Left-liberal organisations in New Zealand have been going on about the gender pay gap for decades now, despite admitting that in fields where men and women actually compete for the same jobs with the same skills its not particularly significant. For example, in the Christchurch Press last Saturday, of Judy McGregor of the Human Rights Commission said "We still have a long way to go in relation to pay equity," despite saying that the average gender pay gap in the public sector is only about 12 per cent.
I would think that the fact that women have to leave work to have children would account for most if not all of such a relatively small gap, especially in a long-term career-orientated field like civil service work.
Of course in these complaints about pay differences, it's never considered that there may be occupations in which women are over-payed relative to men with the same qualifications.
Take teaching for example - in secondary teaching there is apparently a shortage of science and maths graduates, and a slight surplus of arts graduates. However, teachers unions are strongly opposed to allowing schools to increase pay rates for maths and science teachers.
Given the majority of arts graduates are women and the majority of science and maths graduates are men, holding back salaries for maths and science teachers negatively discriminates against a disproportionate number of male teaching graduates.
In the private sector there are also a number of fields where men are underpaid. There's little doubt male models are paid less than their female counterparts and its also likely to be a similar story in public relations, where a disproportionate number of jobs are given to youngish, relatively attractive females.
Sure, there may be valid reasons why women should be paid more than men in certain occupations, butt that's equally likely to be the case with men being paid more than women in some occupations. Blanket statements about gender oppression just don't cut it, particularly in a relatively tight labour market where there's nothing to stop workers from looking for another employer if they feel they aren't getting a fair deal.
Unless women are frequently getting paid substantially less than men for the same work, for an extended period of time, without taking time off for maternity leave, then its hard to make a claim they are being unfairly discriminated against.
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aaaaaaah there are some rather large contradictions here.
12% is still a problem - does anyone think it is ok for someone to be paid less than another person when the only differentiating factor is gender/ethnicity/religion/etc. How big does it have to be before it is actually discrimination??? (this is what the gap refers to, and does not reflect time out for child-raising).
Women taking time out to have children again reinforces the gendered notion that that is women's role - workplaces do little to support women to allow them to work and maintain a family, and in this modern age of supposed acheived equality, this should be something that effects men equally to women. Women may give birth, but men are able to tend to their children equally well. Few workplaces accommodate this fact.
Additionally, taking this time out to provide new workers to the economy seriously disadvantages women in the retirement stakes, esp when private contributions are the key factor.
The gendered differential in graduate types ie women in soft sciences versus men in hard sciences has been shown to be embedded in a gendered ciricullum (sp). This has the knock-on effect of creating an imbalanced teacher workforce. As a double whammy, women's access to hard science jobs is more difficult (statistics) - the result is that fewer women take these degrees and thus enter the workforce as teachers or otherwise, whereas men who take these degrees take higher paid jobs in industry. To suggest paying more for these teachers woulod in effect be a gendered stratification of the pay scale. A crappy position, unfortunately. This points to the general undervalueing of educators in this country in general.
As for women being paid more than men in certain jobs, this is by far the exception rather than the rule.
For women, finding an alternative employer can be challenging when managing the needs of a family - her current job may: allow her flexitime to pick up/drop off the kids to school; allow flexi lunch hours for daycare visits; provide on-site child care; allow her to take her sick leave and personal leave to look after her children when sick; and so the list goes on. Having an accommodating employer in a suitable envuironment that allows a woman to balance her work and home responsbilities is not a given - better to stay in an unsatisfacfroty job with those allowances than risk loosing it for more equitable conditions - such is the cost-benefit analysis many women have to perform.
(sorry, I reserach for the DoL).
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