As of today, New Zealand women are effectively working for free until the end of the year because of the 8.2% gender pay gap.
Based on that gap, the average Kiwi woman is paid 336 days for the equivalent of 366 days for men, according to the Ministry for Women.
The way they calculate it is so simplistic…
Pay for males – Pay for females ___________________________________ x 100 Pay for malesIt doesn’t take into account what kind of job the person is doing, where they are working, in which industry, work experience, etc. Just median hourly pay across everything with no nuance.
It’s like comparing a newbie and a senior by median pay and claiming they should be paid the same because they are human.
At this point its just stupid to call it a “pay” gap. There hasnt been a statistically relevant pay gap in western countries with gender equality laws for a long time. What does exist is discrimination and a hiring/promotion gap. Proponents of the term “pay gap” are just shooting themselves in the foot by refusing to actually name the thing that they are fighting for.
The issue is deeper too. As mentioned in another comment, women are often found in jobs that have low pay to start with, regardless of sex. One has to find out why that happens as well as why those jobs are paid so badly. “Because women” is not an explanation as the “solution” could either be “fire all women” or “hire more men”, but that’s barely an attempt at analysing nor solving the issue.
Women choose jobs with more positive externalities (benefit their community, benefit their society, etc). You don’t see a lot of women looking to work in oil and gas exploration, minerals, timber harvesting, or heavy industry. There are a lot of great paying jobs in those industries but the work is hard and there’s no “feel good” social benefit to it. Women would much rather work for a non profit or be a teacher or a nurse.
You can even see the breakdown within a given field. Take medicine for example. Women are much less likely to go for the lucrative surgery positions and much more likely to go into paediatrics, family/general medicine, or ObGyn.
People want to claim that women are discriminated against in those fields but I don’t see any evidence of it. Women were heavily discriminated against across all fields of medicine but they pushed through into the ones they now dominate (listed above) and ignored the more lucrative ones.
Of course there’s also an issue with time, especially heavy overtime. Women often leave overworked careers (surgery, high end corporate law, academia) because those areas don’t leave a lot of room for starting a family. But then that gets into the whole issue of household dynamics and which partner is going to give up their career to be home with the kids. Employers used to be very one-sided about pressuring men to stay at the office but that’s become less and less of a thing in recent years.
Now it’s much more about the individual circumstances of the family: whose career means more to them, whose job pays more, and whether the household can afford the loss of income or not. Perhaps not surprisingly, higher income households are much more likely to have one partner leave work to be a stay at home parent.
I call it The Earning Gap
Could you elaborate on the difference?
The difference is that he’s not stupid.
Wow, what a smackdown. Did you tell your friends on the schoolyard?
Of course not you are not the interesting kind of stupid.
There hasnt been a statistically relevant pay gap in western countries with gender equality laws for a long time.
lol, miss me with this bullshit
I feel like the simplistic representation is the right one here.
Women are earning less on average due to a multitude of reasons. Some are an issue, some are not. Who is to decide which reasons should be accounted for in this percentage and which ones shouldn’t?
I have seen plenty of statistics where they calculate the percentage down to the immediate difference between men and women in exactly the same positions with exactly the same experience levels. But that removes the very crucial fact that some positions simply aren’t equally accessible to women, even if the ones who make it in do get a fair pay compared to their male peers.
It’s like comparing a newbie and a senior by median pay and claiming they should be paid the same because they are human.
I’m not going to engage in the typical internet “Oh so you’re saying …!” thing, but damn, read that sentence again and think about why it might not apply to this situation.
I feel like the simplistic representation is the right one here.
Life isn’t simple nor is this issue. Nearly anything can be misrepresented if boiled down a simplistic view. For example “foreigners aren’t from here, so they don’t belong here” is a simplistic take with a simplistic conclusion which is able to galvanise a good portion of society.
For example “foreigners aren’t from here, so they don’t belong here” is a simplistic take with a simplistic conclusion which is able to galvanise a good portion of society.
