Does the gender pay gap exist?

That's for couples to work out. It makes sod all difference to anyone else and it's none of anyone else's business anyway.

If women get paid whatever % less than men why don’t companies just hire women?
The only possible answers are:
Women are less productive
There is no gap
Companies don’t care about profits

Do you actually think that reasoning makes sense?

What does it stand for

Yes if women were as productive as men and could be payed less no one would hire men as it would be a lot cheaper to hire women

It oversimplifies the recruitment practices of businesses. If it were simply about reducing labour costs at all costs, there would be no stratified pay scales as all companies would push towards hiring less qualified people. There would be a veritable race to the bottom. Clearly, companies care about things other than reducing overhead costs.

So you are saying that women would have some negative effect on a business?

Do you actually think that reasoning makes sense?

I don’t understand the whole pay gap thing... it’s illegal to pay men and women different wages for doing the same job based on their sex?

If the argument is that men get paid more because they occupy higher positions, perhaps women should work a bit harder and stop using the feminism card? Could this also be explained by the fact that (USUALLY) women will have children and take a hiatus in their careers, go part time or stop altogether? I appreciate this may be a generalised and not very PC statement to make. I am a woman by the way before anyone starts.

There has been a long term decline in the numbers of male teachers, exactly as society has been becoming more equal. The reality is if you give women the freedom to choose their own paths there is nothing to say they will, or should, make the same choices on average as men do.

It basically does make sense tbh, as far as it goes anyway. Enough to refute the 'equal pay day' rubbish, anyway.

You're a businessman and you want to fill a position in your business. You have two tremendously competent, appropriately qualified, eager candidates. One is a man, one is a woman. According to the 'equal pay day' people, you only have to pay the woman until early November. That's a substantial saving which, if I were making hiring decisions, I'd want to put in my pocket. This demonstrates that it is implausible that the pay gap actually exists as pictured.

There are obviously some problems with this if it's taken as a serious argument beyond its quite limited point, but it makes for quite a good quick-fire response to this stuff.

It was a limited argument in your hypothetical scenario: one man vs one woman. However, the suggestion was instituting whole companies with exclusively female hiring, and that goes quite a bit further than one man vs one woman. At that point, you have to take into consideration realist issues of sourcing sufficient number of qualified candidates given your narrow pool.

To answer your limited argument, in such a case it does not correspond with reality, because it would be almost impossible to have two completely equal candidates. The original argument by the other poster was if women are truly equal to men but cheaper, why don't we see exclusively women hired in reality. Because the situation you are describing does not exist in reality.

That statement made it sound like it was okay that it's the *woman* that takes the hiatus in their careers when having children rather than the man which in itself is unfair and one of the causes for there being a pay gap. Therefore, the ''feminism card'' can still actually be played. Society still views it as the norm for the woman to be the one to take the leave since in the past it was the man that would work and the woman who would take care of the house and the children. Of course, society has changed a lot since then but the old views are not *completely* gone.

There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.

If, in a couple, the woman decides to spend a couple of years out to look after her kids, and the man decides to work to provide for them, that is there choice and it's a perfectly good one. It is literally no one else's business how people choose to organise their families, and the idea that the aggregation of individual choices might be a problem 'for society' is absolutely outrageous.

It’s not that society views it as the norm it’s that it IS the norm. It is usually the case that women chose to become the primary caregiver in a family

It’s not that society views it as the norm it’s that it IS the norm. It is usually the case that women chose to become the primary caregiver in a family

I absolutely do believe people are influenced by others around them. I just don't think it's the job of you or me or the government or anyone else to tell people on what basis they should make decisions about their own lives.

OK so assume that women who want to stay home have been influenced by social norms. So what? They still want to do it. They presumably believe it would make them and their family happier. Who the **** are you to tell them they're wrong? Why should they act in a way they think undesirable? Even if that is those desires are a product of their upbringing, they're still very real, and you can't wish them away.

The implications of this sort of logic are terrifying.

If you have socially conditioned someone to be x, let them be x? 1984 comes a calling.

Is this supposed to be ironic?

When faced with a choice between telling people how to live their lives and letting them live as they choose, you seriously think it's the latter that smacks of Soviet totalitarianism?

You have managed to get this analogy wrong in every possible respect tbh. The relevant dystopia here is clearly Huxley's, and it is the modern left that wants to change and control people's desires, not us. The main difference is probably that the modern left's objectives are less coherent than those than the World State, to the point that I've never even seen anyone attempt an explanation as to why there should be parity between the ambitions and life choices of men and women.