EU Equal Pay Day: Women in Ireland are paid 13.9% less than Men.

Tragedy

http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2013/0228/370030-europe-gender-pay/
http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/equal-pay-day-highlights-gender-pay-gap-586375.html
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-165_en.htm
http://ec.europa.eu/justice/gender-equality/document/index_en.htm#h2-7

Except of course, they aren't.

Having researched this a bit in previous years after arguments over wage discrimination, I find it frustrating that yet again this nonfactual nonsense is being blithely peddled as truth.

Firstly, the issue of pay: 'Pay' is what you receive for a period of your time given in work.
What you 'earn' is the totality of being paid X for time Y.

For instance: I was paid €20 per hour to work overtime last weekend. I earned €120.

EU Equal Pay Day claims that women are paid less than men, what their research actually shows is that women earn less than men. A very big, very important distinction - but one that is completely ignored in the rush to shout that women are still being discriminated against.

Why is that an important distinction?

Firstly; More women work part time (36% of women as compared to 13% of men). This means that even if they're paid the same as men, they're earning less.
Secondly; The highest earning jobs in society tend to be reserved for the most educated and those who have been working the longest - and given the Irish history as regards to female participation in third level education and the labour force, it isn't surprising that the vast majority of consultants, barristers, senior accountants and the like are men. Again, this isn't wage discrimination but it's being portrayed as women being paid less than men for the same job and the same amount of time worked.

There are a number of more minor factors that elaborate on how women earning less /=/ wage discrimination, but those two are the major ones and should be enough to illustrate that the headlines and the EU announcements need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Lastly, EU research states that women in the public service in Ireland have an average hourly wage of something along the lines of 20% less than men - which quite frankly, sounds horrific. However, it's impossible to wage discriminate in the Public Service. Every role has a salary grade and 'raises' (increments) are governed by length of service, not gender. How then, such a big wage gap? Simply, demographics - the vast majority of higher grades in the PS are men aged over 50 and the majority of mid range grades in the PS are women aged under that. Can anyone guess what's going to happen in the next 5-15 years as people naturally retire?

Of course, I could be missing something blindingly obvious - so I'd welcome peoples thoughts on the issue

professore

In the private sector, you get paid as little as the company can get away with, whether you are male or female. If you are making the company a fortune, you have the potential to make a lot of money, but it's up to you to get it. It's that simple.

BKtje

Woman are more likely to take career breaks to raise children or whatever and when they return to the work force they are earning less than their male counterparts. This is not due to discrimination but less time spent working and therefore less experienced. This is not highlighted by the stats either.

RandolphEsq

The mere fact alone that women get paid less than men on average does not automatically mean that it is because they are women. If that were the case then they would be entitled to more money purely for being women which is extremely sexist and discriminatory!

More important issues to look at are why women prefer to stay at home and mind/raise the kids instead of the husband/father.

jimmycrackcorm

I wish the people instigating these surveys would spend more time on related issues such as why women get paid maternity leave and men don't...

Stheno

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

I wish the people instigating these surveys would spend more time on related issues such as why women get paid maternity leave and men don't...

I wish they would actually profile based on a lot of what the OP posted

Other countries outside of Ireland split maternity leave into equal maternity/paternity leave (Sweden irrc)

It's been said before but if you are taking time off to have children and working in a state that doesn't support paternity leave, then as a woman your earning potential drops every time you have to take maternity leave.

Tragedy

RandolphEsq wrote: »

More important issues to look at are why women prefer to stay at home and mind/raise the kids instead of the husband/father.

Is that not just demographics?
I.e. if both parents are working and the woman is earning less, it makes more sense for the woman to cut down to part time?

I'm seeing more and more stay at home Dads due to either the male parent being unemployed, or earning less than his partner. With the majority of University graduates being female, is there any reason to doubt this won't be a continuing trend?