This isn’t even a strawman, it’s like an entire fucking straw city.
Is it really that difficult to understand an example of a bad simplistic take to drive home the fact that simplistic representations aren’t good?
It can be for people who only want to see their opinions reinforced
lmao what
English, do you speak it?
Dude you’re cooked haha
I’m not in a mood to explain, have this picture of my pet snake being a cute cinnamon roll instead
It’s like comparing a newbie and a senior by median pay and claiming they should be paid the same because they are human.
No. Male VS Female is the entire population. A newbie vs a senior is the smallest most biased possible way to compare.
I personally think it’s hilarious that you decided that “senior vs junior” is the best way to exemplify gender gap.
The article might be simple, but you’re example is plain bad.
Replace junior and senior by “less experienced” and “more experienced” if you like. The example is to show that apples aren’t being compared to apples.
Is this a troll comment? Or are you really this thick?
If you really can’t understand a simple simile, I question who you’re calling “thick”.
That’s a common way of looking at it.
My buddy who works in a snowy mining camp in absolutely remote Yukon on a 4wk/2wk shift - but after 3 days of air travel down to his house its more like 1wk off - says they have a lot of open roles to fill out there but no women applying.
The pay is awesome.
That is such a common and widespread shenario. In fact 20% of us do heavy manual labor in conditions that push your body to the limit and get paid a ton while doing it.
It is known.
I’m curious. What’s the pay? Even better if you can post the job or something like it.
Do you even know how big a number they are dealing with? If the assumpion of equal capability is valid (and it’s a SMALL if), you should always get a much smaller gap.
There are lots of reasons the gap might exist that have nothing to do with capability
In a merocratycal just society? I don’t think there should be.
I mean, if we thought there really were no biological differences in what men and women want to do, then yeah there wouldn’t be any gap. That’s the tricky thing with the wage gap, right? I think there plausibly is some difference, but it’s likely exaggerated by patriarchy.
That’s the tricky thing with the wage gap, right?
I was never notified the issue is considered “tricky” in any way shape or form.
Unless…
The p value of women just randomly deciding to all work low paid jobs is <.001
Which doesn’t say anything. Nobody throws a dart at the board and picks a job that way. It is undeniable that women are often found in jobs like healthcare, retail and education (source). One could have the simplistic take of “just get another job, duh”, but a lot goes into career-path decisions from upbringing, to social perception, and opportunity. Things aren’t just that simple, so taking such a simplistic formula to draw up a complicated plan is the wrong way to go about it.
So you’re saying the simple formula actually measures the complex factors of upbringing, social perception, and opportunity.
You’re right! This figure represents a serious inequality in the upbringing, social perception, and opportunities presented to women. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
“So you’re saying” followed by nothing of what I said.
I feel like I’m on twitter… If you like replacing other peoples words with your own, just have the discussion in your head. It’ll save us all a bunch of time.
Okay, so you’re not saying that women’s career paths are determined by inequality of upbringing, social perception, and opportunity. Drag is trying to understand. Can you explain what you actually meant to say, and whether you agree with the statement even if you didn’t mean it?
This is such a divisive way to frame it. But no women aren’t effectively working for free until the end of the year. You are not working for free because someone else gets paid more.
This article and the few others i’ve seen present this as doom and gloom but I think its good news. An 8% gender pay gap is one of the lowest in the world. Judging by the trends it looks like that will be completely closed in a few years as female wage growth is outpacing male.
Its mainly comes down to the average wages in different industries and if we paid teachers a decent wage it could close the gap immediately.
I start effectivity working for free in early January when you compare my pay to the CEO’s pay.
13 yo take. The point is that if a woman was born a man she’d be getting paid 8.2% more.
Yes, this includes everything tied with being a woman. It’s “priced in”.
Great time to hire women
Since when have minimum wage workers working for free?
