Reader's Letter Of The Day

From today's Metro:

Ms Ahmed's fight for equal pay for BBC presenters is admirable.

The outcome, however, should not be a rise for a woman but a massive reduction in pay for the overpaid male 'talent'.

Peter Brown, Croydon.

Or, they could just buy "male" razors...

From the BBC:

A Lib Dem MP wants to stop items such as razors or deodorants from being priced differently based on whether they are marketed at men or women.

On Tuesday Christine Jardine will introduce a bill to Parliament banning what she calls "a sexist tax"...

An investigation by The Times newspaper in 2016 found that women and girls were charged on average 37% more for clothes, beauty products and toys.

In the same year, a petition accused Boots of charging £2.29 for an eight-pack of women's razors compared to £1.49 for a 10-pack of male razors.

"Women abandon calls for equal treatment with men"

From The Guardian:

The state pension age for women will rise to 65 on Tuesday to match men for the first time since 1940, reaching a milestone that has prompted warnings from campaigners that the pace of equalisation has left some female retirees realising that life isn't a bed of roses for men either.

The equalisation of the state pension age at 65 is the first step towards a rise to 66 for both sexes in two years (October 2020), and a planned further increase to 67 starting from 2026. Another rise to 68 from 2039 was recommended by the official Cridland review this year, which will mean all workers currently in their late 30s and early 40s are treated equally.*

The accelerated timetable for equalising then raising the state pension age will now mean men and women are treated equally, according to the campaign group Wfspe (Women for state pension equality), with about 3.8 million women born in the 1950s expected to wait as long as men before they can live off the taxpayer guilt-free.

From here:

1940 - men age 65, women age 60
In 1940 pension age for women was cut to 60 to try to ensure for most couples that the married rate would be paid as soon as the husband reached 65.

1995 - women's state pension age to be equalised
Following pressure from Europe**, the Conservative Government was forced to announce plans to equalise state pension age for men and women. The timetable was the most relaxed possible and would raise pension age for women to 65 slowly from April 2010 to April 2020.

Yup, the people whining now have had over twenty years' fair warning.

* On a technical note, and what 'campaigners' like the Wfspe don't mention, the UK state pension is now moving towards a flat rate Citizen's Pension in all but name (hooray for that). The new system equalises the state pension between men and women, because of instead of having a low basic state pension based on years with NI contributions (tends to favour men slightly) plus the second state pension based on lifetime earnings (which favours higher earners = men), it is based purely on years with NI contributions or years with 'mother's credit'.

To eliminate the mothers' pay (or state pensions) gap (which is what the so-called gender pay/pensions gap actually is), women who have had children are given one year's credit for every year that they were not working but claiming Child Benefit, i.e. pretty much for every year of their adult lives, automatically.

So I (higher earner for most of my working life) will end up with less state pension than I would have done under the old rules, and plenty of lower earners esp. women will end up with more. Am I moaning? No, because that is A Good Thing.

** I take it they mean "The European Union", in which case one of the good things they did for us. But I bet the Remoaners never mentioned that.

Some people are a bit confused

From The Daily Mail:

Last April, federal prosecutors filed charges against two men suspected of spying on the opposition People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) on behalf of Iranian intelligence, Deutsche Welle reported.

The Paris-based MEK is an Islamist-Marxist-feminist militant group seeking to overthrow Iran's theocratic government. Iran has blamed the group for stirring up protests earlier this month in Iran.

I know what each of those four adjectives means, and I am sure there are plenty of groups which tick two of those boxes; if you drop "Islamist" then a group which ticks the other three is plausible; going for all four is a comedy sketch.

Short Lists

Major political parties in Great Britain* with a male leader

Labour Party
Liberal Democrat Party

Much longer list:
Major political parties in Great Britain with a female leader

Green Party**
Plaid Cymru
SNP
Conservatives***
UKIP

* GB excludes Northern Ireland. That bastion of male chauvinism only has one major party with a female leader.

** Yes I know that technically they have two joint leaders and one is a bloke, but Caroline Lucas is the only one anybody's heard of.

*** Which gives me another idea for a short list: "European countries with a female prime minister/chancellor etc who never had children"

The Mothers' Pay Gap

At last!

From the BBC:

Women in the UK returning to work after having a baby fall even further behind men in earning power, a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said. The gap between hourly earnings of the two sexes becomes steadily wider after women become mothers, the IFS says. Over the subsequent 12 years, women's hourly pay rate falls 33% behind men's.

