The gender pay gap

[stui magpie]

FWIW this is the government department who collects the data, analyses it and publishes it.

https://www.wgea.gov.au/

I've had a read through their methodology and apparently they annualise the salaries of part time and casual staff up to the full time equivalent so they are somewhat comparing apples with apples.

In some ways it's mildly interesting data but certainly nothing to huff and puff about as a huge problem that needs to be fixed urgently.

I looked up a couple of previous employers and read their employer statements, nothing surprising. Standard thing that seems to tip the balance is the representation in senior or higher paid roles.

[What'sinaname]

Annualized is just converting part time to full time. It ignores difference in role, experience, actual hours worked.

[What'sinaname]

Did they have the Australian Open where woman get paid more then men on an effort adjusted basis?

[pietillidie]

^Read the document, FFS. They're simply encouraging like-for-like comparison within industries, knowing there are differentials. The idea is to bring down unwarranted historical pay gaps where possible within a range simply through transparency and awareness. Basic, uncontroversial and behaviourally intelligent (i.e., encouraging behavioural shift through the awareness and the natural social pressure that accompanies such awareness).

This data then gives industry groups and firms the opportunity to put smarter strategies in place over time. Most biases are sub-conscious, and most sane people are willing to adjust of their own accord when the data is brought to their intention, particularly when recruitment and staff shortfalls are so costly. Moreover, employment markets are undergoing considerable change, so more data is needed to help firms adjust.

Honestly, use your own brain, which for some reason you're determined to undercut by filling your head with other people's Facebook dumbness when you're miles smarter than that.

As an aside, it is very clear to me as someone who has worked closely with hundreds of high performers that many people are unaware they're victims of the grim ideas and attitudes around them. Sometimes, those ideas and attitudes are in their immediate environments or inherited from them (family, social groups, cultures), while at other times they're internal (immature reactions to duress; untreated maladies including anxiety and depression; anger; etc.). This causes people to undermine their own abilities by falling into destructive sub-cultures (religion, internet groups, ideological hysterias, etc.) that only drag them down.

I was one of them.

[What'sinaname]

Tell me 10 companies that pay woman less than men for doing an identical job?

[pietillidie]

[Bucks5]

There are 2 explanations for the differences.

One is the number of men vs women in senior higher paying roles. The other is overtime and penalties, a women working part time usually misses out on both. At my workplace you do not get time and a half or double time until you have worked 38 hours for the week. As a result the part timers do not bother working OT.

[What'sinaname]

^Your very question shows you don't understand the problem. By your reckoning, if 10% of CEOs are women, and those 10% earn much the same as men in the same role, there's no problem.

Yes, there is no gender pay gap problem.

The fact that someone like yourself, who thinks they are intelligent, who reads the headline "gender pay gap" and (a) doesn't see what's wrong with it or (b) is too scared to call it out for being misleading, says more about you than anything else.

Is there a gender opportunity issue - yes. Is there a pay gap - no.

[Culprit]

The pay gap is real and in saying that if I negotiate a better pay deal with my employer than my female co-worker who does the same job, should they get a pay rise as well?

[David]

^Your very question shows you don't understand the problem. By your reckoning, if 10% of CEOs are women, and those 10% earn much the same as men in the same role, there's no problem.

Yes, there is no gender pay gap problem.

The fact that someone like yourself, who thinks they are intelligent, who reads the headline "gender pay gap" and (a) doesn't see what's wrong with it or (b) is too scared to call it out for being misleading, says more about you than anything else.

Is there a gender opportunity issue - yes. Is there a pay gap - no.

Is terminology really so important? A gap simply means a difference, and in this case it's the difference between how much one cohort (men) earns on average vs another cohort (women). While it might be an understandable mistake for people who aren't familiar with debates around it, nobody as far as I can tell is actually saying that "the wage gap" or "the pay gap" has to mean different pay for the same work. I don't see that as being an inherent assumption in the phrase.

Even just the introduction to this Wikipedia page lays it all out pretty plainly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap

[pietillidie]

^Whatsinaname is still even wrong on the terminology, let alone the concept and its history. As I say, this is just more internet global warming deniers wasting everyone's time because they can.

^Your very question shows you don't understand the problem. By your reckoning, if 10% of CEOs are women, and those 10% earn much the same as men in the same role, there's no problem.

Yes, there is no gender pay gap problem.

The fact that someone like yourself, who thinks they are intelligent, who reads the headline "gender pay gap" and (a) doesn't see what's wrong with it or (b) is too scared to call it out for being misleading, says more about you than anything else.

Is there a gender opportunity issue - yes. Is there a pay gap - no.

Do you hear yourself? You're like a Mormon missionary at the door crapping on about the only verse he knows because he's never read anything outside the cult. Everyone beyond primary school knows its bigger than a like-for-like pay gap, something discussed decades before it entered your head.

The discussion itself is actually part of the much broader gender gap problem, which is part of 'social differentiation and polarisation' if you're a social scientist, but even just within work and careers it includes like-for-like pay gaps, seniority gaps, aggregate pay gaps, industry pay gaps, opportunity gaps, promotion gaps, asset gaps, pension gaps and more, including the penalty and reward gaps Bucks5 mentions.

But being related to income, it's also related to health and wealth across the lifespan. There's a reason why so many older women are impoverished; it's a massive problem doing massive harm, not some trivial Facebook quackery people discuss for fun. If you're an economist, it has enormous implications for things like productivity, under-employment, generational poverty, single-parent families, benefits funding, skills deficits, hiring shortages, healthcare funding and present fiscal policy.

I don't give an eff what the headlines say or if the term isnt to your liking because you've come to the problem 20 years after everyone else and some gaps have finally narrowed.

And if you bothered listening, there is still probably a 5-10% like-for-like gap, while the seniority/promotion/opportunity/career differential is reflected in aggregate pay and reward gaps, which you've just dismissed again with your fixation on the word 'pay'.

[stui magpie]

The pay gap is real and in saying that if I negotiate a better pay deal with my employer than my female co-worker who does the same job, should they get a pay rise as well?

No, but sometimes that can highlight a problem.

In my last job I negotiated a good hourly rate and a 4 day week. Per hour I would have been in the top 10 in the organisation.

Once of the first things I was asked to do was to review the remuneration of all of the staff on contracts and one of the first things that struck me was that one of my (female) colleagues was grossly underpaid for her role.

She was my peer, notionally the same level, but earning F all. She'd been in the place over 10 years as it grew and her role had grown and expanded but no one had ever stopped to look and see if her rem was appropriate. I was getting paid high end market rate for my role, she wasn't even near the bottom of the range for hers. And this is in a female dominated organisation. Hopefully after I left they had enough in the budget to give her a significant raise.

Sometimes you have to pay a premium to attract new talent, doesn't mean that everyone else there doing similar roles gets a payrise to match them.