The Gender Pay Gap

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/aug/10/gender-pay-gap-widening-at-one-in-four-government-bodies-figures-show

It will take the civil service more than 37 years to achieve pay equality between men and women, and one in four government departments and agencies have seen the gender pay gap widen over the past decade, according to a Guardian analysis.

Data shows that the average male civil servant in 2017 is paid £28,280 and the average female employee £24,680 – a gap of £3,600 or 13%, down only slightly from 15% in 2010.

Labour said it was “morally wrong” for such a gap in pay to exist in the civil service, and feminist campaigners said the public sector should be leading the way on the issue. But the Cabinet Office said the gap was at a record low and the government was committed to closing it in a generation.

This is for the public service but the fallacies apply to the broad spectrum of comparisons between men and women in work. In typical fashion, the Guardianistas make it clear from the very first instance we're talking utopia as ever. The day equality will be achieved, we won't sleep until then...

First illusion being peddled is that like-for-like is being compared and of course it isn't, the same goes for national figures. Women on average do less well paid jobs and that is what causes the difference, the ONS don't look for anyone to blame but the Left do. The Guardian, Labour, the BBC, etc.

The Fawcett Society, for example:

https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/close-gender-pay-gap

As the ONS rightly do, they list differences in caring responsibilities and a higher proportion of women in lower skilled jobs as contributory factors that make a difference but then... we're off to the Left.

Nah, outright discrimination is the major problem. You won't find many figures on their site, it's all on the social front and feminist agenda with all the classic ingredients of manipulation. Oppression, victimisation, discrimination, under-privilege, the need to do something about it at public expense...

There is no problem, merely a difference between what all men in their jobs earn and what women do on theirs. Among part-timers, women earn 12% on average more than men do. Do we need an inquiry into that?

It's all a con by the Left, like so many others. Absolute fortunes consumed by all these bodies and quangos in plush offices, constantly making up causes in other people's names to earn out of it either economically or politically.

In all this, it's us blokes who are at the receiving end. All this 'political correctness' is pushing up women artificially at our expense, every piece of 'positive affirmation' by the feminist cause means a man being unfairly discriminated against.

Reply 1

username1738683

Default young women into maths and science subject choices at school with an opt out, rather than relying on them to opt in, sending a clear message that ‘girls like you do subjects like this’, and increasing take up. The quality of careers information and advice must also be improved. The government and educational institutions must proactively tackle occupational segregation, with teachers themselves treated as key agents for change.

That's one of the 'objectives' declared in what I found a truly horrifying and creepy sexist site, it's alarming that such views are what we nowadays institutionally regard as politically correct. The Tories themselves have been sucked into all this atmosphere, too feeble to challenge it and paying heed to the correct views dictated by the Left. Thatcher would have, in her prime.

I was never one for conspiracy theories and can't really tell whether it is consciously happening or not, but that everything the Frankfurt School set out to promote is happening... no doubt, it is. They have taken over the shop, unquestionably. Safe areas at uni, to insulate people from incorrect views. There used to be a healthy balance of political activity and discourse at unis in the past, now they all come out of them reciting the mantra of the public services and the State. Tick.

Check out the 'changing of minds and attitudes' section, if you're interested. Snippet above. I'll go away now, no more a secret.

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 2

username1738683

The safe space, Ms. Byron explained, was intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. Emma Hall, a junior, rape survivor and “sexual assault peer educator” who helped set up the room and worked in it during the debate, estimates that a couple of dozen people used it. At one point she went to the lecture hall — it was packed — but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/judith-shulevitz-hiding-from-scary-ideas.html

That's the New York Times, it's safe to read. Creepy or what? All that because a speaker was coming in to perhaps suggest there is no such thing as that rape culture feminists speak of, which is quite debatable and just another issue for the Left to weaponize.

At Oxford University’s Christ Church college in November, the college censors (a “censor” being more or less the Oxford equivalent of an undergraduate dean) canceled a debate on abortion after campus feminists threatened to disrupt it because both would-be debaters were men. “I’m relieved the censors have made this decision,” said the treasurer of Christ Church’s student union, who had pressed for the cancellation. “It clearly makes the most sense for the safety — both physical and mental — of the students who live and work in Christ Church.”

That's it, I'm not sending my kids to Christ Church. They deserve a proper education.

A year and a half ago, a Hampshire College student group disinvited an Afrofunk band that had been attacked on social media for having too many white musicians; the vitriolic discussion had made students feel “unsafe.”

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 3

Underscore__

I thought this pay gap rubbish was finished? I thought people finally realised it is just nonsense?

Also is it just me or are the authors trying to use a clever slight of hand? They compare the average male civil servant to the average female employee. Surely you’re not classified as a ‘civil servant’ if you work in a tea room for a government department?

