Labor’s gender pay gap policy is based on lies
THERE are many reason women earn less than men on average, writes Caroline Marcus. Forcing companies to hand over their salary data won’t make a jot of difference.
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LABOR is again pitting women against men, this time wanting companies to publish our incomes.
What next?
A public register for how many times male and female employees take coffee breaks or smokos?
A searchable list of how often each sex goes to the loo?
Under a Shorten government, companies with more than 1000 employees would have to make public their “gender pay gap”, or be named and shamed, not to mention denied well-paying government contracts.
These big companies would also have to spell out the difference in pay between their managerial and non-managerial staff.
It’s the kind of information that businesses are already forced to report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA).
The new legislation means that anyone at home would be able to look up this information and finger-wag over what sort of “gender pay gap” the company has.
I keep putting the offending concept in quotation marks because there is plenty to suggest the very idea of it is a myth or, at the very least, grossly exaggerated.
Yes, it’s true Australian working women take home on average about $27,000 less than men every year — a figure that, on the surface, is alarming.
But the reality is pay discrepancies have more to do with the choices women make for themselves, often based around that most primitive urge to bear and raise offspring.
Women may choose to take years out of the workforce to have and raise children, they may choose to work part-time or more civilised hours to spend time with aforementioned kiddies or they may choose vocations in the first place which are lower-paid, such as childcare or nursing over, say, engineering.
US academic Christina Hoff Sommers, who describes herself as the “factual feminist”, refers to a study by feminist organisation American Association of University Women, which found the oft-cited 77 cents-to-the-dollar wage gap in her country shrinks to only 6.6 when such lifestyle choices are factored in.
Sommers makes the point: if the gender pay gap is real, why don’t companies only hire women since they would save an absolute motza in wages?
Another strong voice on this issue is the equally despised enemy of the gender-fixated, Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson.
In his book 12 Rules For Life, he quotes research which found only 15 per cent of equity partners at the 200 biggest US law firms are women, a figure that’s barely changed in the past 15 years despite the large pool of female associates and attorneys.
Maybe, just maybe, Peterson suggests, many women decided working an 80-hour week at a high-end law firm is not worth the sacrifice — namely, the time away from their families.
Controversially, Peterson adds that many women have traits of “agreeableness” rather than aggressiveness, which — although a confronting idea for his critics — is certainly not ideal when it comes to negotiating a pay rise with the boss.
At the end of the day, it’s already illegal to pay a woman less for doing the same job as a man.
The problem is “same” doesn’t apply when there are different levels of seniority, years spent in the job or hours worked per week.
Not only is Labor’s new policy pointless and divisive, it’s unoriginal.
The same requirement to publish the pay gap was introduced in the UK last year; research found half of companies — even those that agreed with the principle — believed the requirement wouldn’t have any impact on closing the so-called gap, and could in fact misrepresent efforts to increase diversity.
The head of reward at a FTSE 250 manufacturer said the requirement didn’t reflect “in any way the different demographics and skill sets in the external market, for example [the fact that] males dominate technology roles.”
Back home, business leaders are warning of the cost and red tape of the new regulations.
Identity politics already places a significant burden on the corporate world, whether it be the WGEA or programs like the Male Champions of Change.
What’s more, quotas already apply across the public service; commonwealth agencies are even required to meet gender targets when awarding legal work.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison pointed out that the so-called “pay gap” has actually come down under the Coalition government — from 17.2 to 14.5 per cent, its lowest level in two decades — but why even engage the Opposition in gender politics?
It’s obvious this is all about Labor wedging the Liberals on women, at a time the Coalition is already feeling the heat over allegations of bullying and a lack of women in the party.
Last week, the ALP announced a policy to spend more taxpayer money topping up the super balances of women who take time out of the workforce to have babies.
This latest intervention may make their supporters feel warm and fuzzy inside, but it’s based on a lie.
Caroline Marcus is the host of Saturday Edition and Sunday Edition on Sky News.