Society/Culture The Gender Pay Gap

[kickazz]

Plenty of jobs (finance, real estate I'm looking at you) are not paid based on value to society, just on profit.

Yes - salaries/wages are more about your value to capital for sure - if you can make rich people richer or at least protect their capital then in a free market of course you demand a higher price. The value that 100 000 people put in the dignity of elderly people who need care is swamped by the value 3 billionaires put in protecting their interests.

There are other things at play though, like leverage. If nurses, teachers etc could mobilise and seriously strike they could probably demand a lot more - but we all gotta eat.

 

[burge13]

Yes - salaries/wages are more about your value to capital for sure - if you can make rich people richer or at least protect their capital then in a free market of course you demand a higher price. The value that 100 000 people put in the dignity of elderly people who need care is swamped by the value 3 billionaires put in protecting their interests.

There are other things at play though, like leverage. If nurses, teachers etc could mobilise and seriously strike they could probably demand a lot more - but we all gotta eat.

Honestly though, we'd be fooked if Nurses earned what they 'deserve'. It'd bankrupt the public sector! Who on earth wants to wipe arses, deal with vomit, abusing/drunk patients etc for $45 an hour? 100's of easier jobs. Pay them what they are actually worth and where does the money come from to pay it. Just wouldn't work

The idea teachers earn more is one I cannot get behind. I know alot of them, they all got into it because it's easy and lots of holidays. They love claiming the 'I work out of hours' card but so do most jobs, it just doesn't hold up, primary school especially when there's no essays/projects to grade. They're paid handsomely for their work and only do 20 hours of teaching per week (and fought for even less). It's madness. Though I don't think many regular punters are on teachers side for pay rises thankfully whereas most agree healthcare workers are underpaid.

Both should earn more than real estate agents

 

[Chief]

If nurses, teachers etc could mobilise and seriously strike they could probably demand a lot more - but we all gotta eat.

Really doesn't help that governments weaken unions at every turn. Yeah some are dodgy but the witch hunts and undermining of collective action is a crime I think.

 

[Chief]

Pay them what they are actually worth and where does the money come from to pay it. Just wouldn't work

Taxes on non-productive profit making. I know you might not want to hear it but things like Tobin taxes on profit from currency trading would yield good money to return to the working economy that these trades profit from.

 

[burge13]

Taxes on non-productive profit making. I know you might not want to hear it but things like Tobin taxes on profit from currency trading would yield good money to return to the working economy that these trades profit from.

Taxed at 40% already via CGT? Has to be better ways to raise funds than continuously tax us

Tax the effing church

 

[faible]

Both should earn more than real estate agents

Being an REA in the current real estate market is about as easy a job as you could get. Yeah you need to work weird hours, but if you're selling houses in high value high demand suburbs like Brunswick or Northcote you're doing SFA and getting a hefty commission.

Teacher salaries aren't too bad these days, from memory the annual award is around $100k for an experienced teacher. No idea about nurses.

REA shouldn't be anywhere close to earning what they got.

 

[burge13]

Being an REA in the current real estate market is about as easy a job as you could get. Yeah you need to work weird hours, but if you're selling houses in high value high demand suburbs like Brunswick or Northcote you're doing SFA and getting a hefty commission.

Teacher salaries aren't too bad these days, from memory the annual award is around $100k for an experienced teacher. No idea about nurses.

REA shouldn't be anywhere close to earning what they got.

Agreed. Worse is they don't just charge their commission and sell the house

They charge a 3k 'marketing fee' as well as a host of admin charges/fees then get their commission. The 'marketing fee' is BS, chuck it on realestate.com.au which their receptionist does and chuck a few flyers out, maybe.

Then they ring a list of clients and could sell the house before an open even goes ahead so the 'marketing' was barely required

Scum industry full of slimy people

Edit: teachers 100k for 40 weeks of work a year plus pupil free days, 10 days sick leave on top, LSL after 7 years, mostly 330pm finishes. They have it bloody good, sick of hearing how hard they have it tbh. Them fighting for pay rises never passes the pub test

 

[Chief]

teachers 100k for 40 weeks of work a year plus pupil free days, 10 days sick leave on top, LSL after 7 years, mostly 330pm finishes.

I don't know any teacher that clicks off at 3:30 every day. Plenty of evening and weekend work. They put in the hours.

 

[faible]

Agreed. Worse is they don't just charge their commission and sell the house

They charge a 3k 'marketing fee' as well as a host of admin charges/fees then get their commission. The 'marketing fee' is BS, chuck it on realestate.com.au which their receptionist does and chuck a few flyers out, maybe.

