Why Do People Still Believe the Myth of the Gender Wage Gap?

@Bumbles https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/gender-equality/equal-pay/gender-pay-gap-situation-eu_en

@Guitarman123 Interesting - and surprising!

I'd not realised it's far more complicated than simple equality of pay for equal work, but I'd not expected the observation that even the very experienced analysts and statisticians who wrote the report admit it can't be fully explained.

One facet they highlight is this:


Indeed but there are also broader undervaluing and overvaluing that probably differs widely among different countries, by perceptions of different professions.

Certainly in the UK, agriculture and engineering for example tend to be regarded as low-skilled, perhaps because the publicly-visible parts give very false perceptions, on top of loose use of the words. For German engineers, the opposite is true, as the profession is ranked alongside ones like law and of course, science. In some respects these three fields are similar, in requiring high analytical skills as well as high academic knowledge.

While professions like law, finance, paid sports and show-business gain an over-weening importance because although their skills are very different (but not necessarily higher in knowledge level than farming and engineering), they all seem to earn vast sums of money - and the entertainers obviously are on public show. Indeed, the arts and entertainments seem full of both sexes earning oodles despite boasting little genuine talent!


That won't directly affect the pay-gap by sexes except by proportion: the 5% difference in actual pay in an area netting £20 000 annual salary for one sex, is much less than the 5% difference from £50 000 salary.

Consequently the men and women in the lower-paid occupations are nearer to each other in pay and might well receive the same pay in given employment places, but their occupations tend to be looked down on as lowly-skilled; and these do include the ones employing disproportionately more women than men.


So might attitudes towards different trades and professions be a factor?

( 5% of 20 000 = 1000. 5% of 50 000 = 2500.
Percentages are powerful beasts, but unfortunately that is often not fully appreciated! )

@ArishMell Teaching, agriculture and nursing/caring are among the most under-valued occupations in the UK for a number of reasons:

(1) There is no direct correlation between economic inputs and outputs in these sectors, which is hard for liberal freemarketeers to get their heads around (although I would challenge any other worker to be productive on an empty stomach or with an infected leg).
(2) Relative lack of professiinal identity or effective labour organisation within these occupations.
(3) The association of two of these occupations with a large female workforce and the associated flexibility required to balance work requirements with family duty.

@SunshineGirl I'm not sure how you can say no direct input/output correlation for agriculture because it produces physical goods, but teaching and caring can't show that almost by definition. Their professions are physically obvious, as they teach or care for real people, but in services that are vital but can only ever be one-way expenses.

Yet the financial "services" seem to be worshipped by what you call "liberal free-marketeers" despite many of them producing nothing obvious for no-one obvious. Obviously I rely very distantly and indirectly on some parts of the financial services for my pensions, but I often wonder what functional value some of the others' work really has, despite it making (not necessarily "earning") high wages.

The farmers, teachers and nurses do have strong unions, but I take your point about the relatively large female workforce.

I think nursing is generally seen as skilled, but caring is not; but by vague status of occupation, not the sex of the employees.

@ArishMell The point with agriculture is that most farmers in the UK do not or cannot sell directly to the end consumer. They are dependent upon intermediaries (the supermarkets and government via DEFRA) for getting their produce to market and making their enterprises economically sustainable (through subsidy). The market does not on the whole price their output correctly (if it did, there would probably be widespread discontent).

It's actually quite easy to evaluate output for teaching and nursing with the correct terms of reference (I used to do it as part of my job at the Treasury). The problem is that this creates inconvenient truths (ie. that the labour of both teachers and nurses is grossly under-priced) that few people wish to hear.

The basic nursing qualification was given parity with a bachelirs degree in the UK. That is a recognition of its technical complexity that has not been matched by an uplift in wages (nursing and caring have had to be excluded from the minimum wage cap for migrant jobs - a recognition that these are difficult to fill jobs, while at the same time undervaluing them on the market).

I agree that financial services are over-valued, and I work in the sector myself. Like many white collar professions, entry is tightly controlled by professional regulatory bodies - in effect creating a cartel for qualified members.

@SunshineGirl Thank you for explaining it.

I have a lot of sympathy for the farmers, and I have never had any connection except as eventual customer. For years the big supermarkets were accused of paying them less than the production prices, which effectively is theft. I don't know if that has been put right. Another problem they face is that even some of the franchise-chains like Central have been stopped from supporting local producers (and selling local-demand goods like descalers), by remote head-office managers. They are also under pressure from all sorts of non-governmental outsiders trying to tell them how to run their own land and businesses.

I think the whole area of fair salaries for all is so messy and so skewed by public perception, I don't see any sensible way out of it. When young people emerge from school or university they must wonder what has the real value, the underpaid but highly-skilled technical role in the sciences, medicine, law or teaching; or the over-paid world of show-business, sports and social-media "influencing".

Incidentally, I wonder how those "influencers" based in the UK, pay their Income-tax and NI?