The narrative about gender pay gap has changed subtly over the last year or so; finally the flimsy argument not supported by actual facts, that "because of Patriarchy women get paid less for the same amount of work" has seem to be dropped; it's nice because literally nothing supports it. (But if you did not know: we have pocket money pay gap, too - again the evils of men suppressing women from an early age.)
The ONR's figures show that between the ages of 22 and 29 women earn 1.1% more than men of the same age, and between 30 and 39 women earn 0.2% more than men in the same age group. (Of course this is not a problem worth correcting.) This pay gap reduces and then reverses around the average age of having children. Yes, overall men earn more but that is because the pay gap flips before the higher earning years. Employers, however, are being gender blind on this issue, and simply basing decisions on productivity and output. Feminists can describe this as unarguably unfair and hence slander men as sexist or even misogynist but it is a grey area depending on your perspective on fairness. For instance is it fair to discriminate against someone who has more experience and fewer career breaks simply because they are a man?
When you compare apples to apples -same experience, same qualifications, IT companies (which supposed to be the epitomes of "Da Patriarchy", with all those spotty little nerds who break out in sweat whenever they see a woman) show no gender pay gap.
So finally the narrative is shifting; now even The Guardian admits (in contrast to previous articles) that the situation is not as clear-cut as women getting paid less for the same work. (It took about two decades, but finally data and facts overtake ideology. There is hope still. Next you're telling me that Climate Change is real...) The sneering condescension is actually ramped up, but there you go. It's somewhat ironic that finally they are getting closer to the "other" narrative, and admitting that the situation is more complex than the identity politics' response of "women are downtrodden", and yet being more hateful and confrontative. I think it's understandable (and even necessary) since they cannot possibly admit that "the other side" might have been right about something all along.
So what does it leave us with? Our feminist now scornfully explains (you can see this as "womansplaining") that the solutions should include societal changes - the very things that "the others" have said, since this is what the data suggested. Just to make it clear: she is explaining something that was constantly brought up to feminists as an alternative explanation to the disparity of pay between genders... in a tone that suggests that everyone else but her was stupid. I really do think it's a great example of the hitherto unidentified, but not unobserved womansplaining.
Yes we know. We kept telling you the very same thing while you called us misogynists.
So there are a couple of issues here. Career choices - a difficult proposition. A woman who has no family has the same pay as a man. But can you negatively discriminate others so that you promote women who do have children? It is something that does need to be discussed; but the angry, straight-out hostile tone is not helpful -or even warranted. Interestingly these authors are looking at women in isolation when it comes to career choices and pay, instead of looking at them as part of a family unit. By taking a career break, they do impact their own earning potential; however the other member of this family unit can actually make up for the shortfall. Unless you gimp them as well, because "they're men, and they should also earn less even though they have more experience and did not take career breaks". In this case the whole family suffers the loss of earning, you know. Unintended consequence which can be actually foreseen.
The author of this Guardian article also argues for gender neutral recruitment; which is a very good thing, but it can certainly backfire spectacularly. She also calls for encouraging women to enter different fields; but how exactly are you going to force them to do so? Are you going to set up quotas for mining engineers, for example? Sorry, Rosie, I know you want to be a teacher, but you will need to enrol in astrophysics to fill out the quota? Like it or not, genders do differ, and men and women in general might be inclined to gravitate towards different fields. It does not mean that a particular woman cannot be a fighter pilot or a coal miner, but in general women tend to do other types of jobs. A lot of which is underpaid, I might add. This is not a gender issue we're talking about; it's a societal issue. Our society in general seems to reward other things that most of us see important; lawyers, economists, pop stars are making dis-proportionally more than people who wash the bottom of your grandmother in the hospital. We should definitely make sure that our carers and teachers are paid better; but the identity politics really poisons this conversation.
The other issue constantly brought up about gender inequality is the relative low representation of women in the top management positions (and in politics). Certain people like to look at it as the Patriarchy oppressing women; as if Joe the Septic Tank Cleaner might benefit anything from an Oxbridge educated white guy getting a CEO position at a hedge fund. (I guess they all know each other from the weekly secret penis-meetings where they discuss everything they need to oppress women).
It is certainly a possibility, although I never got an invite, so I'm feeling a bit left out. However there are some minor issues with this. For example a LOT of high management positions are being filled out with women in the civil service, academia, etc - and there are more and more female politicians, too. So it seems like the trend is changing already. Perhaps people should just wait until this naturally equalises in reaction to the affirmative actions taken over the last two decades. (After all, women already are represented in higher numbers in universities... and yet no cries can be heard about gender imbalances.)
Another intriguing possibility presents itself by simply taking a look at these positions and what it takes to get there. We do know that people in high positions often express psychopathic traits. And by "often" I mean one CEO in five does. Which is way more than in the general population. This is really not surprising; to get to the top you have to be absolutely driven and be absolutely without any scruples. You don't get these promotions by being passively promoted, as these authors in The Guardian seem to think; according to their wisdom you are promoted to a high management position on the basis of the possession of a penis. The truth is somewhat different. You have to be a one hundred percent dedicated individual who is willing to put in an insane amount of work, and walk over anyone if necessary -in other word, well, you have to be a psychopath. (Or something close to it.) Even if you reached a moderate success, and possess enough money to invest and live off comfortably with your family without having to work another day, these people still put in sixteen hours a day to get even higher up.
You don't get these positions by playing nice, and doing your work, climbing up the ladder one step at a time; you have to elbow yourself in, and destroy all your rivals (professionally only usually, but personally, too, should it become necessary).
But perhaps women are underrepresented in the higher management positions partially because fewer women are willing to engage in these struggles; fewer women want or can put in fourteen hour workdays, and put up with the merciless contest leading to the top. Very few people are willing to do that - regardless of what their genitals look like. What I think is that there are a little bit more men than women who are competitive and ruthless enough to succeed; that's all. We are talking about the very edge of the outliers on the bell curve here. What feminists and other mostly arts and humanities majors tend to forget that we are biological beings; results of millions of years of evolution. This includes our gender roles as well; a hundred years of societal conditioning will not erase millions of years of savage struggle for survival. Men ARE evolved to be more aggressive; its foolish to think this can all be forgotten because you played with gender neutral toys as a toddler.
There is also a different aspect of the higher management positions: there are really not a lot of these around, so statistics will not be very useful. For every one of these high-earners you get thousands of underlings, so a very small imbalance can absolutely skew the statistics. Ironically the feminists are right that these people make way too much; but it's not a gender issue.
I'm not sure what the solution can be to address these issues. Sudden society engineering moves will not be very successful. You cannot mandate gender quotas only in certain positions (unless you're willing to do that for others as well- coal miners and construction workers come to mind), and you certainly cannot discriminate against men without a serious backlash. You can't mandate more women in leading positions, either; vagina-quotas will not fly well with corporations, and ironically you will entrench the position of women as the "lesser sex", since obviously they need help to climb up. You can only encourage more women to enter the fight for those position. But how exactly are you going to do that? How fair would it be to handicap males or help females to get to higher management? First of all you really, really need to answer the question: are there fewer females in these positions because it's a boy's club, or is it something else, some other factor at play? (Such as the potential explanations above.)
