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The apparently unfavourable comparison between the pay of men and women, and the ensuing debate,\u00a0has been rambling on for years.\u00a0 Various nauseating phrases like \u2018pay gap\u2019 and \u2018glass ceiling\u2019 have been used and persist, including in articles out this week (here<\/a>\u00a0in the Irish Times <\/a>and here<\/a>\u00a0from a recruiting firm).\u00a0 Whether or not women in general have been paid less for an equivalent job in the past is hard to quantify precisely\u00a0\u2013 there are of course some well-known\u00a0cases, but these seem few.\u00a0 Either way, nothing can defend the actions of those who sought to instigate such a disparity.<\/p>\n

But despite\u00a0\u2018equal pay for the same job\u2019\u00a0problem having been done away with some time ago\u2014and it really has been, any impropriety on that score would (rightly) have employers being sued until they were naked, obviously\u2014the debate still exists.\u00a0 A recent report in the Society Pages<\/a>, tweeted by a female friend, is a good example.\u00a0 The essence of the argument is that women and men of the same age do not have the same pay.\u00a0 This is not only possibly, but probably, true, but it is not unfair.\u00a0\u00a0Let us analyse it stepwise.\u00a0 These statistics are an average of the pay received by men and women, a given point after leaving University.\u00a0 Do the statistics take account of a man and a woman of the same ability, experience and qualifications in the same pay structures?\u00a0 Of course not \u2013 although useful, it would be ludicrously complicated to do, and the sample sizes would probably be too small to make it statistically significant.\u00a0 On top of this the laws that have been in place for some time mean that gender does not influence the pay for a given job.\u00a0 So, 10 years after University, two equivalent brains, one belonging to a male, one to a female, will do equally well, accounting for luck.<\/p>\n

But what, if at the age of 31 years, our female example takes two years off to have a baby?\u00a0 We will assume she, like our male example, is married, and that co-incidentally, our male example\u2019s wife also has a baby at about the same time.\u00a0 If our example woman then goes back to work two years later, by the time our two examples reach 35 one will have had 8 years\u2019 experience and the other 10.\u00a0 And so when they are up for promotion to middle or senior management, which will get the post?\u00a0 The one with more experience will get the job.\u00a0 Add to that our example man may have done not only more years, but more hours-per-year in that time: how many fathers have you met who have said that having a baby on the way focuses the mind?\u00a0 I know plenty.<\/p>\n

Although this example is broadly true, and includes two factors general statistics do not, it is of course a simplification.\u00a0 Changes in priorities with age, and a possible second child, would influence things further.\u00a0 However, if the meretricious notion that doing more work means getting paid more is borne in mind when interpreting the statistics, the fact that men apparently earn more than women is explainable at least partly because men in general spend more time at work.\u00a0 There should not be any shame in that.\u00a0 If anything it proves that meritocracy, the only\u00a0acceptable status quo<\/em>,<\/em> really does exist: you do more hours, you get more pay and experience.\u00a0 An obvious comparison would be between men and women of equivalent years of experience and qualifications, rather than just male and female.\u00a0 Have any studies been done on that I wonder?\u00a0 I could not find any.<\/p>\n

The most important point is one I have not really touched upon yet.\u00a0 That point is based on\u00a0the idea that a comparison of men and women should be done on financial grounds.\u00a0 This idea is plainly revolting.\u00a0 The message from such a comparison looks, for all the world, like \u2018Money is how we measure success and personal value, men earn more therefore they are worth more\u2019.\u00a0 How vile could a gender imbalance be?\u00a0 This sort of idea pervades both sides of the debate \u2013 both radical feminists and tabloid loonies alike \u2013 and thus heavily implies that it is a waste for a woman to take time off from a career to have a baby and mother<\/em> it (yes that word is also a verb).\u00a0 Well it f***ing isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

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