Reply 4

username1738683

Original post by Underscore__

Of course they are, that's what the feminist lobby have managed to push through. This illusion that 'women earn less than men' for doing the same thing (the problem that t justifies the action, see?) or that we should strive to achieve a state of equality. It's all a con, like the 'racial divide'. Labour call it 'morally wrong', for there to be a difference between what men as a whole and women earn regardless of what they do and the solution is... to enforce that there is no difference the day men and women all do exactly the same thing.

Feminist institutions think nothing of cooking the books to make a case, they use all sorts of misleading ways of measuring these things. The gap for the FS at the top of the page is not what you'll find on the ONS report. Guess which way it tilts...

(edited 6 years ago)

But it doesn’t exist

Original post by Reece.W.J

But it doesn’t exist

Not in the problematic way the Left portray it, as mythical as a unicorn. This is the real and technical view of the world from the ONS. No political overtones.

The gender pay gap for full-time employees in 2016 was 9.4%
This means average pay for full-time female employees was 9.4% lower than for full-time male employees. This gap is down from 17.4% in 1997.
The gap for all employees (full-time and part-time) has reduced from 19.3% in 2015 to 18.1% in 2016. This gap is down from 27.5% in 1997.

This means that men on the whole earn more than women but also that the gap has been steadily narrowing before the social engineers got at it and it reflects the different nature of jobs and activities. There are many ways of measuring the differences, adding overtime or not to calculations is enough to change the gap. What it definitely doesn't mean is what the feminist lobby say it does.

The fairest way to calculate that difference is the way the ONS do, those figures are the best we can get. For some reason, if you go on some feminist sites you'll find them measuring the gap in seriously misleading terms. The discrepancy between the ONS and what the link to the FS in the OP is about 4%, something that would mean an abrupt reversal to trends. But factual information never really is their strong point, bless them.

it's all a con, there is no problem at all. Social trends alone have pushed women higher in the social scale in a very natural way, that's how the gap narrowed so much from 20 years ago. More women in higher education, not because the social engineers took them there but because that is life. Having stabilized a few years back and stopped widening or contracting, this gap is these days no more than the natural reflection of women's pay following the same pattern as that of men's in the activities they pursue. What is the problem?

The problem is that it is advertised in every social billboard as such, that's where we've all been had. Society has been sucked into this utopian idea that man and women must all do the same thing, earn the same thing. First they create a problem by turning the gap into a cause for the State to address, by grotesquely peddling this notion of 'women earning less than men' as if these figures meant such thing on a like-for-like basis. We need more research into the problem, more action, more studies and committees, quangos, social projects, we need a million people and a billion pounds to tackle the problem. they want to raid every premise on the land to enforce that equality and protect all victims of it from... I dunno, someone.

An utter misrepresentation of the real world to start with, as ever. For as long as male footballers earn more than their female counterparts on average, the Labour Party will see it as 'morally wrong' and the Left will be pushing for a truly utopian society at our expenses. Cons like this are oxygen balloons for them, they can't win an argument on anything serious. They live on largely imaginary social cause and problems, that's all they have to flog. As much as feminists are totally dependent upon making men oppressors, without that it would be hard to justify the war footing. And funding too.

It all comes from Marx, exactly the same mindset. People who keep making up problems and purporting to offer the solution in exchange for cash, the sociologist army out of all humanities and social studies departments gripped by his followers. Some people call all this Cultural Marxism, I don't but it isn't too hard to see where they come from... I don't pin it on Marx.

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 7

fallen_acorns

new news today - first large companies publishing their gender pay gaps.

The BBC article is cancerous though...

"Women's hourly pay rates is 52% lower than men's at Easyjet, On average, women earn 15% less per hour at Ladbrokes and 33% less at Virgin Money."

....

"All three firms say men and women are paid equally when in the same role."

-- seems like good evidence for a performance/promotion/opertunity gap.. but absolutly no evidence at all for a pay gap.

so far none of the figures published have shown a clear case for arguing that women get paid less for the same role... backing up what many of us have been saying for years. They do show that women are vastly under representated in the higher levels of business.. but given that equality takes a while to phase in, and most of the chief executives now were educated in a different era.. I would suggest its a problem we have already solved, and are now just waiting for the results to filter through, generation by generation.

Reply 8

AperfectBalance

Original post by fallen_acorns

The only actual case we have is of WOMEN getting paid more than MEN! they daycare company says that most of the men are employed in the lower ranks wheras the majority of women are in the higher ranks. That is 100% fair but we dont see any other companies saying "women actually work X less on average or work in lower positons on average"

Reply 9

ThomH97

Nobody's going to hire a man on a higher wage if they could get a woman to do the same thing to the same standard for less money. But yes, there are fewer women the higher up a company you go and that is something that needs to be investigated and kept being looked at.

Reply 10

ilem

The gender pay gap doesn't exist in the sense that people imagine it to be. Women as a group are paid less than men as a group overall but that stems entirely from choices people make based on their respective evolutionary strategies, rather than some sort of systemic discrimination against women. That the BBC is still peddling this nonsense is testament to how pervasive this bogus ideology is nowadays.