The Truth About the Gender Pay Gap
This is really rather surprising, a left wing organisation like the Trades Union Congress, being reported in a left wing newspaper, The Guardian, actually makes a sensible statement about the gender pay gap.
The difference between men’s and women’s pay more than trebles when women reach their 30s, TUC research revealed today. It found women leaving school at 16 and going into a full-time job earn 9.7% more than their male contemporaries. But from the age of 18 - and throughout the rest of their working lives - they earn less than men.
In their 20s, the pay gap for full-timers is a modest 3.3%, but in their 30s women take home 11.2% less than the men. And in their 40s - the peak age for discrimination - the gap rises to 22.8%. The TUC said the undervaluing of women in the workplace was partly due to a “motherhood penalty”.
All of that is true, my only quibble with it would be that they say “partly” due to a motherhood penalty while I would say mostly if not completely. However, they then go and spoil their copybook by saying this:
The hourly earnings of women working part-time were 23.4% less than the male rate in their 20s, 41.2% in their 40s.
As we saw here recently, this simply isn’t true.
But I think I should reserve my greatest scorn for this particular piece of nonsense.
The long hours and intensity of senior positions deterred mothers from seeking promotions for which they were qualified.
If you’re not prepared to do the hours required, nor deal with the intensity, then you’re not in fact qualifed to do a job that requires either or both of those things, are you? But there is merit in the piece as a whole: it’s another brick in our wall of evidence showing that there really isn’t a gender pay gap, there’s a motherhood pay gap.
Quite what we might do about it is another matter, but only if we identify the causes properly will we ever be able to resolve the situation: indeed, only if we identify the problem properly will we be able to decide whether we want to or not.
March 11th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
My interpretation: Teen girls earn more than teen boys because more teen girls wait tables while more boys wash dishes or otherwise work for minimum wage. Guys like to go to restaurants and have pretty girls wait on them, which is why restaurants hire more young females than males. And, of course, guys tip pretty young girls generously. By the time they hit their 20s (when pay gap is 3.3%), young men are beginning more lucrative careers than dish washing. Young women are entering professional careers, too, but they are not being paid as much as men. Why the relatively low pay gap here? Because many of women continue to wait tables, or perhaps they’ve moved onto bartending, and in reality, many servers and bartenders make more money than entry-level professionals (was true for me).
In their 30s, yes, women often have babies. I won’t argue with that. But what happens in their 40s? Perhaps because women took time off to stay with babies, they’re less qualified, etc. But this Reuters article, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2029109620070423?pageNumber=1, says that’s not it: “If a woman and a man make the same choices, will they receive the same pay?†a study (by the American University Women Educational Foundation) asked. “The answer is no.†The researchers find no other explanation than discrimination.
March 16th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
That waiting table thing works in the US: but not in the UK really, as tipping is really rather rare. I think it’s rather to do with the well known and observable fact that teenage girls are more mature than teenage boys.
The gap in hte 20s is I think that some women have indeed had children then but also that those who have not, might: and this colours the way in which employers trreat them. Less training, for example, becaue of the risk that they might then go and take those several years breaks.
I mkust emphasis though that I’m not saying that it is a good thing that this happens: far from it, only that it’s rational: in that everyone concerned is acting rationally given the incentives they face.