New Trades Union Congress (TUC) analysis reveals Women’s Pay Day – the day when the average woman stops working for free compared to the average man – is today, Wednesday 21 February. In some industries and in some parts of the country where the gender pay gap is wider, women effectively work for free for even longer
Women’s Pay Day: 52 days of working for free
New TUC analysis published on 21 February reveals that the average woman effectively works for free for nearly two months of the year compared to the average man. This is because the gender pay gap for all employees currently stands at 14.3%.
This pay gap means that working women must wait 52 days – nearly two months – before they stop working for free on Women’s Pay Day today.
And the analysis also shows that at current rates of progress, it will take 20 years – until 2044 – to close the gender pay gap.
read more: https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/02/21/womens-pay-day/
Wasn’t gender pay gap basically explained when we consider all the factors like motherhood and weekly hours worked?
Yes. People keep spreading the myth that Jack and Jane in the same job working the same hours at the same company during the same year earn $1 and 70c respectively. Even the government sources used to back up their arguments state that the pay gap is as a result of an overall snapshot of the workforce, taking into account a huge multitude of factors.
Not paying men and women the same amount for the same job is very, very illegal, at least here in Australia.
That absolutely doesn’t take into account of women being promoted less often and thus making less money while being over-qualified for their position.
If those were the only factors I’d expect to see a pay gap that’s roughly the same size across the developed world. But that’s not the case.
Sometimes that is what happens though.
Sometimes it also happens in reverse, I believe this conversation is about seeing when it does shake out unfairly. Could you share something more verifiable than a general statement of sometimes?
Your own article states that Google has problems assigning women to appropriate pay bands, assigning women to lower pay bands despite having similar qualifications to their male counterparts.
And in some companies Jane earns more than Jack. Should Jack be given a pay raise? Are there other factors involved?
Yes. The 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics was given to Claudia Goldin for her research into the gender pay gap. Here’s a great breakdown of her research and findings. The tl;dw is that in every country men have an employment rate higher than women. The worldwide average is 80% for men and 50% for women. This is why women make less than men. There are a variety of reasons for that, but the biggest seems to be that women get pregnant and necessarily need to take time off work because of it. Goldin’s suggestion was that women’s employment rates could increase if workplaces allowed for more flexible schedules or work from home.
And why do you think they do that?
It’s because they’ve been raised in a society that pressures them to do so, and punishes them if they don’t.
It’s not fair enough to punish women with lower wages because they perform billions of dollars worth of unpaid labor with house and child care.
Not entirely, and those factors constitute part of the pay gap and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.
If you’ve got 6 minutes and like John Green I’m quite fond of his overview
https://youtu.be/it0EYBBl5LI?si=5L_qAqqV0v5S7uGW
Great video. I hate the argument that it’s like 70/100 because people can argue it’s wrong. Rather than focus on the actual values 96/100 which can’t be argued.