Half of the UK public believe that the gender pay gap will never close
42 replies, posted
There is confusion about what the gender pay gap is, with only one in five knowing what it measures
Over half (52%) of all UK adults think that the gender pay gap will never completely close, our new research reveals.
The data shows that while 46% of men believe it will never close, this figure rises to almost six in ten (59%) among women. Older people are also more pessimistic, with over six in ten (63%) people aged 65+ believing it won’t ever disappear, compared to just under half (48%) of under-25s.
The research also highlights the amount of misunderstanding that exists among the public around what the gender pay gap is. A sizable majority (71%) of the public choose the wrong definition – that the gender pay gap is “the difference in pay between men and women doing the same job”. This compares to just one in five (20%) that picked the correct answer – that it is “the difference between average earnings for men and women regardless of what job they do.”
Source - YouGov
It doesn't surprise me at all that most people don't know what it is. The only reason I personally know what the gender pay gap measures is because of YouTube. A lot of news publications heavily distort or omit information for purposes of sensationalism.
That's pretty concerning that people don't completely understand, like I could see how if you thought women were straight up being paid 4/5ths as much there were some pretty deep problems
Is it any wonder people use the wrong definition when they constantly have it parrotted by news and other media devoid of context with heavy implication or outright claim that it's the result of sexism, and therefore a comparason between two otherwise roughly identical people doing the same work?
It's something i can only describe as dishonest propagandizing, intentional or not. And worse still, to say "we need to stop the wage gap between the sexes!" is to, knowingly or not, say "the elective free choices of all of the individuals that make up these two groups is incorrect and must be fixed". And when you're arguing against the nature of individuals manifesting itself fully, something has gone wrong.
Equality of outcome is a hell of a drug.
While pretty concerning I don't think many of those who do understand are very surprised about this. People in the media to the advocates in street protests declaring that women are being paid less for doing the same work as a man help to mislead people into believing this falsehood and it's shameful.
That said, even controlling for things like education level and experience, there's still a small but significant gap of several percent.
the only credible significant numbers i've seen are between 2% and 5%, which is easily accounted for by things like agreeableness, which affects one's ability to negotiate salaries, for example. Not to say that unreasonable discrimination doesn't or can't exist, but there's a thousand other reasons to explain the discrepency, which are simpler, more obvious, and easier to deal with than the cartoonishly simple idea of "it's just overt discrimination by the western patriarchal institutions", as so frequently claimed at the highest levels of influence
Given that males tend to work longer hours and take harder jobs on average, I can totally see that contributing to a small gap however I can't see education being force helping to create this gap when more women than men are graduating from higher level education these days. All things considered, if there is a small gap as you say it's something that is the cause of peoples decisions and not sexism so I don't it as a problem.
I like how the gender income gap gets so much attention but no one ever mentions the MUCH larger workplace death gap. Women getting paid around 20% less on average is a travesty, but men making up 90%+ of the workplace deaths, well, who cares?
A) Workplace deaths don't affect 50% of the population
B) Problems don't come to light without someone bringing them to light. So bring more attention to the problem.
C) We can care about the wage gap without being indifferent to other issues. The wage gap isn't getting attention at the expense of workplace deaths, so they "why care about x when y" is just a totally worthless approach.
Can someone explain to me why equality of outcome seems to be the aim, rather than equality of opportunity?
Of course women should be paid the same for the same job, and have the same opportunities if they want to. But it seems pretty clear at this point a large chunk of the wage gap is due to differing choices in job types, riskier jobs, etc.
Sometimes it's an issue for men as well. My employer is sexist as fuck towards men. The woman in charge of the admin team refuses to interview men, so all the men in the company are in higher paid positions, and literally can not get into the lower paid admin positions. I'm the lowest paid guy in the company doing devops, this creates a massive pay gap but it's not because women can't get the higher paid positions.
because it's a completely separate issue and this post is textbook whataboutism?
Not a suggestion of what to focus on going forward, just my personal contention with what I feel is a priority issue. Both statistics are well known and established, you would have no problem finding someone who knows which gender is far more likely to die at the workplace, the problem would be finding someone who cares all that much to the point of wanting that to be changed. Also the same logic by which the wage gap affects 50% of the population (women) is the same logic by which men having far more dangerous jobs affects 50% of the population (men). Unless you want to divvy up the issue to only those being directly affected, only taking into account those women supposedly getting paid less for the same job and those men (non-supposedly) working dangerous jobs. We SHOULD care about both, but we don't, the majority only cares about one issue, and I'd like that to change. There are people who try to focus on the workplace deaths issue, but they tend to be denied a platform, shot down as MRAs (a very dirty word), and never get any focus from officials and media the way the pay gap does.
Without a doubt, it's disgusting how people fighting against issues that affect men tend to be treated and even branded with dirty words. Workplace death's will never be an issue that'll get the same attention from officials and the media unless the people care enough about it and I doubt they ever will to the same extent as the pay gap.