The IFS says this is partly because women who return to work often do so in a part-time capacity and miss out on opportunities for promotion.

Robert Joyce, one of the IFS report's authors, said women who chose to cut their hours on returning to work were not penalised with an immediate cut in their hourly wages. However, he said: "Rather, women who work half-time lose out on subsequent wage progression, meaning that the hourly wages of men (and of women in full-time work) pull further and further ahead."

Which is what I have been saying for years - there is no real gender pay gap, it is a mothers vs everybody else pay gap. You do not need to be an economist, social scientist or statistician to suss this out, most people will have noticed this themselves first hand (my wife and I certainly have).

Ben Southwood of the ASI takes the more cheerfully libertarian view in City AM explaining why this is no biggie and the real reasons for the apparent residual ten per cent pay gap which cannot be explained by motherhood alone, worth a read in full.

Nonetheless, to the extent that we "should" do something about the gender pay gap*, this is the place to start. IMHO, a Citizen's Income and more generous Child Benefit** instead of the Child Tax Credit crap would more or less eliminate the pay gap in net terms.

* My view is 'big deal'; the total wage pot is what it is, if mothers were paid more, then everybody else would be paid less, so for most couples it evens out. Her Indoors earns barely a third as much as I do (she is underpaid and I am overpaid, by definition) but - like most women - she somehow gets to spend considerably more of our total net/discretionary income than I do.

** The IFS say that the pay gap increases steadily after a woman has had her first child. Other sources correlate this with the number of children - the more children, the bigger the gap (probably a bit of both). So a more generous Child Benefit per child, paid to the mother would fix this nicely, and scrapping means-tested Child Tax Credits increases the incentive to work, so that looks like a win-win to me.

Nobody move or female workers get it!

Harriet Harman on (over the) top form in The Guardian:

Harriet Harman has claimed campaigners calling for Britain to leave the EU are more likely to associate with an old-fashioned view that a woman’s primary role is in the home.

The Labour MP made the claim in an interview with the Guardian in which she also argued that Brexit could derail the fight for women’s rights.

Harman, who has been a leading campaigner on gender equality for four decades, said she would not trust high-profile out campaigners such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove or Nigel Farage “as far as I can throw them” on the issue... Harman argued that lurking behind the opposition was the idea that women should not be demanding rights in the workplace when they should really be at home.

“We still see occasionally the veil slips,” she said. “And actually there is quite a good match between the people who want to leave the EU and the people who actually want women to be back in the home. Why would we want them to be in charge of our rights? Why would we trust our rights to them?”

Perhaps Johnson, Gove or Farage are indeed old school male chauvinist pigs (there's no evidence for it, but hey), surely we are having a referendum on EU membership, not voting on whether those three form the next government?

Satire copies satire.

Me, last July: Lack of women in London's refuse collection 'disappointing'

Newsthump, today: Feminists demand equal representation in the refuse collection industry

Women Junior Doctors

From the Telegraph

The contracts also change the current automatic pay progression that means a trainee doctor’s salary goes up every year. Under the proposed changes, doctors who take time out of their training for maternity leave or to study for a PhD will not be eligible for the automatic rise.

You get an automatic pay rise when you take a year out to spend it changing nappies? And some people think it's wrong for the government to be stopping this? Are you a better doctor after you've spent a year with rattles and warming bottles? No, so why should you be paid more?

“It’s really difficult if you’re trying to put a roof over your children’s’ heads,” says Tamsett who has just had her first child and is currently on maternity leave. “The fact that I could work part-time was one of the reasons I thought medicine was a good career for me but now I’m faced with the prospect of returning to a job that demands longer hours for less pay.

Go back to work and hire a nanny then. £32K will cover it and you'll be better off if the finances matter.

But female doctors particularly feel they will be penalised by the potential new contracts. “If you’re a mother as well as a doctor, you’re hit extra hard,” explains mother-of-two Dr Rachel Clarke, 42. She gave up a well-paid career in TV production to retrain as a doctor and is now doing her core medical training in Oxford, where she earns around £20,000 a year.

What clown allows people in their late-30s to do medical training? Seriously. It costs £250K to train a doctor and there are limited places. If you consider that someone normally works for around 40 years, that's like training half a doctor.

Sarah, a 31-year-old junior doctor in anaesthetics who didn’t want to give her full name, is worried about the effect the contracts would have on gender equality within the medical profession as a whole:
“As the majority of medical school graduates are now female, it is clear that penalising against trainee doctors for taking parental leave has widespread implications for medicine as a profession, just as we were making strides in the area of gender equality.”

