- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.de
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.de
Organisers hope the women’s strike – whose confirmed participants include fishing industry workers, teachers, nurses and the PM, Katrín Jakobsdóttir – will bring society to a standstill to draw attention to the country’s ongoing gender pay gap and widespread gender-based and sexual violence.
Not really. The easily quotable figure is 84% but in reality it doesn’t take into account important differences in profession, qualifications, type of employer, seniority, hours worked or many other things that go into deciding compensation. The only thing the gender pay gap really shows is that men hold more high paying jobs than women, or have worked in industries for longer and therefore have more compensation.
The gender pay gap has narrowed over the recent decades, at least in the EU and the US, but it still exists. And this is also true for the adjusted pay gap, taking into account education, seniority, etc.
In addition, women are overly represented in low-wage jobs such as personal care, which adds to economic inequalities.
What is the wage gap amongst the same job role?
For example, are female cashiers paid 80% what male cashiers are?
In most of Europe, it is illegal to pay differently for equal work, so a female cashier would be paid the same as a male cashier.
The gap arises where men are able to take more hours, obtain more qualifications, develop more experience, enter more lucrative industries, get more promotions & they are far less likely to leave paid employment to raise children.
Some of that is due to personal choice, which is fine, but most of it is down to societal hurdles outside of work which determine how women approach the workplace.
Men are able to, or they are practically forced to? Because when I took paternity leave, I heard managers describe it as a “vacation”, which is a term I’ve never seen used to describe maternity leave. And when I left my job to take care of my second child, my co-workers described it as “career suicide”, which again I’ve never seen used to describe a woman’s decision to raise her child.
So I have to wonder: how many fathers out there would rather be raising their kids but don’t get a real chance to do so because they know their careers would suffer disproportionately to their female coworkers?
Still amounts to more time in the workplace, forced or otherwise.
It isn’t a comment on whether that is what men want or are ok with. Ditto employees generally.
Certainly a major strand of reducing the gender pay gap will be about fixing rights, practices & attitudes surrounding paternity leave.
That depends heavily on which country you’re looking at.
It seems that the issue in Iceland isn’t as much getting equal pay for equal work, but rather that women don’t get equal work opportunities for cultural reasons.
We could say that their issue is of why “typical womens jobs” pay less than “typical mens jobs” (regardless of the individual employee being woman or man).
The same situation still exists in all the countries that rank better on the equality lists, whereas the low ranking countries probably have more basic discriminatory issues that need to solved first.
They’re tying it in with domestic violence and this might be a way to address the cultural issues.
Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with. Hopefully it will make actual changes for the entire sectors rather than just a mindless gender bonus which could make things even worse.
No study has ever gotten an adjusted pay gap correct. Its all propagandized crap meant to distract you from the bigger issue. In the free world woman have just as much opportunity for high paying jobs as men. Its personal choice that limits them in job choice or life choices.