A group called Mind the Gap likes the idea of forcing companies to publish their wages on a gender basis thus embarrassing them in paying more to women.
The claim is, if we did this, we could increase females' pay by up to $35 a week.
The gap on average is currently 9 percent. The reason it's 9 percent is not because people who employ other people don’t like women. It's because women, on the whole, choose different jobs than men, on the whole.
The key there is “on the whole.” This is where you get a distorted view of the world when you average everything out.
Women frequent the aged care sector, for example, more than men. We have been here before, of course. The famous pay equity case involving aged care where we ended up comparing aged care women with mechanics who are men and pretending apples were apples.
There is an inquiry currently underway in Australia looking at the same thing. The warnings are out over whether it addresses anything. In our case, some in the aged care sector got more money. But it still didn’t solve the overall problem, and that was attracting people to the industry.
Artificiality is almost always a mistake. Do you hire women on skill and talent? Or do you hire women so you can close a gap on a chart? The same mad argument applies to the debate over numbers of female CEOs and board members
We must also remember a couple of important things. People must choose what they want to do for work and money is not always a driving force.
If women, on average, chose professions that don’t pay as much as other professions, that’s not automatically a problem. And if, on average, the person who happens to be female earns less than she could if only she changed jobs, but is happy, then that’s not a problem either.
Trying to ratchet your square peg into the round hole you think is fair and equitable is only going to cause trouble because it’s a false economy.
Remuneration is based on demand, supply, and skills, not gender.
The key there is “on the whole.” This is where you get a distorted view of the world when you average everything out.
Women frequent the aged care sector, for example, more than men. We have been here before, of course. The famous pay equity case involving aged care where we ended up comparing aged care women with mechanics who are men and pretending apples were apples.
There is an inquiry currently underway in Australia looking at the same thing. The warnings are out over whether it addresses anything. In our case, some in the aged care sector got more money. But it still didn’t solve the overall problem, and that was attracting people to the industry.
Artificiality is almost always a mistake. Do you hire women on skill and talent? Or do you hire women so you can close a gap on a chart? The same mad argument applies to the debate over numbers of female CEOs and board members
We must also remember a couple of important things. People must choose what they want to do for work and money is not always a driving force.
If women, on average, chose professions that don’t pay as much as other professions, that’s not automatically a problem. And if, on average, the person who happens to be female earns less than she could if only she changed jobs, but is happy, then that’s not a problem either.
Trying to ratchet your square peg into the round hole you think is fair and equitable is only going to cause trouble because it’s a false economy.
Remuneration is based on demand, supply, and skills, not gender.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings.
2 comments:
low numeracy skills lead to fear or hatred of statistics. then you have a situation where people don't understand the concept of variation between groups and variation within groups. pay, life expectancy, happiness, etc. are outcomes of complex variables and within-group variation usually dominates across-group variation. perhaps 'mind the math' would be a more noble objective.
while we are trying to close the gap on avg wages, why not do the same for avg happiness (i know teachers and nurses love their jobs far more than plumbers and garbage handlers do)? how about closing the gap for work injuries/fatalities?
your comment about Australia reminded me of some interesting discussions involving Former Senator David Leyonhjelm - worth watching them on youtube.
Yes, you are right, Mike
It is important to compare "apples with apples"
For example:-
Typically, many (no,not all) women take a 6 to 8 year break from work to have children.
The pay gap comparison would, in that case, only apply if there was a similar group of men who had taken a 6 to 8 year break from work.
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