Society/Culture The Gender Pay Gap

[jatz14]

Not sure you would find many objectionable engineers. If I can find my graduation photo you will laugh and agree.
Engineering has high drop out rates at the Uni I went to due to the difficulty. I didn't notice a skew either way (male or female) and if there was it wouldn't have been due to discriminating against a gender. If a female wanted a reasonably wealthy and extremely stable life (cause that's what they want right?) they could do worse then completing an engineering degree and having their pick of 100+ itching males.
Not sure how you can find an industry objectionable before you even enter it? Even the most perceived male dominated of industry of engineering IMO being Construction has NAWIC to support female engineers.
I really don't even know what point you are trying to make? I'm giving insight to what I know and more than happy to answer your questions. But stuffed if I'm looking up stats for you and arguing those, could not be arsed.
If you dont believe me send me a CV of a good female engineer and I'll likely hire her: I am a man of the people after all

The point I am making is this.

I have no doubt that women being under represented in engineering is at least partly due to women just not being attracted to the industry, however I have a problem with the arguments put forward about this. My problem isn't with the engineering industry but the nature of the debate on the topic and the conclusions drawn on ambiguous data.

The points being made so far are,
There is a push to get women into engineering.
Women get hired over men in entry level positions.
People are not seeing evidence of sexual discrimination at uni or in the industry.
There is still a massive Male bias in the industry.

What is your conclusion from this, is female participation low just because?

Could there be factors in play you do not know.

Is it possible that if we had a female engineering graduate in this discussion, that she would vehemently disagree with your assessment?

If there was sexual harassment/bias at uni, are you certain you would know? Did everyone at the institutions embroiled in scandal know and ignore it, or did most not involved, not know?

Are you really sure you know what the experience of being in the industry is for a young women, or are you assuming based on your perceptions.

Is the argument, we have female focussed hiring policies, and it looks like a female friendly industry to me, therefore the disparity must be down to women themselves, sufficient?

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[Jello_B]

The point I am making is this.

I have no doubt that women being under represented in engineering is at least partly due to women just not being attracted to the industry, however I have a problem with the arguments put forward about this. My problem isn't with the engineering industry but the nature of the debate on the topic and the conclusions drawn on ambiguous data.

The points being made so far are,
There is a push to get women into engineering.
Women get hired over men in entry level positions.
People are not seeing evidence of sexual discrimination at uni or in the industry.
There is still a massive Male bias in the industry.

What is your conclusion from this, is female participation low just because?

Could there be factors in play you do not know.

Is it possible that if we had a female engineering graduate in this discussion, that she would vehemently disagree with your assessment?

If there was sexual harassment/bias at uni, are you certain you would know? Did everyone at the institutions embroiled in scandal know and ignore it, or did most not involved, not know?

Are you really sure you know what the experience of being in the industry is for a young women, or are you assuming based on your perceptions.

Is the argument, we have female focussed hiring policies, and it looks like a female friendly industry to me, therefore the disparity must be down to women themselves, sufficient?

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I have answered what I know, you are choosing to start a debate I'm not interested in so good luck with whatever you want to hear.
Harassment, bias, scandal (wtf) you honestly need to spend time thinking about anything but this.

 

[nylexbandit]

Where I work the pay bands are very narrow so outside the slight differences for performance (which they force to be rated with gender equality in mind) you know men and women get effectively the same.

When you then add in paid maternity leave for 16 weeks, and a general two child outcome, a situation arises where you have women having 32 additional weeks off in a three year period as compared to men in the same circumstances. When it comes to promoted, provided the woman doesn't take the piss when they come back, the time off is not held against them, so they are often promoted at the same time as those who remain working.

Of course, there is the option for men to take paternity leave, however 1) that requires them to be primary carer, and in the past 5 years not one man has had a wife who agreed to go back to work and allow home to be primary carer; and 2) there is a very definite bias against men doing so (confirmed by conversations with the bosses who said they can't hold it against a mother, but can against a father).

