Equality at Work

A brief respite from revision today I think. Johann Hari in The Independent had some interesting comments to make about the difference in pay between men and women.

Hari says a study by the Higher Education Policy Institute has found that women outperform men at every stage in higher education. As soon as women get a job though, this is immediately wiped out. For the same work, women now earn 17 per cent less in full-time positions, and 40 per cent less in part-time jobs. The popular view is that this is because they break from work to have children, thus losing seniority and taking time out from work. Hari says this cannot be true because the pay gap is in place and fully grown before they have their first child. Yes, says Hari, it costs money to let men take time off – but it costs even more money to squander the talents of half the population on jobs that are beneath them. When Norway ruled that 40 per cent of all seats on corporate boards must go to women, growth shot up.

Of course, another possible hypothesis is that women on average get less pay because of the sorts of professions they go into. That said, it’s rather difficult to evaluate Hari’s claims because he isn’t very precise with those statistics.

There’s a good class exercise here for those doing this topic, or indeed, for those who want to try and do something a bit different for A2 coursework - this is a topic area which, sadly, tends to be a bit neglected.