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Want trillions of dollars injected into the economy? Pay women the same as men

19 Comments
By Lin Taylor

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19 Comments
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Burning Bush - name one? Well, I would name the company that I worked for, but I can't because I agreed not to say anything publicly that would hurt their reputation when we settled the lawsuit. But put it this way - this is one of the largest companies in the world, with over 200,000 employees, and they DO discriminate.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

Yeah, the gender pay gap is real; women make less money than men overall. The problem is that many wrongly state that a woman will make less money than a man for the same work; that is not true.

The article above says that more women should enter the work force and suggests that they should work harder, to do the same work for which men are getting their higher salary. But nowhere does it say how this would inject trillions of dollars into the economy; i.e., wouldn't they just end up transferring the higher paying jobs from men to women?

4 ( +6 / -2 )

Increasing the female labor force to match that of Sweden - where 69 percent of women work - would add a further $6 trillion to countries in the OECD,

At what cost? Even Nordic countries which have the most generous benefits for working women are facing crisis levels of fertility, well below replacement rates. What's the purpose of boosting GDP by a few points over the short term if it only accelerates the precipitous population decline that all industrialized countries are facing? No western country has a fertility rate that reaches population replacement levels. This is the real crisis our societies are facing, so we would be much better off to stop this admiration of career women who enter the workforce and instead build a society that rewards and respects stay at home motherhood. The values and preferences that we've promoted over the past few decades have led to an unsustainable society.

1 ( +4 / -3 )

This is so vague as to be almost meaningless. Women and men perform different jobs. Very generally speaking, the differences arise from the fact that on average men tend to perform more dangerous and physically demanding jobs, as well as ones which demand an interest in technology and numbers, while women tend to take up the more nurturing, more social and safer ones. Individual differences apply of course, but these are general tendencies that arise out of a variety of complex societal as well as biological factors.

Consider this: Compare the female/male teacher ratio at the primary school level with that of high school. Everyone is a teacher, and yet the number of women teaching at the lower-paying primary level completely skews the salary ratio in favor of men.

Until we can force women and men to take up the same jobs in equal numbers, the gap will continue to exist, and justifiably so.

4 ( +7 / -3 )

Go into a field that pays. Acquire skills that are in demand. Bring something to the table that not many people can. Very simple concepts, but many are in denial.

Ask yourself, how many people can do your job?How replaceable are you?

Gender inequality is an excuse.

1 ( +5 / -4 )

I work in science. The eternal discussion is how can we attract more women, and at least at Japanese universities, there is no salary bias (and this is becoming a problem, but that's another topic) . The percentage of female students in the science department is already very low, so naturally this reflects in the percentage of female researchers. My point here is that there are jobs inherently gender biased, for reasons that I don't really understand, but surely not related to pay gap.

By the way, my wife is working in HR, and at least at the companies she worked for she says there is no pay gap. But there is performance gap, and this reflects in the pay, regardless of gender or whatever.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Want trillions of dollars injected into the economy?

Is that in nominal or real terms?

Didn't the BOJ "inject" trillions of yen into the Japanese economy? How'd it pan out?

I'm all for equal pay for equal work, but I don't like mumbo jumbo talk about economic "stimulus".

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Several jobs I've had here, I've never worked for a place where pay was different for men and women.

I hear these pay gap stories all the time but then again, I have not personally seen or experienced it.. hmm.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Several jobs I've had here, I've never worked for a place where pay was different for men and women.

Did you work for HR? How did you know their salaries?

0 ( +3 / -3 )

Putting more and more people on the treadmill isn't the answer. The more irreverent question is why single-breadwinner households could support middle class living standards before but now they can't.

What changed? Why? And in whose interest?

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Can anyone name a specific large company in the USA suppedly paying women less? It defies capitalist logic, all men would be fired in favor of the imagined less expensive work force. I personally as, a consultant for over 20 years, have converted dozens of payroll systems for large companies, some while working for PwC and never I'm data analysis did a pattern of a gender or any biological feature based pay gap exist. This gender pay thing isn't real. Perhaps really small businesses do it or more likely Governments have gender biased pay but it isn't medium and large sized companies. If it is true, then where is the report naming the perpetrators?

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Can anyone name a specific large company in the USA suppedly paying women less?

I specifically said that I sued my company for this very thing. Two people downvoted the comment and the rest o you ignored it, and continued as if nothing had happened.

I'd also like to point out that we are perfectly aware that part of the reason for the pay gap isn't due to companies blatantly breaking the law, but is due to:

There are long standing societal reasons behind the gender pay gap in countries across the world," said Laura Hinton, chief people officer at PwC, in a statement.

This includes the difficulties women face in returning to the workforce after pregnancy (maternity harassment is a real thing, guys), women being responsible for childcare which limits the amount of overtime work they can do, the harassment women face in STEM jobs, and oh, medical universities that readjust test scores so that fewer women are able to pass.

What is it they say? Conversations about feminism completely justify feminism.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

@girl_in_tokyo

What you say is undeniable, and the behavior of some Japanese universities is scandalous, but generally speaking, the reason for differences in salaries not inequalities but differences in biological and societal makeup. Men can't have babies, and since women are the ones physically having the babies, it makes intuitive sense that they form stronger emotional bonds with their children leaving men to "bring home the bacon" so to speak, at least while the women are on leave. How is this sexist? It's reality. Men perform more dangerous manual labor as well, which is often paid quite a bit better as well. Why aren't women choosing these jobs instead of lower paid healthcare work or elementary school teaching? Why is the focus always on STEM?

And since you mentioned STEM, it's been documented that women in poorer, less equal countries (eg. the Middle East) tend to go into STEM at higher rates than their Western peers due to lack of better options, while under more equal systems like the Scandinavian countries, women go into STEM even less because they have more freedom to choose. Furthermore, western women far outnumber men at universities, making the system seem more stacked against men than women. That's not to say that harassment in STEM doesn't exist, but it's not the end-all be-all answer to why women don't tend to choose the most financially rewarding careers.

In the end though, the most important thing is how you measure financial equality. As I mentioned above, if you're just averaging out salaries by sex and then comparing, that's an apples to oranges analysis. It only makes sense to make judgements based on the performance of the exact same jobs by people with exactly the same qualifications and experience.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Back in the day - there were separate payroll charts for men and women, but I don't know when that became illegal.  As a manager, it was rare for me to see two people doing the same job - with the same experience and qualifications, so pay comparison wasn't really possible.  When setting an initial salary, there is generally a range - and the person with more experience and better negotiation skills will obtain closer to the top of the range, while those with less - will obtain near the lower end - and this whether they are male of female.  But from my experience, when hiring two or more people for the same job title, usually males come with more experience.  I wish it weren't so.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

sourpuss, you could not be more wrong.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

@girl_in_tokyo

why don’t you tell me how?

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Did you work for HR? How did you know their salaries?

Strangerland -

Well, late response.. but here's the answer..

I did not work in the HR field but because the salary is clearly stated in every job announcement even within internal, and the yearly promotion/pay increase, overtime, everything is clearly stated for every employee to be able to view.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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