Then they ring a list of clients and could sell the house before an open even goes ahead so the 'marketing' was barely required

Scum industry full of slimy people

Edit: teachers 100k for 40 weeks of work a year plus pupil free days, 10 days sick leave on top, LSL after 7 years, mostly 330pm finishes. They have it bloody good, sick of hearing how hard they have it tbh. Them fighting for pay rises never passes the pub test

Most teachers I know do a reasonable amount of after-hours work, it's a bit of a furphy to say they finish at 3:30pm every day.

No the conditions aren't bad, but it's not just pop in for classroom hours and then done for the day.

edit: 7 years LSL is standard here in Victoria too.

 

[burge13]

I don't know any teacher that clicks off at 3:30 every day. Plenty of evening and weekend work. They put in the hours.

And I know many who race each other out the door to try and beat the 3.02 record between them

High school would be significantly harder having to grade actual work but it's still shitloads of time off compared to anything else.

They also talk more openly to each other about the ease of it then ham it up when outsiders are around. They always let slip at some point joking about the latest pupil free day, or sports day, or excursions, or whatever the latest easy day was/is

 

[Chief]

And I know many who race each other out the door to try and beat the 3.02 record between them

If they are finishing work at home and doing their job then is that an issue? People like WFH.

 

[burge13]

If they are finishing work at home and doing their job then is that an issue? People like WFH.

These guys aren't WFH. Not then anyway

Primary school teaching just isn't that hard, they aren't working as hard as they claim. It's obvious. They get free lessons to mark in, not that have anything difficult to mark. I have 1 mate who puts a bandaid on his head and tells the kid he has a headache only to then set his phone up to watch NFL. They have it very good

Even if they worked until 430 that's still only what the rest of us do in a normal day and they claim this is proof of tough out of hours work lol.

High school much harder but they still get triple the time off to everyone else

 

[Chief]

I have 1 mate who puts a bandaid on his head and tells the kid he has a headache only to then set his phone up to watch NFL. They have it very good

That would be a management problem. Principals and the like. Primary teachers I know are pretty active all day.

Also... the number of people who blow an hour or two at work posting on BF is likely massive.

 

[burge13]

That would be a management problem. Principals and the like. Primary teachers I know are pretty active all day.

Also... the number of people who blow an hour or two at work posting on BF is likely massive.

no comment lol

Difference is most of us don't then bang on about how hard we have it despite most other roles working longer hours with less leave etc

 

[Chief]

no comment lol

Difference is most of us don't then bang on about how hard we have it despite most other roles working longer hours with less leave etc

Yeah but you also don't get the government, media, general online denizens, all attacking your profession 24/7.

 

[ShanDog]

These guys aren't WFH. Not then anyway

Primary school teaching just isn't that hard, they aren't working as hard as they claim. It's obvious. They get free lessons to mark in, not that have anything difficult to mark. I have 1 mate who puts a bandaid on his head and tells the kid he has a headache only to then set his phone up to watch NFL. They have it very good

Even if they worked until 430 that's still only what the rest of us do in a normal day and they claim this is proof of tough out of hours work lol.

High school much harder but they still get triple the time off to everyone else

In my experience, primary school teaching is much, much harder than secondary. Trying to wrangle 5-11 year old kids for hours of learning is impossible to begin with, and the learning is on average far more practical with activities that involve heaps of setup and creation by the teachers for each use. Comparatively, teaching English or humanities subjects at high school is 90% ICT-based learning which, because of the curriculum structure, is easily recycled from one class to the next and requires minimal 'maintenance' time.

I'd rather uppercut myself into oblivion than teach primary school.

 

[burge13]

Yeah but you also don't get the government, media, general online denizens, all attacking your profession 24/7.

I'm in the public service, so yeah we do

 

[Chief]

I'm in the public service, so yeah we do

Touché.

 

[Carringbush2010]

Seems the narrative has gone to value of certain jobs versus other jobs and what they're paid, which to me is an even more valid conversation.

I find it wrong, that I earn roughly 20k more, work for a week then have a week off, all my flights, food and accom paid for when I'm at work than my cousin cop who has to deal with aholes, weird hours and an overall very demanding job.

Instead of the argument:

Women are discriminated against, it's conspired versus logical and practical reasons for the 'overall' gap, like females gravitate to jobs that don't pay as much.

 

[ShanDog]

Not all of the pay gap is discrimination. That's known.

Some of it is. That's known.

Some of it is by industry. Some of it is workplace structure. Some of it is devaluing certain types of work. And more.

The majority of those issues you mention have little to do with gender when you consider that by and large, society recognises the men and women are capable of performing all jobs with very few exceptions.