It doesn't affect anywhere near 50% of men, however. Most workplace fatalities apply to a small portion of jobs.
And yeah I'd agree that there are certain issues men face like that, custody rights, suicide rates, etc.. But one pretty large issue that is good spokespeople for those issues are scarce. They're branded MRAs because largely, the people that are vocal about this unfortunately seem to be MRAs.
What's the issue with MRA's? I understand they can be cringy sometimes but otherwise I haven't seen too much wrong with them.
The "50%" talk wasn't to say that 50% of men are affected. Godong said that workplace deaths "don't affect 50%" of the population, implying that the income gap, on the other hand, did. I pointed out that by the same logic that all women are affected by the pay gap, men are affected by workplace fatalities. The point being that neither statement is correct, because not all women earn less than men and not all men work dangerous jobs. Also I have to ask what the inherent issue with MRAs is. The term in and of itself only means 'Men's Rights Activist'. Anyone who cares about things like the suicide rates and custody rights enough to campaign about it is, in theory, an MRA.
Probably not referring to actual real mras but rather twitter mras who care more about shitting on women than they care about men and obscure the legitimate ones.
I mean sure, but if we're going to be even handed with the dismissal of whole movements we should also go ahead and toss out feminism because, whoops, some loud chicks in the media are more aptly described as man-haters than actual activists.
I understand that those who consider themselves as mgtow or incels have a reputation of shitting on women and I would bet that it's those people you are referring to.
It's a very large proportion of women this affects, larger than those who work jobs with common fatalities.
That's just a name. I don't care about how pretty a label is, all it serves as is a pointer to those who actually bear it.
The analysis they tend to base their worldview on is very undeveloped (e.g. completely missing the toxic masculinity aspect of suicide) and they spend so much of their time attacking feminists and positing reactionary bullshit. The MRM isn't a unified movement, but you can look at the big hitters like r/mgtow, r/mensrights, a voice for men, etc. to see what I'm talking about.
I would also contest that mgtow and mras are not the same group given they have separate values.
I have yet to hear one women come out of the MRA movement and say anything as egregious that, mind providing some examples?
Could you explain further about this toxic masculinity regarding male suicide?
"Doesn't change the content" just like how the portion of the movement you're basing the whole upon doesn't change the validity of the points they do make. For one, I wouldn't lump in MGTOW with the larger MRA movement much in the same way I wouldn't lump in MLK with the Black Panthers. One wants their issues to be addressed, the other wants total separation. Also they have really no chance on their own of gaining publicity other than making rebuttals of popular feminist talk points. Also I'm interested in what you mean by the "toxic masculinity" aspect to suicide. Generally the higher suicide rate of men is attributed to using more reliable methods of suicide, and most suicide in general can be attributed to mental illness or extremely poor quality in life due to external factors.
You're still trying to deflect attention away from an issue.
I would question its status as an 'issue' in the first place. I wouldn't say this if women legitimately made less for the same amount of work, but what very little we do see of women making less for the same position is attributable to many factors other than "i pay womyn less because the patriarchy lets me". Also it just seemed relevant to point out what to me seemed a much more egregious issue than pay. Women making less would be wrong, but on the other hand we're talking about LIVES.
As I said, they aren't unified. But you see a lot of overlap when you watch their events and forums. You are right, that there are a lot of shitty feminists. But I however find their body of work much more useful when it comes to analyzing the way things are and how they can be improved, and it provides a more useful mechanism for getting things done.
As egregious as what, by the way? How about women like this:
GirlWritesWhat on “The Necessity of Domestic Violence”
Toxic masculinity refers to the stereotypes of masculinity that hurt men. In the case of suicide, men are MUCH less likely to attempt to seek help, or to express their pain in appropriate ways (e.g. they're more likely to hold it in.)
This discussion is about pay discrepancy. I agree that workplace deaths are a more significant issue but it just isn't really the current topic.
The pay gap is demonstrable when considering certain criteria but its existence and significance depends heavily on what data you look at, what factors you control for, and what data you normalize. Workplace culture is a very likely culprit, corporate America is, in general, not kind to women. In many instances it is actively hostile.
Starting pay for workers with the same experience is nearly identical across genders but after that is where it begins to diverge. Women get fewer and smaller raises. The difference is not enormous but it is demonstrable and outside of likely margin of error.
Shit's complicated.
There's also the incarceration gap, over 90% male in the US. But the US's incarceration is essentially legalized human trafficking lobbied for by prison corporations, so they prefer having men since they make better workers.
Many MRA figures I've seen speak much of that exact issue, that one of the most harmful factors to men is the societal conditioning that masculinity itself entails. Emotional repression is a major factor in men's unhappiness, and I think if you were to say that to the more reasonable elements of the MRA movement, you would be preaching to the choir.
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