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January 17, 2006
Womenâs Pay Gap.
Various little bits and pieces recently about the gender gap in pay. The reasonable response seems to have come down to two reasons for its existence. The first, the choices made about which career or occupation to follow, something which certainly I believe is changing. Women now being the majority of undergraduates, new doctors and new solicitors, for example.
The second is they effects of child bearing. The gender gap expands from almost nothing before the likely child bearing years to a quite large one then shrinks again as people become ever older. The argument here would therefore seem to be about whether such a pay gap is justified. Is it people being unfair to working mothers? Or is it an economically rational decision? (Could be both to some people of course, both rational and unfair by their value judgements. Not a view I take though.)
From The Times.
THE Government has ditched ground-breaking
schemes designed to get more women to return to work in the NHS after
childbirth as it struggles to control spiralling spending.
So it is more expensive to employ women with children?
Women make up more than half of new graduates
from medical schools, but their careers are often interrupted by
child-bearing and the demands of bringing up a family. To make the NHS
a better employer for those wanting to work part-time, or returning
after a career break, posts were subsidised from central funds for up
to five years.
Apparently so. If it is more expensive, requiring of a subsidy, to employ women with children, I canât say Iâm all that worried about the fact that women with children get paid less. Sounds entirely logical to me.
January 17, 2006 in Your Tax Money at Work | Permalink
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The government has just announced that it is scrapping the incentive scheme to get female doctors back into general practice. This is stupidity beyond all reckoning. Since the scheme was introduced in 2001 it has attracted 2500 doctors back into gene... [Read More]
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Tim Worstall has stopped trying to deny the gender gap exists anymore. For the moment, hes content to attempt to explain it away with reference to (1)womens choices of career and (2)women having children.
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Tracked on Feb 28, 2006 1:50:59 PM
Comments
[two reasons for its existence]
only two? Are we so absolutely sure that absolutely none of it is the result of intentional or institutionalised sexism that the very suggestion is no longer "reasonable"?
Posted by: dsquared | Jan 17, 2006 2:15:16 PM
dsquared
Yes.
Posted by: Rob Read | Jan 17, 2006 3:45:21 PM
Most couples decide to allocate child care primarily to the woman. The womans consequent loss of earnings is a result of her own and her partners free decisions both to have children and to let her assume the main childcare role. The state should not interfere with a person's freely taken decisions.
Posted by: simon | Jan 17, 2006 3:56:58 PM
Most couples decide to allocate child care primarily to the woman. The womans consequent loss of earnings is a result of her own and her partners free decisions both to have children and to let her assume the main childcare role. The state should not interfere with a person's freely taken decisions.
Posted by: simon | Jan 17, 2006 4:26:53 PM
Perhaps the key is to ensure that a man's career prospects will not suffer if HE decides to go part-time to help with childcare. At the moment, in most industries a man who takes time off to care for his kids is a wooftah. Since recent staff reforms, a certain quorum of my male colleagues have taken up an opportunity to take parental leave as a part-time exercise, for six months or so per child, and it seems to be a good solution all round as employers retrieve good female brains, do not lose all the male brains, and child and parent get some good bonding time.
Posted by: Auntymarianne | Jan 17, 2006 10:08:58 PM
Tim, I think you may need to retire to your dugout on this one. Women have the babies. Even Germaine Greer cannot change that.
If more than half the doctors in the country are female then you have to encourage them to come back to work.
There is a serious shortage of GPs at present. The bribe of a few thousand pounds was encouraging women to come back.
Once they come back, the should be paid the same.
http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/2006/01/women-doctors-no-longer-encouraged-to.html
John
Posted by: Dr Crippen | Jan 17, 2006 10:30:19 PM
Why so, Cripps? Couldn't the "bribe" be treated like a student loan, and paid back over the years? That would result in payment being nominally equal, but actually reduced by 9% p.a. until repayment is complete. Alternatively, experiment a bit until you find the wage that tempts enough people back to work to fill the slots. Markets, eh?
Posted by: dearieme | Jan 18, 2006 1:48:34 AM
Rob Read has some nerve flatly rejecting dsquared’s suggestion when he himself has openly stated his policy of intentional sexism on this blog:
Everyone who runs a business with their own money (like me) won’t employ women of impregnable age. Why? They can ignore their contract. Businesses pay people to do a job, not knock out children.
Posted by: Contradictory Ben | Jan 27, 2006 12:10:57 PM
