Re: Oh please
All most kind but I fear I'm a touch unfashionable under the current editorial dispensation.
If I were to write here on this I'd add in these three facts:
1) We only need two numbers to explain all of the observed gender earnings gap. Mothers make less than non-mothers among women (about 9% for the first child, lesser extra amounts for each subsequent). On average, of course, with all these numbers. Fathers make more than non-fathers among men, about 8% or so. Yes, always controlling for all other factors like age, education and so on.
Sexually dimorphic species - one that started out as hunter gatherers with sexual division of labour - has division of labour in child rearing. Really?
2) The stat being used is of all men and women, part and full time, within each company. Back a decade Harriet Harman and the Fawcett Society started bandying about the pay gap of this unadjusted form, part and full timers together. The Statistics Authority, in the form of Sir Michael Scholar, wrote an open letter insisting they stop. To blend in this manner was extremely misleading and more likely to confuse than inform. One can and should use part time to part time, full time to full time. So, we then get a law insisting reporting is done in the misleading manner, do we?
3) Consider what must be true if this is about discrimination. Women are cheap compared to their skills, talents and output. It is therefore possible to make a fortune by discriminating in favour of hiring that cheaper female talent. Dame Steve did exactly this in the 60s and did make that fortune. No one is doing this today. We must therefore conclude that it isn't about discrimination, even that women are not being underpaid for their output.
Then, the bit in the next comment about women who might have children but don't getting lower pay. Actually (and this is just the way the stat was collected) never married childless women in their 40s enjoy a - small to be sure, 1 or 2% - pay premium over the average male. Lesbians do too, presumably something to do with the lower incidence of children. Interestingly, gay men have a pay gap against them in reference to hetero men. Quite possibly that influence of being or not a father affecting the averages.
Give it a bit more time and we'll have a really interesting piece of research that can be done. Same sex coupledom is clearly becoming more common, as is such same sex couples having children. We will therefore be able to study a population where gender (or even sex) is divorced from primary child carer entirely. Be great fun to see what the pay gap is then.
My bet is that primary child carers would face about the same gap as women do today. Meaning that the gap is about primary child carers nowt else. But then we all do hope for confirmation in the future of our own assertions today, don't we?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