I reckon the quickest way to gender equality in pay would be to get more blokes taking leave. Obviously there are biological factors making that more difficult, but things aren't meant to be easy.

The current approach seems to just create resentment in the men who are picking up the slack, and also means very capable women have to deal with a bullshit assumption that any promo is some sort of gender equality initiative (given the focus on targets in this area)

 

[Barry_Badrinath]

So women are more highly paid, and have the best graduate jobs then?

Female engineering graduates on average earn $5,000 per year more than males.

Page 3
https://www.wgea.gov.au/sites/default/files/GradStats-factsheet-2014.pdf

Also note that this doesn't mean sexism, but they do tend to get better jobs out of uni.

 

[Scotland]

Also note that this doesn't mean sexism, but they do tend to get better jobs out of uni.

Which is meritocracy.

If it was the other way around it would be sexism.

 

[coerced]

When I studied engineering, 15 years ago, there was a massive push to get women into the discipline. Off the top of my head, IEAust offered scholarships to women just trying the degree. My mates and I didn't care, the way we saw it, the more women the better.

Most of the ones I know who graduated in my year have had kids since and either left the profession or taken on part time work. They are all married to male engineers.

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

Question
Has anyone ever seen a woman being discriminated against or paid less for the same work?????

I my 10 year IT career I have never seen a women being discriminated against.

I have seen less competent women promoted before men and women paid more for the same work.

Also the conditions for women coming back from child-care and taking maternity leave have been nothing short of brilliant.

Am I alone in my experience?

I have been in the workforce for over 30 years now, both public and private. I have never worked with a female who was getting paid less than her male counterpart for working in the same position.

I have worked in positions with women who weren't physically capable (military and prison) of doing certain parts of a job but weren't penalised nor were the males rewarded for picking up the slack.

 

[Chief]

FFS childless women in their 20s are no less privileged in the workforce than men in their 20s.

Lol! You are such a card!


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[BORK]

Lol! You are such a card!


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You know it too.

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

I am not a sexist, but...

Rinse and repeat.

How did you get that from that? There's always one I guess.

 

[Maggie5]

I have been in the workforce for over 30 years now, both public and private. I have never worked with a female who was getting paid less than her male counterpart for working in the same position.

I have worked in positions with women who weren't physically capable (military and prison) of doing certain parts of a job but weren't penalised nor were the males rewarded for picking up the slack.

Since we are sharing personal experiences...
I have seen it many times working over 50 years, females do have to be more assertive.
Example: salary was the same for me and my male colleague but come bonus time it wasn't and took me a couple of years to feel strong enough to challenge. Asked another department manager why this happens and was told that sometimes as well as being competent in your role you also need to be able to 'manage up'. Of course senior management were all men.
Prior to the next bonus, took a list of my KPI's and details of achievements, challenged how bonuses had been distributed in the past - I received the higher bonus! Why did I have to do that? Of course, unlike my colleague, I didn't boast about it.
Sadly it is a matter of knowing your own worth and being prepared to challenge the status quo.

 

[Jello_B]

Since we are sharing personal experiences...
I have seen it many times working over 50 years, females do have to be more assertive.
Example: salary was the same for me and my male colleague but come bonus time it wasn't and took me a couple of years to feel strong enough to challenge. Asked another department manager why this happens and was told that sometimes as well as being competent in your role you also need to be able to 'manage up'. Of course senior management were all men.
Prior to the next bonus, took a list of my KPI's and details of achievements, challenged how bonuses had been distributed in the past - I received the higher bonus! Why did I have to do that? Of course, unlike my colleague, I didn't boast about it.
Sadly it is a matter of knowing your own worth and being prepared to challenge the status quo.

Great point. I look after bonuses and you are correct that normally the most noticeable person gets a higher bonus. It's something you need to be careful of when assigning bonuses. I would add though that even the quieter gents who don't challenge also fall into this trap. This can also be a cultural thing as well, meaning that staff from a different country with different organisational structures can be left out.

