Each other, as usual.

* shrug *

The gender pay gap /is/, the reasons for it are many and not all sexism based, there’s very little any of us can do about it except behave fairly and treat others as we would wish to be treated. That sort of thing can’t be enforced by legislation without, as someone said above, creating massive amounts of resentment.

Impatience, on the other hand, leads to totalitarian imposition, and that has many unwanted by-products which I think those who argue for it choose to ignore and those who choose to go along with it cannot see.

All three conditions are therefore perfectly compatible.

I mention all this because of your original question: “how it can be that women can both be in a situation where they actively seek to rise up the career ladder faster than their male counterparts … and still be so far behind male pay in some sectors.”

And your answer to that question: “women on average ARE gaining those jobs faster which can only lead us to know that they are either more qualified than men of the same age, or more aggressive.”

For all I know, that could be true. But it does not have to be.

39. Are we arguing over the definition of equality again?

I don’t think so. But if someone does claim to work towards e.g. equality of outcomes, should they work to equalise all outcomes, or are they allowed to cherry pick the outcomes to equalise? I tend to assume that if the latter option is allowed they will only want equality where it benefits the groups they care about, effectively turning a demand for equality into a demand for privilege.

38. Promotions must always based on market forces. How otherwise will a woman be promoted before a man unless it is because the company think they can either get more money from a woman for less investment (something inherently unethical if the money offered is significantly underneath the market price) or that the woman is more appropriate for the job. I’m not reluctant to say the second bit you talk about, I just believe that you can logically come to the assumption that market forces are the only factor in “promotion gaps” you talk about.

TBH I find it flabbergasting that this argument has gone in a full circle of contradiction in this debate. Apparently women get “paid less” because women work less than men…but where women do choose to work they get paid less because they are less driven…except that women do get promoted faster and so there must be some argument for those women being driven, or perhaps it’s more a conspiracy to employ “cheaper” labour at the detriment of men…except wait a second, *women work less than men* apparently. Repeat ad nauseum.

The facts are simple. Women make up barely a third of the managerial work force, and less than a fifth of all board positions. Where these women HAVE attained that rank in their business they have done so at a younger age and largely for significantly less pay year on year. Even the best situation (I believe in IT) is 11% gap on average.

As I’ve said, there does need to be more specific questions asked, but you honestly believe gaps of as much as £4k on average (meaning there must be significant amounts of female managers out there with even higher gaps too) are simply down to women accepting such salaries *below* the market average to get a promotion, and that there is even slightly the hint of companies unfairly promoting women ahead of men when the managerial industry is dominated by men?

I just think it interesting that people who say that:

“The pay gap [in which women are paid less than men] needs rectifying, if it is not the product of acceptable market forces (something we simply don’t know right now), simply because it is unfair and discriminatory not to”

are reluctant to say:

“The promotion gap [in which women are promoted faster than men] needs rectifying, if it is not the product of acceptable market forces (something we simply don’t know right now), simply because it is unfair and discriminatory not to.”

The pay gap needs rectifying, if it is not the product of acceptable market forces (something we simply don’t know right now), simply because it is unfair and discriminatory not to.

My point about the alleged promotion gap, is simply that if such a thing exists, it should be as much of a concern as a pay gap. If you are worried about one, you should be worried about the other. As I said, I am not terribly concerned about either.

ad: Of course it’s sensible, and if we could gather some evidence on whether women were in the positions they were because they offered a “bargain” promotion then I’d accept that. I think this argument alone pretty much nulls and voids any idea of a gender promotion gap though…you either accept market forces are at work in determining pay (in which case I would still argue there is discrepancies in the argument that these women aren’t driven and wouldn’t necessarily ask for more pay), or that everything should be equal regardless of external factors. I really hope no-one is necessarily arguing the latter!

Thomas – How do you measure quality of life? Different people will place different values on the same things. If the thing is non-tradeable there is no good way of finding out what these valuations are.

27. I don’t disagree that employers need to think about the bottom line first, so why is it then that people are suggesting the pay gap is due to employers being happy to give men more money if they ask for it?

Lee – I was not one of those people. But you did claim that women are being promoted faster than men. Which would seem to be a sensible thing for an employer to do, if women really are prepared to work for less money.

And if you are concerned about the “gender pay gap”, why are you not equally concerned about the “gender promotion gap”? Are you only in favour of equality when it benefits the right people?

How about some non-male centric people set their terms for the discussion – quality of life issues as measures of gender equality, maybe? Only then will gender difference be calculated into the true sum of social and economic impact and provide a better picture of the needs of society.

There is always a trade-off to be had between different measures and different choices, which I personally feel reassured by – if everyone were forced to measure up according to a single (treasury defined) yard-stick then what dull automatons living mechanical materialistic lives we would be!

29. Anecdotally your point has no bearing on the salary comparisons I’m talking about, given that it is only looking at women that are interested in promotion, and who are statistically more driven than men to do it at an earlier age.

Of course it is – if you don’t ask you don’t get, that’s a fact of life. No employer in their right mind would voulantarily give employee A the same pay rise as employee B if employee A asked for the bigger pay rise, they would be throwing money down the drain. There is no reason why the employment market should result in equal pay between men and women any more than it should result in equal pay between left handed and right handed people, or ginger haired versus dark haired people, as those attributes are irrelevant to the market.

