Men work harder
But then there’s Kevin Myers.
The Sunday Times has apologised for an “error of judgement” that led to the publication of a column which used anti-semitic tropes about Jews and argued women needed to “earn” equal pay.
The article by Kevin Myers about the BBC’s gender pay gap came from the Irish edition of the Sunday Times, but was published on the main website used by the UK based edition and its daily counterpart. It has since been removed and the publisher of both editions, News UK, is expected to launch an investigation into how the article made it through the newspaper’s editorial procedures.
In the article, Myers said that women were generally paid less because they were worth less, referencing two of the BBC’s better paid women, Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, identifying them as Jewish and saying that “Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price”.
He also argued that the gender pay gap existed because “men usually work harder, get sick less frequently and seldom get pregnant”.
Haw haw, let’s all have a good laugh about how worthless women are and why are any of them working for the BBC at all?
The editors of the Sunday Times and its Irish edition issued an apology, saying the piece should never have been published. Martin Ivens, editor of the UK version, apologised for the “error of judgement that led to publication” and Frank Fitzgibbon, editor of the Irish edition said he took full responsibility for the piece, adding: “It contained views that have caused considerable distress and upset to a number of people. … This newspaper abhors antisemitism and did not intend to cause offence to Jewish people.”
But the insults to women are just fine, I guess.
Hmmm, I find people to be people, with a large degree of overlap between men and women with regard to work ability and habits. That said, in my experience of women working in professional settings, they have had to over-prove themselves so much to get roles that they are generally at least as good as men in the equivalent role, and often a damn site more diligent. they also tend to bring all sorts of other positive attributes around communication and teamwork that many men lack or consider unimportant (or even negative).
Men work more than women (8.4 hours compared to 7.9 hours):
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf
Women are more often absent from work than men:
https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/comparative-information/absence-from-work
Women invest more time in childcare (pregnancy should be obvious):
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/03/14/chapter-5-americans-time-at-paid-work-housework-child-care-1965-to-2011/
The data clearly supports his position (not the antisemitism part though). So please let’s be honest.
And please recognize, that all of those are statistical differences, which can’t be broken down to the individual. But they can be taken to explain other statistical differences (such as the gender pay gap).
And how could you get to the conclusion that women are worthless? So you claim that people are worth more if they (statistically) work more? Or if they get paid more? That would be a crude view of humanity.
Let me state this again: Those are statistical effects. It does not imply that a specific woman cannot work more than a specific man, just like the gender pay gap does not imply that a specific woman cannot get paid more than a specific man.
Cero, except that Myers was talking in the individual sense, not broad statistical groupings. Also, hours worked does not tell the story of quality, productivity or intangible skills brought to the job.
As for the justification of the pay gap, the NZ Government recently published a report summarising analysis of such factors and concluded that they did not fully explain gender pay differences.
In addition, one specific occupation group (care workers) have won a long Court battle demonstrating that they were underpaid compared to others similarly skilled groups, and that this represented gender discrimination. Eventually the Government conceded. The evidential framework in this case will become a template for other groups dominated by wome to seek redress.
Rob, my thoughts exactly – number of hours worked does not necessarily correlate with how hard one works. And another thing – those numbers are very close together – it seems very likely that the variation around the mean is such that it may not be significant. Although I realize this is anecdotal evidence, I have never been in a job where the men worked more hours than the women. And my ex (as well as my current husband before he retired) put in substantially fewer hours per day/week/month than I did.
As for women taking off more time, that might be, but again, my own experience suggests that there may be more to this story. I suspect it is noticed more when women take off any significant amount of time. At one job, I was chastised for “abuse of leave”. I took off an hour early three times during my seven month tenure because I had surgery right before I began working there, and had to have physical therapy; occasionally I could not get an appointment either before or after work hours. On those days I had to leave early, I came in early. When my boss was counting up my absences, she counted each of those hours as an entire day. Meanwhile, my male colleague, who had a heart problem, was frequently absent for doctor appointments, and would be absent sometimes for a half day, which got counted by the boss as a couple of hours. Our boss magnified every absence for the females employees, and minimized every absence for the males. If this sort of thing is common (and it has happened at most of my jobs, though not usually as blatant), it could be skewing the results of the survey. In fact, my boss at my current job required me to sign out a half day absence if I left 15 minutes early; it wasn’t until I spoke with one of the males, who told me that our contract did not require us to sign for absence unless we were gone more than 2 hours (and the men knew this; the women did not. And you couldn’t sign out for 15 minutes of leave; it was half a day. So my absences, which are almost non-existant, were magnified to look like I was taking off an entire day a semester instead of leaving 15 minutes early twice (and working through my lunch, so the work got done).
And yes, women are doing more of the childcare. When I was going to the hospital in labor, my husband was informed he should come in as soon as I gave birth; since that ended up being 8 hours later, he actually did get to take the full day. When we made an agreement that we would alternate taking care of our son when he was sick with the chicken pox, he was told by his boss that he could not take off for that – it was his wife’s job. I had to take off.
And when I got home, like most women, I had another shift to work. I picked the son up at the day care. I stopped at the grocery store. I cooked dinner. I washed the dishes. I put the dishes away. I did the laundry, dusted, and swept. Meanwhile, my husband and son sat in front of the TV together. (And I was working 2 hours a day more at work than he was, too). Then he complained to everyone he knew that he was tired of doing half the housework! His only real chores consisted of making the bed in the morning (because he was still in it when I left for work) and dropping off the son at daycare (because it wasn’t open yet when I left for work).
