Unions still barking up wrong tree on gender pay discrimination with zero solutions for working parents
It will take almost 100 years to close gender pay gap at current rate
If New Zealand’s gender pay gap continues to close at its current rate, it will be almost 100 years after the passing of the Equal Pay Act before women are paid the same as men.
The Council of Trade Unions each year calculates the date that women start working for “free”, because of the difference in their wages compared to what men earn.
For all women, compared to all men, that date is 28 November.
But compared to Pākehā men, Pasifika women start working for free from Friday. Asian women hit the “free” date on 21 October.
The gender pay gap currently sits at 8.9 percent. It is down from 14.9 percent in 2008 but increased for a period during the pandemic.
The Gender Pay Gap debate in NZ has always felt like a lot of white tertiary educated women at Boardroom level management pissed off they aren’t getting the same sweet deals the boys are getting.
Less Les Misérables and more Laissez-faire miserable.
Surely the harvest of civil society should be a wee bit broader than the Professional Female Management Class?
At the centre of the Gender Pay Gap is the biological reality women carry the babies. If we as a liberal progressive society want to ensure everyone has equal agency, then surely recognising biological reality is a starting point?
The first 12months should be maternity leave – or paternity leave, either one, but one of the parents should be paid to stay home with the infant for its first year of life. Who else do you want to look after an infant other than the parent?
Meanwhile, ECE should be nationalised and made completely free for 2 year olds to 5 year olds while all after school care should be free.
Childcare costs fall unevenly and unfairly on women, so why not eliminate those costs altogether?
Playing the Gender Pay Gap Game even when implemented, doesn’t lead to the outcomes desired.
If women having babies is stunting their pay careers, then subside the cost of having that kid with 12months maternity/paternity leave, Nationalise ECE and free after school care.
Allowing a parent to stay home with their kid for a year, provide free early education care and free after school care would do more to live up to that promise than anything else.
All we do is make ideological tinkerings to pacify white tertiary educated women at Boardroom level management rather than real biological solutions because 4th wave feminism denounces biological reality.
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Rather than implement a system that encourages children’s parents to work and pay a complete stranger to look raise them instead, would it not be better to have a society that enables parents to look after their own children?
Obviously the first is the most popular – all those people working, paying taxes, increase the velocity of money in the system, increasing GDP, making the rich richer blah blah.
Maybe it’s about time we actually stuck a value on parents doing one of the most valuable jobs in our society.
In many countries, having children is one of the most financially penalized life choices people can make – not least by the tax system that absolutely destroys single earner families. Evidenced by that fact that westerners have pretty much stopped having children altogether.
Isn’t one of the most basic metrics of whether a society is successful whether it is actually sustainable? Even more pertinent where pretty much every western country’s pension system is a ponzi scheme that relies of more people coming in at the bottom to fund those at the top!
Advocacy for female parents Martyn is gratefully acknowledged, as the lack of sisterhood from the elegant, ambitious women rising high in the ranks has been very noticeable. However I am being too hard as I have gone further looking at how all people act as they raise financial status to middle class; they accept it as their individual entitlement and tend to leave behind their poorer and less astute fellows without much compunction. People will run bone shaking marathons for cancer, but not for the cancer of poverty with the often fraught path of missed opportunities and turbulent difficulties.
With the economy and interest rates the way that they are, it might create a,… Gap.
Sure we can create the illusion of gender pay equity/equality etc but it’s a bit slidy doory kind of.
Many men would love to take maternity leave at the same rates as women but they will run into the same career progression issues that plague women.
The whole thing would have to be tightly regulated. Minimum wage, top end taxes, childcare industry, food, etc, etc etc.
It makes no sense that mother’s would want to go it alone and pay out of pocket expenses for perpetuating humanity or that father’s would want to do all the laborious labour limiting career progression. It’s the worst of all possible worlds and none of the good bits.
Where is the love, the love of humanity, the care and attention to detail. The gender pay gap debate misses a lot.
I have given reasoning for why it’s not a market issue as in it doesn’t have the characteristics of a market. Supply and demand can work with monopolies, I claim that wages aren’t set by supply and demand when you have a monopoly. Supply and demand sets wages if there is competition – there is a reason why recession advisory groups go for competitive wages and why most of their public sector jobs like education dont- they’re highly specialized fields with virtually no competition.