For many, ground zero in gender equality advocacy is the #genderpaygap. It’s perhaps the king of all tropes, from which discussion always seems to start, and inevitably returns too. ‘Yeah well, women are still paid less than men!’ You will hear, like some kind of broken record. And this is true, they are – the average salary for women, is lower than the average salary for men. But hold off the pitch forks, flaming torches, and cries of misogyny for a moment, as the picture changes if we ask, ‘are women paid less than men, for the same work?’ And to that, the answer is no. For whilst it’s true that ‘all women’ are paid 16% less than ‘all men’, the gap quickly dissolves and almost disappears completely (to just 0.5%), when comparing women with men working the same job level, with the same function, and at the same company. So, the better question is to surely ask ‘why are women not working in these higher paid jobs’? Or even, ‘do such jobs pay less, because they employ mostly women?’ Or perhaps we’re looking at this the wrong way round... Maybe we should ask – ‘Do men choose more highly paid jobs, because society tells them to?’ Might society’s warped value system of men being ‘the breadwinner’ be whats really causing the gap? What do you think? ~ Special thanks to r/problem_redditor Korn Ferry Gender Pay index  Do Womens Careers Pay less? Images by Luis Villasmil, Nathan Dumlao, and Adam Nir. #paygap #fyp #genderpayequality

2024-02-19