Wage gap revisited

[differenceblog]

Rep. Carolyn Mahoney (2007) urges her readers to participate in "Equal Pay Day" on April 24th. Equal Pay Day is theoretically the day when what a woman earned since January 1st, 2006 equals what a man in a comparable job earned in calendar year 2006. The National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) website says that Equal Pay Day will be featured in

Comments

[differenceblog]

I'm not sure I understand. Did he get the full 12 weeks, or did they terminate him before his guaranteed family leave was up?

[differenceblog]

that's what it sounded like; I just couldn't believe in that level of dumbness. Funny what I choose not to believe in.

[rarkrarkrark]

It always fascinates me that when the gender gap comes up, people always start talking about whether it's fair because women take more leave etc...except that the gender pay gap is still significant even when all of those variables (choice of job, amount of leave taken, etc) are taken into account.

[differenceblog]

The problem, as I see it, is that employers are in a really bad position in terms of reducing pay for underperforming employees under current conditions. That goes for either men or women.

[rarkrarkrark]

I thought that's what firing/layoffs are for. Admittedly, I've primarily worked in an industry known for regular layoffs. I'm not sure how that might work out in industries that don't tend to have regular layoffs.

But the only way I can see this being an issue is if we're penalizing individual women for the behavior of some other women (i.e. paying women less across the board because some of them will drop out of the workforce to have children, or some of them have children and thus will take more leave) which is still a problem.

[differenceblog]

My concern is that you can't penalize women who actually do take leave, under the current system. If you can't penalize the individual, you penalize the group.