The BBC has a radio programme about the gender pay gap today. Fortunately, as the opening paragraph of this Guardian article by the maker shows, we don’t have to listen to it. Because she’s simply not got the basics of the subject under discussion:
We never hear politicians or pundits arguing that men should be paid more than women. Yet this reality is fundamental to the organisation of our society. The mean gender pay gap for full-time work runs at 14.1%, rising to 18.4% if part-time work is included. And these pay gaps are just one aspect of the unequal division of wealth between the sexes.
It’s a decade now since the Statistics Ombudsman told us all that we should not use the mean here. For that places much too much weight upon the very few who earn very large incomes. In fact we shouldn’t use the mean when we’ve a distribution bounded upon one end and not upon the other. We don’t record negative incomes in our wage or income statistics, even though such obviously do exist – we can’t explain bankruptcy without that now, can we? There’s also no obvious upper limit upon incomes. We are thus abjured not to use the mean, we should use the median.
Emma Griffin is professor of modern British history at the University of East Anglia
So much for the UEA and their professor of modern history’s command of basic statistics.
We also shouldn’t be mixing and matching the concept of a flow – income – and that of a stock – wealth. That’s another economic no no. Therefore, obviously, we don’t need to listen to the programme which is a relief.
When we look at how men’s and women’s labour has been rewarded in the past, we are forced to drop that comforting assumption. For hundreds of years, virtually all work has been segregated by gender, and men have always been paid more. Occasionally men did physically demanding work, which might command a wage premium.
Yes, as we knew it would, it does get worse. From, say and around and about, 6,000 BC up to perhaps 1850 or so the majority – the vast majority at the beginning then tapering down – of people were peasants. Farming the fields that is, straight agricultural labour. Which is indeed a matter of muscular heft. There are of course women who can handle an ox-drawn plough, Flemish farmers are famous for seeking them out as wives. But they’re in short supply even in Belgium. The gender division of labour is not some imposition by The Man, it’s, or at least it was, innate in the gender disparity of the human form. Especially in those millennia when an adult woman would, likely as not, spend her entire adult life either pregnant or lactating.
That cultural practice has lagged the change in technology is not exactly a great sociological finding even if it does come as a surprise to a historian or two.
No, no need to listen to this programme at all. Even if we might want to ponder why our taxes are spent upon making it – and yes, the BBC licence fee is a tax, Gordon Brown said so.
Completely O/T, but now I have to switch JS off simply to access the site (if I don’t want a blocking gray front page that insists I either “join” or “sign in”)?
I’m guessing that’s not intended?
Shut the BBC/C4 down for good in 24 hours flat.
Pay ordinary folk –techs/tea ladies etc,–their redundancy.
The CM boss class, their hench-luvvies and all the rest–standard terms . Out with nothing/pensions confiscated.
We are paying for the 24 hour spewing of cultural marxism in our homes. 24 hour propaganda on behalf of socialism. A death cult that has murdered 150 million human beings and ruined the lives of hundreds of millions more.
Shut it down. Shut it down now.
CM creeps trying to disrupt the culture by inserting themselves into other people’s employment contracts.
Occasionally men did physically demanding work, which might command a wage premium. It might. Or it might not. I am pretty sure that working as a bin man is more physically demanding that sitting in an air conditioned studio spouting boll0cks. But for some reason women prefer the latter – and get better paid. Women are simply shaking down the gutless spineless males who run Britain. These pathetic White Knights will throw money at any woman who hates them in the vain hope of winning approval from their long dead mothers. Whereas the sensible response is to say “shut the… Read more »
About greed. 1 Timothy 6:6-10 6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 9 Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.… Read more »
8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 9 Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. Says the f**kwit who is purple with envy at the thought of other people’s money – to the extent that he has built a career lying about how much… Read more »
Taking two problems wages and housing costs. Gender wise the male half take home more than the female half. That seems to be a big problem for some. Housing affordability is another problem which is not unrelated to salary. So do the males have an advantage there? For each strata of income what is the housing enjoyed by each gender. Is there a gender housing gap?