The gender gap

[mistermack]

Should people be paid for the type of work they do, or the VALUE of the work they do?

Women football players do the same job as men. But nobody wants to watch it.
The top men are paid millions because millions want to watch them.

Should Arsenal pay women footballers similar rates as men?


Should they bollocks.

Tennis is ludicrous. The women at Wimbledon get the same as men, even though they don't pull in the same crowds. And they only play best of three, not five.
They are subsidised by the men. Is it equality, for one sex to have to subsidise the other?

[pErvinalia]

I agree. It's fucking sport. The purpose of sport is to entertain with the best skills and strength etc. Put an elite women's football team against an elite men's football team, and the result will be spectacularly one sided every time. Yet they expect to get paid the same. It's ridiculous. Not least because a lot of the prize money comes from commercial advertising, which relies on the numbers of people actually watching the event.

I also think women's tennis needs to move to 5 sets. Not least because it will largely see the end of un-athletic competitors like Serena Williams. But more importantly it will make women's tennis interesting again. A women's tennis match is usually over by the first set. Most of them only go two sets. They are mostly a yawn-fest.

[JimC]

In professional jobs like teaching and health, a given position is paid the same for women and men, as of course it should. The statistical differential, even in professions like this, seems (from what I've read) to be down to 2 main factors (with others possible, of course)

1. The whole time off for being a mum thing

2. A tendency for women (not all, just statistically) to not push as hard as men in the career enhancement stakes

I have no idea how this could be addressed...

[mistermack]

Our courts nearly bankrupted the City of Birmingham with a retrospective decision that female workers like school dinner ladies should have been paid the same as men like rubbish collectors and landscapers etc.

Never mind that the work is totally different, or that the work for men was of a much more physical arduous nature. It's a blow for equality, by pretending that jobs that are not equal, ARE equal.

The bill for Birmingham will probably top a billion. It's a gigantic figure for a city. Of course, they were idiots not to see it coming years ago. It's a Labour council, and they do have highly paid civil servants advising them.
I'd like to know if they got any advice about it prior to the case.

It's actually indirectly connected to the European courts though. For years now, our courts have been working with the knowledge that any decision they make will be taken further, and overturned, if it's not politically correct enough. They don't like that, so they adjust their decisions according to what they think the European court would do.

Get us out Theresa. Don't piss about.

[Brian Peacock]

The thing with the Birmingham case is that council workers on the same grade were paid differently according to their gender, not the work they undertook. The assumption that preparing, cooking, and serving meals to schoolchildren is less important or demanding that refuse collection is moot.

[rainbow]

I employ only women.
They work harder and earn more.

[Brian Peacock]

And they smell nice... like mummy.

[Forty Two]

I agree. It's fucking sport. The purpose of sport is to entertain with the best skills and strength etc. Put an elite women's football team against an elite men's football team, and the result will be spectacularly one sided every time.

You don't have to to an elite men's squad. The US women's soccer team is among the best in the world. They lost a scrimmage to an U-15 boy's team.

[Forty Two]

In professional jobs like teaching and health, a given position is paid the same for women and men, as of course it should. The statistical differential, even in professions like this, seems (from what I've read) to be down to 2 main factors (with others possible, of course)

1. The whole time off for being a mum thing

2. A tendency for women (not all, just statistically) to not push as hard as men in the career enhancement stakes

I have no idea how this could be addressed...

3. women have a tendency to choose different careers/jobs than men - which is why you'll still see the secretaries at various offices being mostly women, school teachers are mostly women, etc., and engineers, coal miners, construction workers, etc. are mostly men.

[mistermack]

The thing with the Birmingham case is that council workers on the same grade were paid differently according to their gender, not the work they undertook. The assumption that preparing, cooking, and serving meals to schoolchildren is less important or demanding that refuge collection is moot.

I don't believe that they were on the same grade at the time. The grading came later.

In any case, if you work for an agreed wage, that should be it. You always have the option of leaving.
Did the council have the option of taking back the overpaid money from the men? No, it only works one way.
A deal is a deal, in that case. As it should be.

[Rum]

The thing with the Birmingham case is that council workers on the same grade were paid differently according to their gender, not the work they undertook. The assumption that preparing, cooking, and serving meals to schoolchildren is less important or demanding that refuge collection is moot.

I don't believe that they were on the same grade at the time. The grading came later.

In any case, if you work for an agreed wage, that should be it. You always have the option of leaving.
Did the council have the option of taking back the overpaid money from the men? No, it only works one way.
A deal is a deal, in that case. As it should be.

Never let the facts get in the way of reactionary prejudices eh?

They were actually on the same grades. The dispute was over the fact that some workers (for example bin men) were able to gain overtime, bonuses and so on which boosted they wages.

[mistermack]

They were actually on the same grades

They were EVENTUALLY put on the same grades. But with a different bonus system. The people who put them on that grade obviously took the bonus system into account when placing them on that grade.

The award goes back to way before the grading was done in any case.

It's a joke. Salaries should be arrived at like any market commodity. Supply and demand. If there's a waiting list for a job, they are paying too much. If they can't recruit or retain staff, they need to pay more.

That's what works in the real world. Not that local government needs to worry about the real world. Their customers don't have a choice.

[Rum]

Well I've tried to get to the bottom of it reading around the topic. It isn't easy as it happens. But basically it seems that the council were awarding compensation on an ad hoc basis to female workers who claimed they had lost out because of lack of equal pay, They were required by the rules to claim within six months of leaving their jobs with Brum council. The actual law suit concerned extending the period allowed for claiming from 6 months to several years. Once that was settled it opened up the gates for other women to claim.

So the council had already accepted the principle that this group of women had effectively been underpaid compared to their male counterparts. The timing of the appeals was the key issue.

The 'grading' issue is part of the mix. All councils were required to go through that process around 2007/8 (roughly as I recall) - I had to.

The basic issue of the women having been paid less than men and that this was 'unfair' was not questioned it seems. Nor should it have been.

[JimC]

In professional jobs like teaching and health, a given position is paid the same for women and men, as of course it should. The statistical differential, even in professions like this, seems (from what I've read) to be down to 2 main factors (with others possible, of course)

1. The whole time off for being a mum thing

2. A tendency for women (not all, just statistically) to not push as hard as men in the career enhancement stakes

I have no idea how this could be addressed...

3. women have a tendency to choose different careers/jobs than men - which is why you'll still see the secretaries at various offices being mostly women, school teachers are mostly women, etc., and engineers, coal miners, construction workers, etc. are mostly men.

Your "3" might be true, but it's irrelevant to my points, which were purely about comparing gender differences in pay (especially over a lifetime) within the same profession. One consequence often overlooked is in superannuation (you may not have the same system in the US) Women frequently take of several years of their working life as maternity leave, only part of it paid, so at the end of their employment, their superannuation fund can have a lot less money than a male, even given identical salaries. This particularly hits separated women when they retire...

[Rum]

Nor does '3.' acknowledge that there are structural and social/political/gender issues around why women occupy some roles and men others.