Ladies, what do you think about this?

Off topic, but my particular grievance is being paid half what my co-workers earn, plus less holidays, etc, because I am on a “temporary” contract.

I have been there 5 years, for one of the UKs biggest companies. Their definition of “temporary” blows my mind.

Damn, I tried to search the archives for that Cecil article but couldn’t find it; I think i used “same job” instead of also trying “same work” like a doofus. Good job Sauron.

Well, for the record, I searched on the terms “women” and “salary.”

Yes, Marilyn does the same thing as Cecil, just as a shovel does the same thing as a bulldozer. They both move earth. It’s just that the bulldozer does a better job.

lol, tell me you’re kidding. The sales department is what keeps the company going. They bring in money. The accounting departing generates no money…they cost money. This is why the sales department is “treated like gods.” Successful saleswomen will get the same perqs. (Or should, at least.) I think this anecdote is a good example, btw, of women choosing fields that don’t pay as well.

Oh please, please tell me you are yanking my chain, Ellis. The accounting department costs money like buying stock for the salespeople to sell costs money - but try getting the salespeople to generate any revenue for the company without either. I guess the salespeople are getting the cheques, recording them, matching them with invoices, cashing them and depositing the money, et freakin cetera? Attitudes like yours are what keeps women in departments like accounting from being appreciated.

I think this sentence could be edited down and be more valid… by removing two simple words, to make it this: “Attitudes like yours are what keeps departments like accounting from being appreciated.

(I removed “women in,” just in case you were wondering.)

In other words, what you’re talking about isn’t a gender issue, it’s an issue of a front-line department not appreciating the work that a rear-guard department does to keep the business flowing snoothly. It’s an issue that exists in many companies, including the one I work at. There are both men and women in our accounting department, and they’re pretty unappreciated. Of course, when something goes wrong, they’re the first to take the fire, but they rarely get the appreciation they deserve when things are going right, which is most of the time.

Here’s the key point, though: that has nothing to do with gender. It has to do with perspective, and the fact that the accounting department is not even on most salespeople’s radar screens. It means the salespeople are ignorant, but not bigots.

I’m not trying to discount the fact that there are gender inequities in the modern workplace. Certainly, there are.

However, those inequities will never be properly addressed and eliminated until people stop distracting the issue with false examples and red herrings. Not every workplace imbalance is related to gender. I would even say that most of them are not related to gender. There is a tendency, however, to overlook other possibilities and automatically blame a gender bias for the inequities one sees.

Frankly, doing so is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The glass ceiling exists. Sorry, true. Been there, done that, hit my head twice. “But he has a family to support…” what am I doing, raising frogs? “He’s more company oriented.” Are you kidding? I do half again more than that doofus in this company, and stay later as well. Oh, are you referring to his famous “Let’s do golf, this round’s on me” with the MD’s? You’re right. I thought this job/promotion rested solely on our work, not asskissing off hours.

Men do not like women in positions of authority. You bet it’s a blanket statement. But at 37, I’ve seen it proven so often, arguing with it isn’t going to disprove it. Especially if you’re male and have never been subjected to it. That’s like a blind person telling me the color green is ugly.

Didn’t Microsoft just get sued for something like this? I realize that probably doesn’t apply in the U.K.

Nice. I suppose it doesn’t matter that, as a male, I actually prefer women as bosses? I’ve had about equal numbers of female and male superiors at work, and without fail I’ve preferred the women. I respected them more, I found them more responsive to needs and to honest discussion, and I was more inclined to do my job well for them. I like women in positions of authority. More than men, in fact.

Yes, you can put your blanket away now. It’s blinding you, not me.

That said, I agree that there is a glass ceiling. I just don’t agree with the broad brush you’re using: not every workplace is as biased as the worst of them are, and not every man wants to trod on his fellow woman to get to the top.

In my experience, far from it.

Yes, in your experience. I’d say, from the number of women I’ve spoken with, my own personal experience, and the women who have posted to this thread, you are in the minority. But what you’re saying is good to hear, despite the personal dig you felt necessary to throw in there. Nor did I say “EVERY MAN.” But, as I said, sexual discrimination is difficult to spot if you’ve never been on the receiving end of it.

Bitter, party of one, your table is ready.

If women are, on average, willing to perform the same work for less money than men, why would employers ever hire men? Doesn’t it stand to reason that if a company could reduce its labor costs by 24% (to quote TaxGuy’s number, which I too have often seen bantered about) and receive the same productivity that they would do so? Or do you believe that sexism is so deep that men are willing to eat a 24% increase in costs simply to give jobs to other men? Personally, I would always hire the women if it is true that they will work for less. The fact that we don’t see companies staffed entirely with females is evidence that there is something wrong with the reasoning behind the equal work for unequal pay argument.

