By Lynn Beaton
One more time: why are women underpaid?
At a conference on inequality, at the University of New South Wales a few weeks ago, a study was presented which claimed to prove that discrimination has little to do with the earnings gap between men and women.
The Age reported the event in these words: "Discrimination has little to do with the 35% earnings gap between men and women, limiting the effectiveness of equal opportunity laws, a study has found ...
"[The researchers] presented their findings ... to counter claims that programs for equal employment opportunity will reduce the earnings gap."
Where do they find these people? The next day the Financial Review carried a commentary by David Clark, who was ecstatic at the results: "Very bravely, they dared point out that the frequently made claim that female wages were 30-35% lower than male ones was sheer poppycock". And: "Indeed they claimed that only a tiny fraction of the earnings — as distinct from wages — gap that did certainly exist between males and females could be a product of discrimination against females by males ..."
The research admits a 35% gap, then says that good old "reliable survey data" show that 20% of it is caused by women working fewer hours than men. Oh thank you, researchers, for telling us that the wages gap is mostly due to different number of hours worked!
Feminists had never thought of that. We've never raised the question of women doing more part-time work because they can't get full-time jobs, or made claims for more child-care so they can work full time, or talked about women not being offered overtime, or argued that if the domestic load were shared women would be as free as men are to pursue a full-time job. And of course, you're right that none of this has anything to do with discrimination.
Next, "... while splitting up the remaining 15% between different causal factors cannot be done so confidently ... it is likely that about six percentage points is due to the fact that on average women employees are both younger and have less work experience than men".
Now why would that be? Could it be that the work patterns of women are different from men's because women leave the workforce to have children, and until recently there was no maternity leave?
After children are born they have to be looked after, and who does that for no pay? Then, after being out of the workforce for x years, women are told they have no skills, or their skills are outdated — but this is not discrimination in the opinion of the Financial Review.
Did David Clark take time away from his career to raise children? Is he paid more than most women who did? Does he know that many of the equal opportunity programs he deplores are designed to help overcome suffer because of child-bearing? Perhaps he thinks they should just give up having children — now there's a thought.
Clark claims the study "leaves only 5% points which are due to discrimination — including the discrimination which segregates women into particular occupations and industries". (This is despite the fact that "At least another five percentage points is due to the fact that married men receive on average a bigger differential over single men than do married women over single women". Apparently this is another example of non-discrimination.)
But even if we accept all the dodgy arguments, 5% is 5%. That is, for every dollar a man gets, a woman gets 95c. On a wage of $30,000, a woman would get only $28,500, $1500 less than a man. Would David Clark work for $1500 less than someone else just because of his gender? And if he had to, wouldn't he think it was a good idea for the government to spend something on eradicating that discrimination?
Or is there another agenda? Do he actually believe women deserve less pay?
Lynn Beaton is a research worker at Jobwatch in Melbourne.