 

[Sydney Bloods]

Societal attitudes - including religious, traditional, conservative etc - definitely have an impact on sexism in the work place. They definitely have an impact on how successful women are perceived - even in their own household.

This is what feminism has been about for decades and decades: changing that attitude that women should stay in the kitchen, can't cut it in upper management, shouldn't speak up about their pay, can't do this, can't do that.

You seem to be viewing this through an entirely personal lens. Good on you if you are a great boss and don't have a shred of bias in your hiring and promotion processes.

You also seem to think that everyone, everywhere MUST be entirely rational in their decision making and if there are areas where they aren't, **** em I'm all right Jack.

That type of society is a barren, uninviting place.

what other lens is their to view the world through? claims are being made, claims which i have never come across in my professional career which include me working for both small businesses and large corporations. I'm sure there are sections of society where things aren't honky dory but any businesses partaking in such discrimination will fail in the long run.

Even if you don't support the notion that businesses succeed or fail based on talent alone, statistics show us the majority of university graduates in western countries today are women, in a capitalist society based on constant growth, particularly advanced ones which require more and more people to have degrees in order to advance their careers, the trends in university graduates by virtue of numbers will see the wall between women reaching the upper echelons erode with the next 2 generations.

But once again we're talking about a real issue which is purely an issue of unequal access to top jobs. Now if the gender pay gap argued for this and this alone it would have my support, but it doesn't it, argues for a whole host of bullshit that is miss represented and used to promote useless statistics that tell us nothing in order to make out there's some great societal oppression of women in the workplace in this country, there simply is not it is a myth created from exploiting the fact that many high up positions are "boys clubs" which far from simply excluding women on the basis of them being women exclude anyone who isn't from a certain clique, arguing that we should push to include women into that clique doesn't solve the problem of the clique itself.

you want to push for equality of access you have my support, you want to bitch because you got a smaller bonus or your not viewed as dedicated to the job because you keep knocking back OT for family time i could not give a *, those are YOUR issues. You want the exact same pay across the board and not have to compete, go work in an industry which pays award rates. You want to raise a family, news flash they negatively impact your financial situation, there's a reason the stereotype of powerful rich people as being distant, uncaring parents exists, it's because balancing the family/work lifestyle is hard and often one negatively impacts the other, none of these things are gendered issues.

as for the rest religion can go * itself, traditions can go * themselves, conservatives can go * themselves. there are no real barriers blocking women on the basis of being women from achieving anything in this country, there are perceived barriers which exist only in peoples minds and artificial barriers which were *edly created to "protect" women from having to compete on a level playing field and force them to do their best and in the process exclude them from being their best.

 

[coerced]

Bit of a whinge from the AFL's chief moralising commentator Erin Riley about how the women's league won't get paid enough.

http://junkee.com/players-new-afl-womens-league-will-paid-just-5000/84011

It seems paltry, but it's likely to be more than what most teenaged boys development squads receive, and given time and again its shown that teenage boys sporting teams are better than elite adult women, I'm not sure how this pay is supposedly unfair.

I do agree that the AFL should cover insurance, but thats it. Even if the AFL did pay a little more I'd still imagine the same quarters would have a whinge.

(Posted in correct thread now)

 

[Scotland]

The ANZ Championship (netball) has a salary cap of $270k per team.

This is a sport played by hundreds of thousands of Australians, has a World Cup, is part of the Commonwealth Games etc. and previously paid Channel 10 to broadcast its games. How much should female footy players get paid?

Women's footy is a perfect example of the "equality" debate. There's nothing holding back the creation of a women's national league, it's just that there's so little interest in it that no one wants to pay for it. So the 'well the men...' card comes out. Look at the Foxtel Cup. The best teams from each state league (i.e. guys that are pushing for AFL selection) and it was canned due to lack of interest.