Women can get into whatever industry they want. Barriers to progression are few and far between, and of course are illegal if they are discriminatory.

Workplace structure is also something we can hardly avoid if you're referring to the need for women to take time off for childbirth and maternity. Until we start incubating all children in pods, it's a fact of life. It's also a great privilege for women to be able to give birth to their children and something men will never get to experience. I think that's far more undervalued than women's work these days!

 

[Chief]

They are part of the same conversation.

I mean, when a male's wage was set to "minimum needed to support a wife and two children" while a female's wage was "minimum to support a single woman looking for a husband" you had people who thought that was perfectly fine and not a valid topic for argument.

 

[ShanDog]

Seems the narrative has gone to value of certain jobs versus other jobs and what they're paid, which to me is an even more valid conversation.

I find it wrong, that I earn roughly 20k more, work for a week then have a week off, all my flights, food and accom paid for when I'm at work than my cousin cop who has to deal with aholes, weird hours and an overall very demanding job.

Instead of the argument:

Women are discriminated against, it's conspired versus logical and practical reasons for the 'overall' gap, like females gravitate to jobs that don't pay as much.

I'm here protecting you bunch of bottom feeding, ill-disciplined, long-haired rabble-rousing unpatriotic scumbags with my life and yet my partner earns $20k more than me with a company car for selling ******* potato chips.

s**t happens

 

[Chief]

The majority of those issues you mention have little to do with gender when you consider that by and large, society recognises the men and women are capable of performing all jobs with very few exceptions.

I don't see this as the case at all. Publicly those are the claims and few people want to give an opinion otherwise as it's socially limiting. But plenty of people - bosses, owners, colleagues - simply believe that men are a better fit for a lot of work for whatever reason they use to justify it. Differences that arise in blind hiring are to my mind proof of this.

Except sometimes when the organisation has already arrived at a more enlightened state:

Some studies, however, have been less positive on the effects of blind hiring. For instance, employers in France were less likely to select applicants from minority social groups for interviews when applicants’ names were blinded versus when they were provided on materials. Consistent with this finding, a large study in Germany found that blind hiring only boosted interview rates for job applicants from minority groups when employers tended to discriminate against applicants from those groups under a traditional process. For employers who were more likely to interview applicants from minority groups under a traditional process, however, the use of a blind hiring policy negated that tendency, leading to worse interview selection rates for applicants from minority groups.

When Blind Hiring Advances DEI — and When It Doesn’t

As a decision-making strategy, “blind hiring” involves blocking evaluators from receiving potentially biasing information about a job candidate until after an evaluation of their application materials are complete. Most famously, the tactic was used to boost the hiring of women in orchestras by...

hbr.org

The orgs that throw up the wall at interview "should focus on solutions that address biases during interviews and selection decisions afterward".

Women can get into whatever industry they want. Barriers to progression are few and far between, and of course are illegal if they are discriminatory.

There are always ways around that - setting criteria that you know work against certain groups. Procedural fairness versus substantive discrimination.

Workplace structure is also something we can hardly avoid if you're referring to the need for women to take time off for childbirth and maternity. Until we start incubating all children in pods, it's a fact of life. It's also a great privilege for women to be able to give birth to their children and something men will never get to experience. I think that's far more undervalued than women's work these days!

That's a part of it, yes. But paid parental leave and Super is needed. Having a child is an adjustment financially but it shouldn't break the bank for a two-income professional couple, or feed through to worse retirement outcomes which is happening now.

 

[Chief]

I'm here protecting you bunch of bottom feeding, ill-disciplined, long-haired rabble-rousing unpatriotic scumbags with my life and yet my partner earns $20k more than me with a company car for selling ******* potato chips.

s**t happens

My day:

 

[Carringbush2010]

They are part of the same conversation.

I mean, when a male's wage was set to "minimum needed to support a wife and two children" while a female's wage was "minimum to support a single woman looking for a husband" you had people who thought that was perfectly fine and not a valid topic for argument.

But wages aren't 'set up' for 50s style mum, dad and 2.3 kids or 'set up' to discriminate against single mums anymore.

As Shan has pointed out, the avenues for deliberate discrimination is non existent.

That sort of thinking 'you had people who thought that was perfectly fine and not a valid topic for argument.' rarely exists anymore.

The whole gender pay gap is largely a result of logical and practical reasons, not some sort weekly meeting of men to punch down on women conspiracy.

In short the way it's reported in the media and discussed by some would have you believe that there is some sort of collective mens movement with ulterior motives. Rarely is it reported the real reasons for the gap, it's all about percentages that women get less = society is punching down on women.

Honestly, yes there's probably exceptions of minuscule proportions, but this shouldn't even be a debate.