Comments on: Why Pay Equalisation is Bad News for Women

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:13:15 +0000

People in the same jobs should be paid the same base wage, irrespective of their gender/capabilities/skillset.

The amount of experience you have in your job is irrelevant. What matters is what you do with it.

Having a degree is irrelevant yet typically those with degrees get paid more than those without one.
Does having a degree make you more capable than someone who doesn’t have one ? It doesn’t to me. A degree says to me that you spent a number of years studying and are probably better equipped to perform a role in that area. It certainly is not a guarantee of high performance.
Its what you deliver that counts, not the degree that you have.

If two people are performing the same role and delivering the same end product within the same confines, why should either one of them be paid any differently ? In my profession, smart managers don’t hire people because they are cheap. Smart managers hire people who they believe can perform the role.

Does it make sense to pay Joe $50 to dig holes because he has 10 years experience digging holes ? Does his experience guarantee me a decent hole ?
Does it make sense to pay Jeff $40 to dig holes because he has only 5 years experience ?
Maybe I could pay them both $30, and reward the person who most accurately meets the requirements for the holes ?
If the quality of their work is identical, how could any person rationally argue that one should be paid more than the other ?
One should think the person with the most experience would perform better and therefore earn more rewards.

People who take time off for what ever reason will not perform as well and therefore will not be rewarded in the same way as their peers. This to me is fair. You get paid for what you deliver.

Performance matters.
Reward your good performers with incentives.
Help your poor performers to be more competitive.

By: Hugh Jorgen

Hugh Jorgen — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 04:35:17 +0000

Men deserve to earn more they work longer over a lifetime do not take time off for children, take less sick days (women in my office constantly take days off for “womens issues”). This debate is old hat and driven by the usual bunch of leftie feminists.

By: W.Hawil

W.Hawil — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 08:38:39 +0000

What about reverse pay discrimination; take tennis; in all the four grand-slam tournaments the men have to play best out of five sets, where as the woman play only best out of three and get the same pay.
I have not heard many male players to complain about, and the media hasn’t the guts to point this out.

By: Dexter

Dexter — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 01:33:05 +0000

I think the issue here is not about levels of pay but about roles in the household. The issue of equality I think is fairly prehistoric and rather than look retrospectively at salaries we should look at current data.
The UK have paid maternity leave to women for years. Margaret Thatcher was leader 30 years before Australia had a female leader. Perhaps we should move with the times and hold our politicians more accountable for their frivolous and wasteful spending then continually hamper joe public in their efforts to get by against rising living costs and taxes.

By: Pip

Pip — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:13:49 +0000

So the good ol’ dinosaurs are still alive and well and are living in my computer! The chief economist of the National Bank of NZ trotted out this same old chestnut at least twenty years ago and received much the same reaction as this latest gem from Money Morning. We all know that of lies, damn lies and statistics, statistics are the best way of obscuring the truth – pay rates and advancement/promotion practices are far more complex and are driven by factors other than just “the market” . Let’s be real – payrate disparity does not happen just at the beginning of a person’s working career, but is more likely to appear and expand over the course of that career because (often white male) employers relate better to those employees similar to themselves (in other words, employers are just as likely not to be economically rational as the rest of us – let’s just look at the multi-million dollar remmuneration packets for some of those CEOs). There are plenty of research findings to the effect that women are often more loyal, work harder, are more productive and make more sacrifices than do their male counterparts yet do not get paid as much. Leave it to the market? I don’t think so!

By: Peter C

Peter C — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:33:52 +0000

Raised the topic of paid maternity leave with my wife who is a State Mng for a international company. I suggested that it would be tough for S to M companies to have to keep a job open for somenone who may or may not return to work and employ someone else for a potentially unknown period of time – ohh and someone who probably is less skilled in that role and therefor probably less productive. Not many people who want to work full time only want to do that for 6 months or whatever either.
Her comment? Don’t employ women of child bearing age! Most companies can’t afford to run the risk.
Mmmm – I agree, but as this is Policitically incorrect to say (according to the left leaning, feminist groups as well as other just plain socially minded without an understanding of economics and a certain Govt Dept dealing with discrimination), I’ll just keep that view to myself!
Fortunately our sole female employee (in a company of 4), has just got engaged and announced she has at last found a man who also does not want children. Suffice to say, there was a small sigh of relief in the boardroom!
I know for a fact I am not alone in thinking like this.
This, combined with equal pay may make employing females in some occupations and busnesses just plain unviable and/or could easily introduce subtle discrimination openly practiced by Head Hunters, HR Managers and the Recruitment Industry. We all know that they do it already by and large. So what is a bit more?
Imagine the rejection letter commencing ” We regret to inform you that you have been unsuccessful this time due to your lack of ten consecutive years in the industry. As we mentioned, our client stipulated that this was to be a criteria we recruited on due to the nature of the everchanging technology/ roles/ science/ whatever in the industry. ….”
MMmmmmm … welcome to the real world!

By: SD

SD — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:52:29 +0000

If women were not happy with their wages then why has the percentage growth of women in the work force been higher than the percentage growth of men in the work force (see Sayce’s graph)?

By: AV

AV — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:25:06 +0000

“According to the Herald Sun, “Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Sharan Burrow admitted the push for a $100 a week pay rise for 200,000 community sector workers was not small.”

Kris – minor mis-calc. Your $20m calc was per week, which equates to $1.04 B per year, the cost being $52 per person per year increase in taxes, but hey, who’s counting? $1…$52… its still our money.

By: RJ

RJ — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:07:35 +0000

Many of you have missed the point. It has nothing to do with who does what and the value of each individuals efforts, regardlees of gender.
The EMPLOYER’s choice of who he or she will employ will be made MORE clear and it will be based on costs.
As per my comment above, female unemployment will increase and the female /male employment ratio will widen negatively towards women.
I will find it increasingly difficult to employ women under these conditions, not because I am a chauvenist pig but because it just doesn’t stack up. I’m not going to have to pay a pregnant man to not be at work.

These are popularist policies designed for women to sing ‘yay’ with their votes, but the benefits will be for the very few.

By: Sandra

Sandra — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:21:30 +0000

Reading my above post (43) again i see it may be a bit ambiguous.
What i meant was for a middle/upper management position, there should/would be no difference in salary between men and older (Baby Boomer) women.
So yes – i do believe that older women would earn more (in total) than younger women, simply because they would be able to work longer/more hours – on average – than younger women.

but again, the hourly rates would all be the same!