Youth workforce report reveals gender pay gaps

Peter Hart - 29 January 2010

Now, I know I'm a man, which means I'm probably just part of the problem - but isn't there always going to be a gender gap in wages, and NOT through any sexist means?

Take a snapshop of 35 year olds in the UK today in graduate positions. Most men will have worked all 13 years since graduating. Many, maybe even most, women will probably have had one or more children by then, possibly only working 10-11 years.

The gap in pay, therefore, is simply because woman cannot move as fast up a pay scale in the first decade or two of their careers, because they won't have had the same amount of experience as a similarly aged man. If this is the reason of a gender gap I think my advice is 'get over it'. I'm statistically less likely to live as long as a woman, but you don't see me whinging :) 

Just putting it forward as a possibility.... and trying to make myself unpopular in the meantime.

Beverley Smith - 29 January 2010

This probably reflects the bias of promotion -that somehow men are better at being in charge. It does confirm an irony though. It was bad enough that society assumed men were better than women at running businesses but in the softer areas of caregiving of the young, women's areas historically, one would h ave hoped women's particular skills would be valued. But we have historically seen a reverence of male doctors to tell us how to nurse babies- eg .Dr. Spock, male cooks telling us how to cook, and now even males telling us how to tend teens. The subtle intrusion of gender bias is really pervasive. To correct it we must still work at reversing basic assumptions that women are not very good at anything and second, that roles women do historically are not very important.