Salary inequalities

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Just heard a comment on television that for every pound a man earns women earn 58p. I think every single job I've ever had had fixed salary bands regardless of sex. Can anyone provide any examples of professions where woman earn less? I'm genuinely curious.
 
Scan read that, some interesting data. Few things jump out, men on average earn more but they have a higher percentage of high earners like directors and company owners which raises the average. Will read and digest further.
 
DaveR said:
Just heard a comment on television that for every pound a man earns women earn 58p. I think every single job I've ever had had fixed salary bands regardless of sex. Can anyone provide any examples of professions where woman earn less? I'm genuinely curious.
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Sport, in general.

I've heard some interesting comments on this by Jordan Peterson (clinical psychologist that many will have heard of).

According to studies, in general women are more interested in people, men are more interested in things. At an individual level, the difference may be small, maybe only a 60%/40% split in the normal population. However, it is why you tend to see more female nurses, and more male engineers. Even in societies, like in Scandinavia, were the difference between men and woman (inequality) surprisingly increases, when males and females were given more free choice.

However, because there is a difference in what interests men and women, according to these studies, then at the extreme ends of these probability distributions you will get virtually all men (interested in things), along with other characteristics associated with males. So, at that end of the spectrum, were you have the people in the world that are extremely interested in things, who are incredibly driven to work and sacrifice social / family life, etc., then it will almost entirely be men (no longer a 60/40 split, as we are looking at the extreme ends of the normal distribution curve). These sorts of characteristics are better suited for high pressure, demanding management type jobs, which is why far more men are in the higher paid management jobs. It is why many of the richest people in the world are men. Elon Musk is a rare breed, were he is just at the very top of the scale in many characteristics that allow a person to become a mega billionaire.

I'd like to think, in our western society, that the sex of a person is not actually a real barrier to getting a job. At least in 99% of cases, ruling out the odd bad case of sexism. Females also get the same education. According to Google, girls out perform males in humanities, languages and reading, while boys do better in maths (although if teachers are awarding grades, there is a bias towards giving females better grades and so they might actually get better grades in maths - Source = Sky News). So, the pay gap won't be because females get a poorer education than males. It is more to do with the fact that females tend to, in general, go for jobs that are more interested in people, and these are less well paid. Whereas men will generally go for jobs that are interested in things, which might not win them many friends either, like management and tend to get better paid.

But, at any rate, if we were to magically get rid of the pay gap, I doubt it would be as easy as just clicking your fingers and making everyone get paid the same. Firstly, many people are self employed and so set their own salary. And, for those that are employed, there are vastly different proportions of males and females in any given job, different jobs that have different salaries. I'd like to think that any job, for example a managers job at a public company, will have the same salary, regardless of whether the position is a male or female. I doubt it would be advertised as having a salary of £60,000 if a male applies, but £34,800 if a female applies. However, you may find that many more males apply for such a position, and therefore over the UK, many more males are in these higher paid roles.
 
Wife works in construction. When she left her last position she found out that a man who worked for her earned more than her as his manager.
 
GB72 said:
Wife works in construction. When she left her last position she found out that a man who worked for her earned more than her as his manager.
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Did she question it, or was there a reason behind it (like, was he in a specialist position)? Would be interesting to know the reasoning behind it from her employers. I guess a manager doesn't always get paid more than the person they manage (football being another good example)
 
Swango1980 said:
Did she question it, or was there a reason behind it (like, was he in a specialist position)? Would be interesting to know the reasoning behind it from her employers. I guess a manager doesn't always get paid more than the person they manage (football being another good example)
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She only found out 48 hours before she left that company for a new role and so never queries it further. Not more specialised though, she ran a health and safety team working across 3 companies including utilities and was far more senior and experienced that her team.
 
Swango1980 said:
Did she question it, or was there a reason behind it (like, was he in a specialist position)? Would be interesting to know the reasoning behind it from her employers. I guess a manager doesn't always get paid more than the person they manage (football being another good example)
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My employee manager is on same wage as me roughly and the people who manage the shift are on more than him

We all report to him

However we do shift work 24/7 and he does Monday to Friday 9-5
 
AmandaJR said:
There seems to be a lot of deflection on here about the gender pay gap. It exists, it always has, it may be improving but it shouldn't exist full stop.
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But, it is interesting to know exactly what we are talking about

Are we saying that men and women are getting paid differently for exactly the same job? If so, that would appear just wrong and needs to be addressed

Or, does a lot of it exist (for every pound a man earns, a woman earns 58p as per OP) simply because men and women are generally in different occupations, where it just so happens that men are generally in higher paid occupations? Does this average figure comparison include the likes of extreme professions, where a Premiership footballer could be getting paid £100,000 - £1 million a week (salary and endorsements), or does it ignore the extremes?

I'm guessing there is a bit of both from the above. The first one must be a lot easier to address (I am sure many companies are addressing this, otherwise they'd surely face discrimination lawsuits). The second one, how do we solve it, except for somehow ensure there is an equal amount of men and women in every profession, so that we can discount the difference in salaries that are due to the profession itself, rather than the gender of the person doing it?
 
In the 2022 salary survey for my industry, only 19% of the people who filled it out were female. There isnt a breakdown on salary based on gender in the report.
 
You can search by company's reports and then the median pay gap...

The median gender pay gap figure
This is the difference between the hourly pay of the median man and the hourly pay of the median woman. The median for each is the man or woman who is in the middle of a list of hourly pay ordered from highest to lowest paid.


A median involves listing all of the numbers in numerical order. If there is an odd number of results, the median is the middle number. If there is an even number of results, the median will be the mean of the two central numbers.


Medians are useful to indicate what the ‘typical’ situation is. They are not distorted by very high or low hourly pay (or bonuses). However, this means that not all gender pay gap issues will be picked up. They could also fail to pick up as effectively where the gender pay gap issues are most pronounced in the lowest paid or highest paid employees.

First few I look at all had a difference in the above number.
 
GB72 said:
Wife works in construction. When she left her last position she found out that a man who worked for her earned more than her as his manager.
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In construction it’s mainly price work. So you’re paid for the amount of work done. If the main site manager earns say 55k he’ll be nowhere near the top earners on site. Sure he’ll get pension, bonus ext but some guys earning well I’ve 100k.
 
Jason.H said:
In construction it’s mainly price work. So you’re paid for the amount of work done. If the main site manager earns say 55k he’ll be nowhere near the top earners on site. Sure he’ll get pension, bonus ext but some guys earning well I’ve 100k.
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These were salaried jobs working in the head office rather than site based price work so not quite the same. Agreed, when she was contracting it was a different ball game.
 
All these studies need to be clear what they are actually comparing. People on the same grade, doing the same work should be paid the same regardless of gender. However, just taking what all the males earn and comparing it to what all the females earn is probably incorrect as there are likely to be more males in top positions, therefore distorting the figures.
Take the military for example, a male Cpl Engineer will earn the same as a female Cpl Engineer (if they have the same career length and time in rank) but if you took the overall earnings of males in the military then the average wage would be much higher than the average females wages as the top brass is (almost) exclusively male. This is a totally separate discussion that I don't wish to start.
 
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