Anecdotally, I have worked for the same public sector organisation for 20 years, and as I have progressed modestly through the grades, the number of women in my cohort has reduced. You get roughly equal numbers up to around the the age of 30, then women start to drop out of the workforce or go part time. 30 is generally the age by which you will start getting into management in most organisatios, so obviously the number of women going into management is going to less than the number of men. I have also managed women who have explicitly stated they are not interested in promotion, something I have never heard a man say.

Clearly I was being provocative, but I am mystified that the opposite appears to be the case here – who exactly are we men engaging with if there are so few women participating in the discussion?

I’ll admit there may well be a gap in career prospects between men and women, which may be considered fair or unfair by different groups, and pay differentials have come to be seen as the expression of inequality, and that this therefore places the area in the foreground of the ongoing ideological battle.

It doesn’t strike me, though, that this gap is really anything other than a measurement of the time lag between the opening of the labour market and the point at which the new othodoxy of equal power within the market is established.

So whether we complain that things are moving too slowly towards final equality is a complete non-sequitur as far as the effectiveness or coherence of the market (starting equality) is concerned, and alone this provides no argument in favour of resorting to legislative means to modify the rules covering the functioning of the market.

For anyone to make such an argument it would be necessary to see examples, not of how the labour market is gender-blind, and yet systemically biased, but BOTH that there are no concessions made to account for the diversity of society AND that any current concessions are proving totally ineffectual.

The choice is between pushing down standards to the lowest common denominator in the name of equality by creating an ever-growing list of exceptions or of raising expectation levels with efforts to promote education and self-awareness to account for our differences, together with the full complement of skills to enable the fulfilment of human potentials and turn our individual abilities to our mutual advantages. You just can’t pretend that it is possible to simultaneously push two contradictory positions at the same time, unless you (knowingly or unknowingly) have a hidden agenda.

Which do you choose?

pay gaps rising between genders in high levels of jobs in every sector outside of the public and third sector, despite the fact women on average ARE gaining those jobs faster which can only lead us to know that they are either more qualified than men of the same age, or more aggressive.

Lee, that could be caused by a variety of effects, such as a change with time in the sex ratio starting careers in sector X. This would not mean you are wrong, but such things can make the concept of “average” less meaningful.

It occurs to me that I can turn your argument around and point to the “gender promotion gap”. Perhaps companies making promotion decisions are discriminating a favour of women? After all, our governing party often selects MPs by a method explicitly designed to discriminate in favour of women.

All I’m saying is that if employers care about equality of any kind then they should pay comparable personnel a comparable wage.

I will say that if employers care about the bottom line they should pay people enough to get them to do the job, and no more. Otherwise they are wasting money.

And private sector employers that do not care about the bottom line tend to go bust.

I’m aware that pay gaps will form to some degree in the market place, but realistically I’d be shocked if these ever formed the major basis for the gaps we’re seeing at the moment.

Yep.

Well not exactly. I think it represents a temporary market inequality that should be combated via cultural and social means, rather than through political means. Coercive laws will exacerbate inefficiencies (by making it more dangerous for employers to employ women, for example).

I’ll get me coat……………

I suggested that a 19% pay gap couldn’t be considered “slight”. That’s just a mathematical observation. I’m also mystified by the idea that gender equality is something for women to discuss while men listen. You probably just expressed your position a little clumsily, but it’s a very bizarre assertion.

I think it is highly irresponsible for people to mix the messages. No-one is arguing that taken as a whole you can’t just compare men’s lifetime earnings versus females, and no-one is arguing that in general (as that article suggests) women tend to lend themselves to public service type jobs more readily while being happy to take the lower level/lower paid jobs. But this is a COMPLETELY separate issue from the pay gaps rising between genders in high levels of jobs in every sector outside of the public and third sector, despite the fact women on average ARE gaining those jobs faster which can only lead us to know that they are either more qualified than men of the same age, or more aggressive.

In both cases this runs completely contrary to the pay gap, which is phenomenally huge in some sectors of management, and far too high at director level. Argue all you want about the women that choose family from an early age and all that, but this is not where the real argument is standing.

Also 21… I don’t claim to know the answers, I just wish people wouldn’t over-generalise the facts of the matter. I think it is abhorrent that on this site of all places we can have so many men defending their kin by arguing the “women like to have kids” side of things when the statistics available show pay inequality even when taking these women out of the equation. I also think it is utter bullshit for you to make light of just how much a male can really offer on this subject, as if our involvement at all makes the problem worse…here was me thinking men had to stop thinking fallacies and engage with the issue of pay equality between genders for the problem to truly be able to go away.

I don’t think it is helpful to talk about generalised differences in the interests if equality, as this creates greater division, rather than reducing it, as it pretends to aim at – talk about specific examples, by all means, but only Ms Belgrave has done so here.

The practice of developing general theories does help create a rational basis for understanding, but it mystifies the reality and places additional distance between the head-scratchers and the problem they want to address: Lee Griffin, Douglas Clark, Nick, Mike Power, Matt Munroe, Jim Bliss and myself (and Unity and Ad?) – all men, all discussing women; how enlightened, how enlightening!

We are all guilty of the conceit of thinking we know the answers and are best positioned to expound them, when we would be better advised to listen.