Poll: Is the 'gender pay gap' a real thing?

Should a woman with the same skill/experience doing the same role/hours be paid at the same rate as

  • Yes

    Votes: 127 66.1%

  • No

    Votes: 37 19.3%

  • I'm not sure

    Votes: 21 10.9%

  • No, but only because that answer suits me and not because it's right

    Votes: 7 3.6%
  • Total voters
    192

kissenger

kissenger

kissenger

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Joined
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Posts
2,491
So I read this this morning:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/09/gender-pay-gap-women-working-free-until-end-of-year

The gist of it is that there is a 'gender pay gap' of 14.2%, meaning that women earn that percentage less than men, and that to tackle it we need to set quotas for the number of women executives.

I am completely open to any evidence which proves a gender pay gap exists but it seems to me that a lot of this talk is based on working out the average pay of men and women respectively and simply registering the difference as proof of discrimination or patriarchy or whatever.

But doesn't that just ignore the fact that more women than men choose to put work second behind raising a family, and that men often do more dangerous jobs than women?
 
No, there is no gender pay gap. When you adjust for experience, length of service, performance, job roles and so forth you'll find that women are not paid less than men. The often cited difference is simply a reflection of the fact many women do not (as a whole) make the same choices as men.
 
Thompson_NCL said:
No, there is no gender pay gap. When you adjust for experience, length of service, performance, job roles and so forth you'll find that women are not paid less than men. The often cited difference is simply a reflection of the fact many women do not (as a whole) make the same choices as men.
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Does this data exist because it rarely seems to get shown? I'm not saying it doesn't and agree that for a fair comparison you need to look at people in the same jobs of similar age and experience. There's so many factors at play that taking overall figures is pretty meaningless.
For one far more men study STEM subjects and go into STEM related jobs which tend to pay more - this is more a fundamental issue with stereotypes, peer pressure, expectations etc whilst at school and what subjects students go on to study.

There's another factor that crops up a lot in that men negotiate more than women so will sometimes get paid more because they won't always accept the first offer.
 
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Pay is the same for normal jobs, it has been the same for years.

Also its the leftwing commie paper reporting it, s you can guarantee its wrong
 
alx said:
Does this data exist because it rarely seems to get shown? I'm not saying it doesn't and agree that for a fair comparison you need to look at people in the same jobs of similar age and experience. There's so many factors at play that taking overall figures is pretty meaningless.
For one far more men study STEM subjects and go into STEM related jobs which tend to pay more - this is more a fundamental issue with stereotypes, peer pressure, expectations etc whilst at school and what subjects students go on to study.

There's another factor that crops up a lot in that men negotiate more than women so will sometimes get paid more because they won't always accept the first offer.
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Here is an article which discusses it and links to supporting studies: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wage-gap-myth-that-wont-die-1443654408

Anyway, the main contention behind this debate is that women are paid less due to sexism. I've never seen any compelling evidence that this is the case. That just seems to be a leap in logic on the part of the feminists.

OCUK is regarded by the resident lefties as being a hotbed of right-wingers. It would be interesting to see the response to a poll with the question "Should a woman working the same hours in the same role as a man be paid the same?" I suspect the overwhelming majority would say "Yes". If so, it should make you wonder where all these sexists are who are paying women less?
 
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There is no pay gap between the individuals of same job/experience/education etc of differing genders.

The pay gap they mention is taken as a mean between male earners and female earners.

Setting a quota for companies is stupid, employ who is most fit for the job rather than to make numbers equal. In a fair society you would not consider gender as a reason for or against employment.
 
Why should they get paid more than men? Cooks and cleaners don't generally get paid that much.

/bad joke, and i'm going to feminism hell
 
Thompson_NCL said:
OCUK is regarded by the resident lefties as being a hotbed of right-wingers. It would be interesting to see the response to a poll with the question "Should a woman working the same hours in the same role as a man be paid the same?" I suspect the overwhelming majority would say "Yes". If so, it should make you wonder where all these sexists are who are paying women less?
Click to expand...

Feel free to post a thread, I'll add you a poll
 
Cosimo said:
Apparently:



So from here:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/...sults/stb-ashe-statistical-bulletin-2014.html

More:

http://www.equalpayportal.co.uk/statistics/
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THanks for the links. This is taken from the pdf of the study:

Gender pay differences
While there is no single measure which adequately deals with the complex issue of the differences
between men’s and women’s pay, ONS prefers to use median hourly earnings (excluding overtime)
for full-time employees. Including overtime can skew the results because men work relatively more
overtime than women, and using hourly earnings better accounts for the fact that men work on
average more hours than women.
It should be noted that although median hourly pay provides a useful comparison of men’s and
women’s earnings, it does not reveal differences in rates of pay for comparable jobs. This is
because it does not highlight the different employment characteristics of men and women, such as
the proportion of each gender in different occupations and their length of time in service.
.

This seems to indicate that the data doesn't exist to compare male vs female salaries for similar jobs with people of similar experience/age (which is not surprising as it's probably quite sensitive information). There's too many other factors at play to make judgements based on the overall data - it needs to be more specific. You just have to look at the gender distribution in various sectors/jobs and what they pay relatively to see this.
 
Thompson_NCL said:
Could you not stick it on this thread? I will post another thread if you want, it just seems like we'll then end up having the same conversation in two separate threads.
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Yeah, I thought about that, but I usually like doing it on request of the OP rather than a respondee. Ah well, I'll stick it on and if he doesn't like it can split it off again I guess. 2 mins.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
What evidence is this based on?

I have come to the conclusion that I don't know either way and have had conflicting or incomparable evidence from both sides.
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This, I'm on the fence until I see this sort of detailed earnings data.
 
Thompson_NCL said:
OCUK is regarded by the resident lefties as being a hotbed of right-wingers. It would be interesting to see the response to a poll with the question "Should a woman working the same hours in the same role as a man be paid the same?" I suspect the overwhelming majority would say "Yes". If so, it should make you wonder where all these sexists are who are paying women less?
Click to expand...

Equal pay in principle hasn't been a contentious issue in a long time, even for hardened conservatives. How it's enacted, the evidence and the methods to rectify are the contentious issues.
 
Bah, it's cut off the end of the question as I added in the skill/experience bit but I think that's important and people will get the gist :)
 
The topic question and topic poll don't match though. Someone might just vote no to the question in the topic without even realizing the poll is asking something else.
 
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