Equal right - Losing it's balance in favour of women?

dav3 wrote: »

When the gender pay gap sits at 14%

Ahh this old saw. You do know it's just a little inaccurate don't you? Not surprising you may not as it's regurgitated everywhere in the media and elsewhere as a fact, but let;s look a little more closely shall we?

Let's go to a source one would assume is pro feminism? Here's the National Women's council of Ireland's report about said pay gap. The usual stats are trotted out, however if we look more deeply...

The latest figures from the EU Commission show that the Gender Pay Gap in Ireland is 13.9% - in other words women in Ireland are paid almost 14% less than men. The Gender Pay Gap exists even though women do better at school and university than men.
In the Irish context, what is perhaps most disturbing is the high cost of motherhood. Figures from the OECD show that in Ireland the Gender Pay Gap for women with no children is -17% but this increases significantly to 14% for women with at least one child – a jump of 31 percentage points. The gender pay gap exists across the sectors.
For the bottom 10% of earners, the Gender Pay Gap in Ireland is 4% but this rises to 24.6% for the top 10% of income earners, suggesting the continued presence of a glass ceiling and indirect discrimination.

Emphasis mine.

Women with no kids get paid nearly 20% more than equivalent men. Funny how they don't directly mention that, and specifically hide it as a minus. No, not bullshít at all. I wonder why? Makes sense too. More women than men graduate second and third level and that gap is increasing. More women than men have third level education and that generally means more pay.

Of course the addition of children complicates things. Women who chose to have a child earlier in adulthood are more likely to forgo third level so job opportunities are going to be less. They're still seen and act as the primary carers so time constraints will impact a career at any stage, but especially at the start of a career. However a woman taking time away from a career will find it significantly easier to renter the workplace. Sure she will take a drop compared to if she'd never left, but have a man take off work to become a househusband and child rearer and see how easily he can get a job afterwards.

What I would like to see are the stats for say 30 to 35 year old women without children compared to men of of the same age range. I'll bet the farm the so called "paygap" and "glass ceiling" doesn't exist and indeed it seems in many cases goes the other way.

As for the "paygap" at the top? Similar things going on. More women are going to dial back when they start a family, many in my experience all too willingly, so that will impact their final earning potential. Secondly men, or more men than women are risk takers, rasher and adrenaline junkies(scientifically provable) and that mindset is more likely to be entrepreneurial, more likely to start their own business, or drive harder within a career for longer. They're also more likely to be obsessive and singular(some have even suggested that the Autistic spectrum is the male brain in extremis). A better stat to look at would be to compare like with like, IE compare men entrepreneurs with women entrepreneurs. Again I'll bet the farm their earnings are about equal.

So pay gap you say? I hear no calls for equal pay for 30 year old men who are likely to be paid less, nor do I hear calls to address the widening educational gap along gender lines in favour of women. Indeed we do still have some way to go.