Gender bias in the workforce - Lynley Tulloch

The recent commentary on the gender pay gap has been lively, but disappointing in its naivety. For those who missed all the fun, Deputy Prime-Minister Paula Bennet recently attributed the pay gap between men and women to gender bias in firing and hiring.

Narelle Henson took this to task in an opinion piece in the Waikato Times (10.3.2017). She made the outrageous claim that not only was gender bias a myth, but that the gender pay gap was a ‘fantastic thing’.

It’s enough to make the pioneer of women's rights, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), turn in her grave. And she’s been dead for close on two and a half centuries.

Henson’s argument is uncompelling.. She argues that the wage-gap is simply a result of individual career choices by men and women. She concludes that because women have babies they then choose to take time off work (for a breather) and so don’t move up the pay scale.

She may well be right. But to claim it is a good thing is a slap in the face for female solidarity It neglects to address how society is systematically disadvantaging women, primarily because they are the ones that are expected to take ultimate responsibility for child care and domestic duties. 

Further, this domestic labour in undervalued and mothers in a position of social disadvantage do not receive adequate support. The economy is being advanced through the unpaid intensive labour of mothers in reproducing the workers/taxpayers for the future. There is a word for this. It is called exploitation and it is precisely why women still need to fight for their rights.

Jim Rose also dove into the murky waters of gender -pay gap in his comment in the Herald (14.3.2017). He says the time demands of high powered rat race jobs are not suitable for families. Further, even a small interruption in these kinds of careers will put a professional back at least five years. He leaves hanging the unstated assumption that women (not men) are the ones who must take time off to raise a family.
 
So far so good, except not all women work in high powered professional jobs. Those are mostly reserved for men. And that is one of the points both Rose and Henson are not adequately addressing. Women are being disadvantaged by a system that privileges male success by awarding higher pay to jobs located in careers considered the ‘male’ domain (such as science, technology, engineering, maths (STEM) profession).

Rose thinks he has the answer to this. He claims that women have a ‘natural edge’ in their superior verbal and reading skills (based on OECD’s PISA tests) and so should enter law and medicine rather than the STEM jobs.

Rose is drawing a long bow. Firstly, biological explanations of male/women difference are a particularly shaky platform to launch an argument from Secondly, both law and medicine require long hours and are not structured to support those who are bringing up families, so that original problem remains.

In addition, male and female domains are further entrenched in other areas. In 2006 men formed two-thirds of the agricultural workforce and 71 per cent of the manufacturing. Conversely, only 28 percent f men were in educational jobs and 17 percent in health. Caregiving jobs are considered ‘women’s work’ by many and have traditionally undervalued and low paid.
The judge and jury are in and they are clear on this. Recent research by the Ministry for Women demonstrates that “the gender pay gap is caused partly by men and women working in different occupations and industries, or by interrupted and changing working patterns due to parenthood”.
Yet, it’s not just differences in occupations. Even when all factors are controlled for women will still receive less than men for doing the same job.
But what really irked me most after reading both Henson’s and Rose’s arguments was the assumption they both made about privilege.

Henson makes the mistaken assumption that most ‘ladies’ are able to stay at home.  Yet being able to choose to stay at home is not a privilege that is afforded to all women And I don’t think Henson has considered the large number of single mothers reliant on an inadequate benefit and spiralling downward into poverty,  

Research by Jonathan Boston and Simon Chapple published in their 2014 book Child Poverty in New Zealand demonstrates that families relying on the benefit will have significant difficulties in exceeding even modest poverty thresholds. 2013 statistics show that 83.4 per cent of single parent families were women.

Training to be a lawyer of a doctor while on the benefit is going to be tough.

The problem is systemic and not one of ‘individual choices’ and we need to make it visible if we are going to address this injustice adequately.

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