The pay gap

lorarc · 2021-03-19T23:04:35+00:00

There is some discrimination certainly, in my country we have a lot of laws regarding maternal leave. There is a common belief that if you hire a young woman then when she'll decide to have kids you won't see her for almost 2 years while you have to pay some of the costs and when she returns you have to give her her job back. I know many small business owners that claim they would never hire a young women full time.

But then there is also discrimination against men, men are brought up believing they have to have a good earning job to earn affection of women. Many young women say they want a guy that is funny, handsome and that earns a lot, men don't have any financial expectations of women (though a lot of guys from my work who earn a lot do say they'd like a girl that earn at least half as much as they do). Men are told they need to earn money, they choose their higher education based on how much money they can earn after they graduate, they take jobs that pay more even if they are less comfortable and the commute sucks, they change jobs with money in mind. A lot of pay gap is explained by toxic expectations put on men.

OirishM · 2021-03-19T17:43:42+00:00

I think in practice the wage gap is a too-soundbitey way of describing a complex set of problems. It's a meme trying to describe way too much (as most political memes tend to).

It's not particularly common afaik for wage gaps to be the consequence of direct discriminatory attitudes. Bosses don't sit in offices going HAHAHAHA PAY THE WAMEN 23PC LESS.

It's a combination of, at minimum:

women seeking flexible working, which may tie in with a greater burden of household work and childcare
difference in negotiating strategies / willingness to haggle on salary compared to men, plus the receptiveness of the prospective employer to a woman haggling like a man might
women not entering certain fields vs receptiveness of those fields to women entering them

I think choices play a role, but the corollary of that is the level of social willingness to accept or reject (or incentivise / disincentivise) those choices made by women. The typical counterargument to notions like the pay gap is to point to women's choices, but those choices aren't made in a vacuum. The social environment may not be similarly supportive of women compared to men.

But this is far more complex than the usual meme-level of analysis we get of these topics from the soundbites.

I'm a left wing socialist. The fact is that if women and men are being put in different positions by the market due to things like different working hours and flexibility, we can make changes on the social front (by being more egalitarian in division of responsibilities) and the market front (by incorporating policies that are good for all, like paternity leave, increasing and demanding flexibility for men, creating better policies regarding time off, childcare, reducing penalties, valuing less valued work, etc.)

I agree with this. Division of responsibilities at home as well as in work matters. Shared parental leave in the UK is fairly crap, maternity leave isn't amazing even when it's taken solely by the mother, so dividing it in two isn't always an appealing offer when it doesn't feel like much time for either partner.

Feminsmkildredtt · 2021-03-20T16:14:08+00:00

Let's talk about men paying more taxes while the government spends 85 cents on women for every five cents it spends on men, then we can talk about the pay gap.

Billy-Batdorf · 2021-03-19T18:48:11+00:00

The pay gap is capitalist propaganda, there is no reason for an economic socialist to take this insignificant shit seriously when working class wages have been suppressed for forty years and Men, the bulk of the working poor and homeless, are suffering.

Strikester101 · 2021-03-19T16:09:16+00:00

I think I am one of the few people who agrees that a pay gap exists and that at least some factor is due to discrimination.

Likewise, I think there are studies that show there is a reverse pay gap in female-dominated sectors.

The69BodyProblem · 2021-03-19T19:52:14+00:00

When >90% o f workplace deaths are not men I'll care about the pay gap. Until then, it's a surcharge for being more likely to die at work.

Strikester101 · 2021-03-19T15:31:37+00:00

[permanently deleted]

Title	The pay gap
Author	confusedbonobo007
Upvotes	2
Comments	26
Date	March 19, 2021 3:12 PM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/m8je65/the_pay_gap/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/the-pay-gap.1190547 https://theredarchive.com/post/1190547

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