of schools and clubs from which women are excluded. When a position became available in my office I overheard an old friend of my boss planning with him to give the job to the friend's son. I had to write a letter threatening legal action to be promoted rather than bring in an outsider who knew nothing of our business. Jobs go to the boss's golfing or drinking friends and well qualified women are ignored. My husband who spent his later working years as a consultant telling companies how to run things is incapable of organizing a piss-up in a brewery, Secretaries paid a fraction of the boss's salary are usually the ones who run things, but the boss gets the company car, the immense bonuses and the bottles of scotch at Christmas. It beats me how incompetent men get the high paying jobs. Most of them seem only good at feathering their own nests and walking away rich from the shambles when the company crashes.

Posted by Vivien Tarkirk-Smith at 6:08am on August 2, 2009

If these publicly financed feminist quangos stopped stirring up gender hatred and admitted that there isn't one single privately owned company they can point at and accuse of paying women less than men for equal work without being sued, and if their generalisations took into account all the pertinent facts leaving no real discrimination other than their own man bashing comments, they would all lose their own very highly paid jobs. They favour making ridiculous comparisons such as binmen to dinner ladies, and crane drivers to dinner ladies (both comparisons used by the former Equal Opportunities Commission) and claiming the work is the same. Dinner ladies are of course paid by the state and the state is in permanent fear of the man hating feminists of the media who report all this garbage completely unchallenged, because it fits right in with their own hate agenda, so the state will usually acquiesce and do what their told by these twin forces of division and rule. Women, stop letting these nasty women control your vote to manipulate the Government. Feminism = misanthropism.

Posted by Jerome Peter at 9:01pm on August 2, 2009

"All of the professions are equally open to women and men and every one of them resolutely and proudly pays men and women the same." - I'd be interested to know what Mr Lyndon's justification is for this extraordinary statement. Maybe it's true in the public sector but in the private sector there is a clear and well-documented gender divide in the remuneration of senior people, and women are considerably worse off.

Posted by Polsonby at 3:03pm on August 3, 2009

Its simple economics if it was cheaper to employ women then all companies would do so exclusively. In my profession , network engineer for an ISP, we have a large number of support staff who are women, they are just as good as the guys working with them, they are just as capable as the men in getting the relevant certs to move higher up, BUT when the higher paid engineering jobs become available none apply. Many of the women are single no kids so nothing in that respect to hold them back, but when i ask why none want to move up they all say the same thing they dont want to have to do call out duties on a 24 hour basis and they dont want to have to do out of hours work, which the jobs entail. Much of our work has to be done when the networks are at their quietest, but that means its unsociable hours. The women simply dont want to work outside of normal hours. I know this is only based on one company but from meeting other engineers at other companies and also in differing professions this seems to be quite common.

Posted by Gary O'Brien at 11:52am on August 21, 2009