Hm. Maybe it has something to do with the amount of qualified individuals of either sex in any given field?

Maybe it has to do with negotiation - I don’t think women negotiate salaries as aggressively as men do. Just my WAG.

As a side note, I find it interesting that Maureen and I are almost exactly the same age, and it sounds like our experiences have been very similar. I have worked for some women supervisors, but the head decision-makers have almost exclusively been men. Does noticing this fact of life make me bitter, too?

Noticing a fact in your own life make you bitter? No. Declaring that your conclusions are unasailable and that you will continue to believe them even if evidence to the contrary is offered? Yes.

As far as experiences go, I’ve never been discriminated in my paycheck solely because I am a women, so I can’t agree with the OP at all. I’ve always felt that my pay reflected my experience, my qualifications and the time and effort I gave to my job, and had nothing to do with the type of genitals I posses.

As far as facts go, I’m just going to copy and paste my comment from the last time we hashed this out because the facts as I see them, and my point of view haven’t changed since then:

Women have achieved equality in the workplace. The major factor in any wage discrepancy is taking time out from work. The choice to have children, and the subsequent time out of work is what causes the ‘wage gap’. By most reports, a childless woman of equal training, education and experience will earn 98% of what a man would earn. Whether this is fair or not is another question, but there is definitely equality in pay structures in terms of equal experience + equal ability = equal pay, and women need to stop playing the victim (IMO).

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba392/
http://www.cnn.com/2000/CAREER/trends/12/12/womenpay/
http://www.aei.org/ct/ctdfr.htm
http://www.stls.frb.org/publication...ic-backgnd.html
http://www.dadi.org/mc_wages.htm
http://nafe.com/whythewagegap.html
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/co...6/Earnings.html

This doesn’t mean that men get paid more than women. It means that the new manager knew how to negotiate better than you did. He had the guts to ask for a better salary, and he got it. Did you ever try to ask for the 3 dollar raise?

Thank Og for unions! I make the same as my male cow-orkers and have the same opportunities regarding overtime, days off, job preference, etc.

Yet another example of why I’m happy to have a job instead of a career.

I’m not going to come in on Taxman’s side of this, but I do remember reading about a flawed study regarding equal pay by gender. It was some years ago, unfortunately, as I was thumbing through a selection in Waldenbooks, so I can’t provide a title.

The book noted that the original study was done in about 1973 by the New York Times. The study concluded, as have many studies after, that women made significantly less, on average, than men. But wait, the book added; ten years later they revisited the study and found they’d done it wrong.

According to my memory of this book, the original Times study involved calling a thousand men and a thousand women, asking them how much they made per year, and hanging up. Not exactly the pinnacle of science: in the 1980s study they admitted they hadn’t exactly asked “by the way, you have a job? No? Is this because you don’t want one, or because you can’t find one? Mmm. And what’s your title? Really? Mmm, interesting, how many hours do you work? How long have you been there? What did you start at? Oh, really! And have you had any raises since then, and how often, and how big were they? And can you provide us with a tax return so we can see you’re not lying about your salary?–we know men sometimes feel the need to inflate their achievements where money is concerned.”

This book claimed that the 1980s study showed that, barring positions of ownership and executive roles, women sometimes made the same as men, sometimes made less, and sometimes made more.

Needless to say, because the first study feels right to many people, it gets quoted frequently. More recent, more accurate studies are harder to come by, and anecdotes abound. Hardly anyone points out that the study was re-done due to terrible scientific methods and bad data-gathering.

Myself, I suspect the pay inequality is probably true, but I don’t know how you’d go about proving it, short of following people around every day to make sure their work is truly equal. For fear I misrepresent Taxman’s position, I agree that bad studies have been done which don’t prove much. So yes, probably true, but woolly-thinking studies aren’t helping.

FISH

I know for a fact at my last job, my goofy, call in sick all the time, show up late male counterpart made more money than I did. He would never tell me what he made but that he knew it was more than me, and the assistant manager confirmed it. I assumed it was because our male boss had just shown him preference because the guy was a little bit condescending towards me and the other females that worked there.

I don’t know about where I work now, except that my new boss greatly prefers me to my (again) male coworker in the same position, so I may or may not be paid more than him.

jinwicked, that may be the biggest problem with these anecdotes. Men who get paid more than women are much more likely, in my opinion (being one), to say something. Men who get paid less than women will, I believe, keep their mouths shut. There may be some lingering machismo and old-fashioned belief by both genders that the husband should make the most money. Disclosing tax information is the only way to know for sure.

I’m the newest member of an office of all women except me (as one of two men) and I’m sure I get paid the least.

FISH