Regardless, the state having an equal and fair maternity/paternity system and designing and funding a functional creche system is a bigger issue than the supposed 'gender pay gap' imho. A parent of either gender having to remove themselves from the labour force due to childcare costs is a loss.

ednwireland

how come my OH earns more than me working part time (i work full time) I must be doing something wrong

Tragedy

ednwireland wrote: »

how come my OH earns more than me working part time (i work full time) I must be doing something wrong

My other half(female) earns more than me, I must also be doing something wrong.

nice_guy80

I make up for both of you lads, so don't worry

carpejugulum

The trend has already reversed in young couples.
Young women more likely to be breadwinners

bizmark

carpejugulum wrote: »

The trend has already reversed in young couples.
Young women more likely to be breadwinners

And remember this will be A ok and lauded to the hills that women are more educated and better payed with out a hint of irony

oscarBravo

There seems to be a breathtaking inability by some posters to distinguish between "paid more" and "paid more for the same work".

Tragedy

oscarBravo wrote: »

There seems to be a breathtaking inability by some posters to distinguish between "paid more" and "paid more for the same work".

Which I tried to differentiate to the best of my ability in the first post.
Alas, I seem to have failed^^

grid_locked

isnt it illegal to pay someone less based on gender or race ?

Manach

AFAIK, this requirement is EU based (originally Art 119 )as instanitated into Irish law. It would be for like work: being described as same or similar work or work of equal value. How this judgement is arrived at in say complex industries such as IT, is a judgement call. Thus could be tricky to avoid the mass of legislation/cases that could trip up on employer.

The Corinthian

One needs to understand the increasingly technocratic nature of Western government to understand such surveys and campaigns.

Increasingly governments are relying upon organized lobby groups to determine policy, whom have agendas to push rather than seeking to promote objective solutions for actual or perceived social issues. It's why, socially, we had practically no public debate on things such as the cohabitation act (specifically its 'opt-out' nature), political (and soon business) gender quotas and a myriad of other social policies that were they to go to a popular vote would likely be defeated.

Lobby groups, as I said, have agendas, and as a result will only put forward arguments and evidence to support that agenda. This is why, in the case of pay levels, they will not look at things such as total years in the work place, specific industry levels or, up until recently, differentiate even between full-time and part time workers.

It's also why things such as the fact that women in their twenties or childless women in their forties out-earn their male peers will not get highlighted. To do so would harm the agendas ends.

If you look beyond the simplistic propaganda press releases on this subject, it doesn't take a genius to figure out why a pay gap exists. Children.

The onus on women to be the child carer can be traced back to many, if not all of the causes for this pay gap:

• Women will tend twoards careers that have shorter or more flexible working hours and increased security, which facilitates their dual role.
• Many women will end up sacrificing prolonged periods of their careers towards full time child care, resulting in lower levels of overall experience, which in turn affects salary.
• The ability to devote oneself to one's career is seriously impeded by having to also care for children - 60+ hour weeks are essentially untenable, when you have to be home to take care of the kids after school.

So why is this not highlighted, except in passing? After all, if this is the core reason for the pay gap, would tackling this not be the best way to solve the problem?

The answer originated in Feminism around forty to fifty years ago.

Around the sixties, early seventies, second-wave Feminism began to change the emphasis of the movement away from 'equality' and to 'choice'. A core part of this choice was a woman's right to choose to be either a carer or a provider - a mother or a career-woman. And over time, this right has morphed into a right to be both.

So while levelling the playing pitch where it comes to social attitudes and legal rights for either parent to be the carer, may address the choice to be a provider, but it acts against the choice to be a carer - women would no longer have an effective monopoly on that choice as they would have to compete with men.

The solution, of course, that lobby groups representing such views, tends to be one of positive discrimination; maintain the status that allows women to be the carer without competition, yet compensate for the negative consequences of this monopoly. That's what the quotas are about.

Hence the importance of the continued bombardment of our society with such propagandistic and misleading surveys. To have legitimacy - because positive discrimination requires that someone is always negatively discriminated against - you must maintain the narrative that one group has an advantage that they must surrender. Even if they don't in reality.