Can we afford equality?
Listening to a refreshingly reasoned and calm radio 4 discussion last week, all about how and why women are consistently paid less than their male counterparts, my immediate thought was that although a more common response may be to pay women more, perhaps our economy could not actually afford to do that. What would happen if all of a sudden women’s salaries were brought in line with their male equivalents? Could the economy actually cope with that?
I suppose that what would have to happen is a lowering of men’s salaries so that a financially viable medium could be found. Now of course that is not going to happen, so what might the answer be?
- Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr
I’m encouraging some discussion on this one as I certainly don’t have any answers or ideas.
In the real world, the significant mind-shift needed to bring about real equality just is not going to happen for a very long time, but something has to, surely. Yes, women should value themselves more – the radio show reported on a high level job vacancy having been advertised with a salary in the region of £50k per annum to which no women applied. Then a while later, with the exact same job spec but at an annual salary of £30k, plenty of women applied. Why do so many of us think that we’re not worth it? Is it really all because men are still the main breadwinners? Are there not now sufficient women who’s income is essential to the family, whether single or not?
For me, running a small business, one-man-band within available hours for a single parent, I find myself not charging as much as my “able-to-be-full-time” counterparts (male or female) as I cannot be available as much as my clients might want to be – I don’t think that has anything to do with being female, though if I was a man I’d likely not have the same issues to deal with (please excuse the sweeping generalisation that suggests, but let’s face it, it is more likely to be the norm than for a chap). And that I recognise as my own issue to get over, it’s certainly not suggested to me, but it is taken advantage of, of course.
The last time I worked within other organisations (late 90s), as an IT Contractor, I frequently came across my male equivalents being paid and offered more, and when I knew of such I would take a stand and insist I be paid the same – never mind that my attitude to the role was often better than the chaps concerned. When such things happen I am astonished and refuse to accept my gender to be the defining issue.
So why don’t we do that more often, and what would happen if we did? I suggest we look beyond “raging against the inequality” and consider how to make equality real with some solutions that could be viable.
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6 Responses to Can we afford equality?
In her shoes: My descent in entrepreneurial hell
In her shoes is a series of anonymous posts from women in business, sharing their experience. In your comments you are asked to answer the question – What would you do in her shoes? My story began 9 months ago; it is a story of self-realisation, friendship, love and betrayal. After 11 years at home [...]
I wonder if they left the job at 30k when they recruited the right person for the role, or did they up it to 50k??
Just discussing this on twitter, and my thoughts and @AndreaNicholls were similar, if we can’t afford to raise them to achieve equality, then perhaps we should lower the mens until we are all equal. Of course the men would go crazy, BUT you may just find they start to pay women more in order not to lower their salaries…
Where’s Kate… she may be able to say whether the economy can handle this
Indeed, Sarah – but can the economy afford that? I doubt it somehow. Wonder what Vince thinks…
Twitter: babssaul
This would be the Vince who is part of the ConDem coalition but spends his spare time denouncing capitalism, Babs? I have to say, I’ve been going off him a bit recently.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get to a situation where the person was routinely paid for the job s/he did?
If we go much deeper, Babs, we’ll be back to the subject of the ‘Can we afford to employ women?’ blog some time ago.
Seems women are da*ned as employees whichever way you look at it until those doing the employing change their attitude – and save us from the Ms Harmans who think the answer is to legislate…:-(
Twitter: Linda_Mattacks
It was interesting the stats on @BBCR4 this morning about equality for women in Switzerland, at first I though they were talking about some Police state somewhere. it was the last country to give women a vote, and for the first time in its history it has more women than men MP, has the lowest maternity leave..Phew!
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