Women get paid less than men because they need to take monthly "sick days" and extra leave, an employers association boss says.
Predictable outrage ensues.
It'a all a numbers game really, there are plenty of highly paid women in New Zealand, on salaries that would make the average working stiff's eyes water.
Take any two groups of people defined however it suits you and compare their average incomes (or any other parameter for that matter) and they will almost certainly differ. So if it suits your agenda to claim that group A is discriminated against and group A's average salary is lower than group B's you are home.
We could play the same game for Catholics/Protestants, Atheists/Christians, Brunettes/Blonds and so forth. Whatever takes your fancy - if you wish to agitate a particular group is discriminated against.
A sad fact of life is that it is unfair and people are not equal nor treated equally and while women maybe under represented in the higher echelons of income they are also under represented in the lowest stratum of society ie the homeless which is a mostly male preserve.
As individuals we have to treat other people as individuals based upon their personal merit not pigeonhole them according to other peoples agendas.
Agreed.
ReplyDeleteI think it was a rather stupid thing to say.
Firstly, I wondered if what he said was factually correct - do women take more days off on average than men?
But that was a mere curiosity. My second thought was "is it relevant to women being paid less?" and I thought it shouldn't be. We all get a certain number of holidays and sick days per year, and as long as people are able to work within that, it shouldn't matter. Those that can't will need to negotiate something, and hopefully the employer is able to accommodate the situation in a fair way, if not taking it as an opportunity to demonstrate committment to staff.
So the statement is basically stupid, and reflects a particular type of thinking that might indicate why women are paid less - having stereotypical bosses! (Yes, I realise the reasons are longer and more varied than that)
As some-one said somewhere, far better to be "sick" one day a month than a twit every day.
Yes. His idiocy is basically irrelevant to arguments about equal pay (in which I tend to share Andrei's view). The most eye-wateringly stupid aspect however is that this guy is spokesman for the EMA so can reasonably be expected, firstly, to have actually devoted some thought to the issue, and secondly to be able to construct a couple of sentences about it without making a complete ass of himself. If his pay is performance-based he needn't look forward to his next contract renewal.
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