Again, I realize this is all anecdotal, but I also realize that many of these facts may be skewed by perceptions. I get suspicious whenever I see a study that flies in the face of everything I have known, and what I have known is women working just as long as men, and usually longer, and doing as much work in an hour as many of the men did in two. So I have to look at the data and ask the hard questions – how did they compile it? Who compiled it? What is the reality behind the single numbers given – variations on the mean, range, etc – and what assumptions were built in.
Sorry for the tirade. I’m currently spending my entire summer vacation working long hours, and this sort of BS irks me.
Iknklast – indeed. That may be anecdotal, but it matches well with what I observe anecdotally also! I must be some sort of pussy whipped cuck beta male…
Apologies AoS – I’m really not trying to ruin you ;-)
That ‘accounting’ of leave hours is outright discriminatory and abusive. In NZ that sort of behaviour would see an employer fined and paying (modest) compensation. That NZ Government study quoted above; you should have seen the comments on the article. A classic case of denial in action. It’s worth remembering that the Government that produced this is not (by NZ standards) very friendly to women or social causes. However, New Zealanders do value fairness to a great (although sadly decreasing) degree.
Even if cero’s statements were true, that’s hardly the end of the story. It matters *why* they’re true.
https://www.vox.com/2016/8/1/12108126/gender-wage-gap-explained-real
[…] a comment by iknklast on Men work […]
You know, Cressida, reading that article brings to mind certain things that get ignored in this conversation, and how they can be fixed.
Men could do a better share of the housework/caregiving.
Women could be treated decently, and not crapped on when putting a child in a good day care and going to work (I know this one from experience; people treated me like I was a monster).
Businesses could provide more onsite daycare.
Women could feel more free not to have children if they aren’t really the mothering type, rather than being given the constant message that children are the ultimate goal of every woman.
Businesses could be more flexible, hire more people to work shorter hours (this probably would cost them more, of course, but it would likely pay them back at least part in increased productivity).
People could recognize that women are still working when they are changing diapers, cooking dinners, sweeping up after the mess, etc, and this could (and should) become paid labor.
Women could be allowed to have wives, which is what has allowed men to thrive in business for so many years – the lack of worry about home and hearth, and the lack of need to do much other than mow the lawn once a week. These wives could be paid women (decently paid women, not women who are nearly slaves) who like doing that sort of work, or they could be robots that help out around the house.
Most men prefer to “solve” the problem by just saying women don’t work as hard, so….
To save people the trouble of Googling BTW
http://women.govt.nz/work-skills/income/gender-pay-gap/research
From the linked page “The research could not test for the effect of undervaluation of female-dominated occupations which can derive from historical or current gender discrimination.” This last relates directly to the legal case I mentioned above, where care workers eventually won big time. Here are a selection of links that together tell different aspects of that story…
https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/practice-resources/practice-areas/employment-law/the-equal-pay-act-where-is-it-at
http://www.etu.nz/article.php?group_id=773
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/91659079/historic-pay-increase-for-workers-in-female-dominated-industries-government-announces
@Rob:
I did not read the article by Myers and I don’t want to defend him. If he took it on an individual level, he is most certainly wrong.
Thank you for providing links to the study/case you mentioned!
First of all: I agree, that hours worked is not the only factor of what makes a worker productive. But obviously it is a factor and I am quite certain, that it has a positive correlation with “productivity”. And therefore a difference in working hours accounts to a certain degree for a difference in “productivity”.
To the NZ study you mentioned:
The study is controlling the wage gap for some factors, such as (very broad) occupation, formal education and household characteristics and reaches the conclusion that those factors cannot explain a large portion of the wage gap.
However, that only tells us, that those factors aren’t sufficient to explain the gap, not that the rest of it can be attributed to discrimination. And there are other studies showing, that there are more factors to be considered.
For example in the NZ study a math professor is undistinguishable from a preschool teacher (professional+education), a head physician is indistinguishable from a physiotherapists and so on.
This report finds the pay gap shrinking to less than 2%:
https://30percentclub.org/assets/uploads/UK/Third_Party_Reports/KFHG_Gender_Pay_Gap_whitepaper.pdf
I also know of several German studies (including one from the german bureau of statistics) who find an adjusted pay gap of 5-7%.
https://www.destatis.de/DE/PresseService/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2017/03/PD17_094_621.html (German)
I do not want to argue, that the whole situation is “natural” or should not be changed, but the wage gap itself is a very bad tool to assess gender inequality.
PS: I did not read the articles about the law case yet, I will do this later, thanks. However it seems suspicious to me that anyone could argue that one job is worth as much as another one and the difference is due to gender discrimination. If you argue just by formal education, wouldn’t that imply that social scientists have to earn as much as, say, computer scientists?
cero:
There have been a number of studies which have shown otherwise. In many cases, lowering work hours has increased productivity. There are a number of possible reasons for this, and this phenomenon has been known for a very long time. So, no, work hours and how hard you work/how much you accomplish are not the same thing.
And can you tell me some good reason why they shouldn’t? They work as hard, they are at least as educated, and their work is as important. Not a good counter argument at all.
On the work hours/productivity issue, the first scientific studies on the issue I am aware of were conducted in Britain during WW1 (I suspect there will be other broadly contemporaneous studies). This was in response to disastrous accidents in munitions factories. It found that workers on extended shifts (up to 16 hours/day) suffered fatigue and were prone to accidents and reduced quality/work output. The result was a limitation of 12 hours/day with a lift in productivity and drop in accidents.
That was the beginning of the push for 8-hour days. There has certainly been a lot of research since that demonstrates that productivity can be higher when staff work less hours under better conditions.
Note also Japan, with a culture of staying ‘at work’ and wanting to be the last to leave, or at least leave after the boss. This is acknowledged as being very unproductive time. Some businesses have even resorted to turning lights and air-con off to try and force staff to go home.
ROB! (shakes fist menacingly with hot coffee dripping from nostrils).