Wednesday 29 July 2009

One step forward, one step back ...

As I have been saying for ages, there isn't a 'gender pay gap' as such, it's a 'mothers-versus-everybody-else pay gap', which is of course based on official statistics, as well as personal and anecdotal evidence.

I thought we'd made a bit of a breakthrough recently when The Farrah Fawcett Society finally acknowledged this simple fact (possibly inspired by Tim W's article at Comment Is Free?) but now 'they' have reverted to type and are insisting that it's a 'gender pay gap' again.

Ah well.

6 comments:

AntiCitizenOne said...

Yep, funnily enough choosing to be a mother instead of a career harms your career.

If I took a 2 year sabbatical and went yachting should I insist a job is held for me when i return and that my time away from work should have no effects?

Tim Almond said...

"The commission, whose members are drawn from employers and unions,"

You can find these "employers" at the end of the following report: http://www.equalities.gov.uk/pdf/297158_WWC_Report_acc.pdf

Of all those on the panel, 2 are from private sector competitive businesses. The other 12 are not.

Of the 2 from private sector, they are in pet retail and catering. Areas which do not suffer much from international competition.

Bill Quango MP said...

Both BBC and LBC doing it on the phone ins this morning. Followed by the fake amount of billions, that will never emerge beyond the silly season's headlines, for tap dancers, teacher's assistant assistants and hammer holders and the like.

I once found out that I was the highest paid in the office. Of the senior managers the woman was paid the least.

Seeing as both she and I were headhunted I can only conclude that she negotiated herself far less than me, and everyone else.
Inequality was heard throughout the office, which was true. But gender inequality was entirely bogus.

Mark Wadsworth said...

AC1, exactly.

OC, wow! Two from the private sector out of twenty or so! That's quite a lot by quango standards.

BQ, I thought you were an MP? When did you ever have a proper job?

Simon Fawthrop said...

What's worse they can't even decide what the gapis. This morning on R5Lite was 17% and then later on R4 it was 23%.

TheFatBigot said...

This is such an important topic that it's surprising the truth never gets spoken in public.

Perhaps the part that riles me more than anything else is that underlying the position of Simple Harriet and her hairy friends is the assumption that being a mother is not a career in itself.

To my mind it is quite artificial to say a woman who does paid work for 10 years, takes 10 raising her children and then returns to paid work again for another 20 only spends 30 years in work. It's utter nonsense. She spends all 40 of those years in work, 30 in one career, split by 10 in another.