 

[coerced]

I forgot about the Foxtel Cup. I think that's the first place most people saw Ben Brown and thought he was worth a look at AFL level.

 

[DemonTim]

Bit of a whinge from the AFL's chief moralising commentator Erin Riley about how the women's league won't get paid enough.

http://junkee.com/players-new-afl-womens-league-will-paid-just-5000/84011

It seems paltry, but it's likely to be more than what most teenaged boys development squads receive, and given time and again its shown that teenage boys sporting teams are better than elite adult women, I'm not sure how this pay is supposedly unfair.

I do agree that the AFL should cover insurance, but thats it. Even if the AFL did pay a little more I'd still imagine the same quarters would have a whinge.

(Posted in correct thread now)

I had to laugh hearing a dad of a female player ringing up and complaining about the costs of getting his daughter to the top level, the travel cost to games, the registration fees, insurance fees, costs of getting her training outside of a club. Literally everything he listed I thought "yep, i pay that", yet he was trying to claim it's so unfair because only women incur these costs.

 

[Maggie5]

Is the assumption that only females without family responsibilities are going to play football and that there won't be any that may have to pay for children to be picked up from school whilst training or that paying for childcare during games may not be involved?

Yep all those things mentioned in previous posts are paid by all.

My understanding is that it will be $25K for a marquee player and $5k for the others.

Lets just wait and see how much interest it generates before dismissing claims of 'it may not be enough or it is more than enough'. More whinging by females?

However as usual, females have been so keen for this league to happen, they would probably pay to play.

INB4 they have a choice and not play at all.

 

[Ruck Machine]

My understanding is that it will be $25K for a marquee player and $5k for the others.

Let's not forget the season is 1/3 the length of the men's as well.

 

[Maggie5]

Let's not forget the season is 1/3 the length of the men's as well.

Hadn't forgotten that at all and have taken that into account. Also less players I believe.
Think it will be a wait and see the popularity, sponsors that will be keen to get involved etc.
Just saying that I think that $5 is a low starting base, that is all.

 

[DemonTim]

Is the assumption that only females without family responsibilities are going to play football and that there won't be any that may have to pay for children to be picked up from school whilst training or that paying for childcare during games may not be involved?

Yep all those things mentioned in previous posts are paid by all.

My understanding is that it will be $25K for a marquee player and $5k for the others.

Lets just wait and see how much interest it generates before dismissing claims of 'it may not be enough or it is more than enough'. More whinging by females?

However as usual, females have been so keen for this league to happen, they would probably pay to play.

INB4 they have a choice and not play at all.

If it generates good interest and is making money then obviously they should get more, but really currently it is no different to any other footy league. I know blokes in country footy paid $1500 to play, because their club makes a shitload of cash from sponsors, the gate etc. whereas I know plenty of blokes who have to pay fees and may never see a second game time, and will end up paying to not even play. It's nothing to do with gender, it's the profitability of the sport (a trainer at my club plays at a local girls team, her team doesn't pay a single player, whereas the team that is dominating pays most)

 

[Maggie5]

If it generates good interest and is making money then obviously they should get more, but really currently it is no different to any other footy league. I know blokes in country footy paid $1500 to play, because their club makes a shitload of cash from sponsors, the gate etc. whereas I know plenty of blokes who have to pay fees and may never see a second game time, and will end up paying to not even play. It's nothing to do with gender, it's the profitability of the sport (a trainer at my club plays at a local girls team, her team doesn't pay a single player, whereas the team that is dominating pays most)

Not sure I would compare your local girls team with a national competition.

 

[coerced]

Sport is not very lucrative or popular except at the very elite end.

 

[DemonTim]

Not sure I would compare your local girls team with a national competition.

Why? It's the same principles, the side that is paying is making a lot of cash, so they're paying players. The side that isn't is a start up club with very little money. It's about income vs expenses. Nothing to do with gender.

 

[DemonTim]

Sport is not very lucrative or popular except at the very elite end.

Exactly!