Widespread implications being that more men, and women who would rather hand their kids to nanny go into medicine raising the total capacity of doctors? And this is a bad thing, how?

"Lack of women in London's refuse collection sector 'disappointing'"

From The Evening Standard:

More than one in four companies involved in waste management in London employ no women at board level, new figures claimed today.

According to the survey of more than 1,600 experts, leaders and investors, published today, 23 per cent of refuse collection businesses employ no women at all, from entry level to board level. Only 12 per cent had women in management roles.

The study, by the National Waste & Recycling Association, found nearly 60 per cent of respondents do not believe the capital’s waste collection services reflect the city’s diversity because of the lack of women operatives...

Russ Shaw, founder of NWRA, branded the figures “disappointing”.

"For a sector identified with underpinning public health and a green economy, these figures are very disappointing. We live in a city with a global reputation for diversity yet one of our most essential industries fails to reflect this from 'street' level to the most senior positions.

“London Waste & Recycling Week is a chance to showcase the scale of our sector but we must also use it as an opportunity to show women how starting as a dustbin woman can lead to a rewarding career.”

Blissex nails it

Blissex, in the comments to the second post on the question of whether people underestimate commuting costs when deciding whether to buy/rent somewhere small but close to where they work or somewhere larger but further away…

Well, either many men don't even think of women's influence on them, or are too politically correct to point out the obvious.

Usually the dominant influence on house location and type is the female partner (after all both before and after divorce she considers it *her* house), and usually the male partner somehow gets the longer commute.

Perhaps the male partner would rather like the 3 bed flat near *his* workplace, but the female one will just fall in love with the 5 bed detached with the big garden in the outer suburbs. And it would be misogynist for the male partner to be abusive to the point of disregarding her needs :-).

Salma Hayek on Feminism

Via Salma Hayek

Despite her passionate support for women, Hayek told PEOPLE that she does not consider herself to be a feminist. 

"I am not a feminist," she said. "If men were going through the things women are going through today, I would be fighting for them with just as much passion. I believe in equality." 

This is an important distinction. Feminism isn't about fighting for equal rights. It's about fighting for women's rights.

OK, women didn't have the same rights as men some decades ago. Some people might argue they still don't have the same rights as men, although I'm really not sure.

But the point is that feminists will cry "equality", but only when women are at a disadvantage. They weren't crying out for pension age equality, or for an investigation into why men get longer prison sentences like they cry about the women's pay gap.

If you want equal rights, you're an egalitarian, not a feminist.

A Dilemna for Lefty Feminists

From the Mail on Sunday

Feminist T-shirts proudly worn by Ed Miliband (bottom left), Harriet Harman (top left) and Nick Clegg (inset) are made in 'sweatshop' conditions by migrant women (centre) paid just 62p an hour, a Mail on Sunday investigation has revealed.

So, do they wear the t-shirt to show their support for the sisterhood or throw it away to show their support for the sweatshop workers?

"Five myths about the gender pay gap"

For a bit of light relief, I read an article at Comment Is Free:

... to make the pervasive myths slightly easier to debunk, here are five retorts. Ladies, if the continued experience of being devalued is getting you down, you can always distribute this piece to pay-gap naysayers. Off we go!

There is no gender pay gap

Alas, there is a gender pay gap...

The gender pay gap only exists because women have babies

... it isn’t quite true. I say “quite” because it’s undeniable that the time women take off to become mothers – often out of necessity because of maternity leave arrangements and childcare costs – has an enormous impact on wages.

But according to figures based on the Office of National Statistics Annual Survey of Hours and Incomes, the pay gap between men and women in their 20s has doubled since 2010.

Let's do these together.

I checked the ONS thing, the 'gender pay gap' for median full time wages is as follows:

18-21 - 8%
22-29 - 6%
30-39 - 9%
40-49 - 29%
50-59 - 32%
60+ - 27%

So that's one heck of a jump between under and over 40, which can largely be explained by women having taken career breaks for babies and/or women with kids choosing jobs with regular or predictable hours, i.e. less overtime, no long business trips, no night shifts, no working away from home etc, which as you might expect are lower paid.

Under the age of 40, the gap is so small as to be not worth worrying about. She makes a false comparison about the gender pay gap for people in their 20s having doubled since 2010, the long term trend is a narrowing of the gap and if there is a blip when it increases from 3% to 6%, well so what.

The gender pay gap exists because women aren’t as assertive as men

Women aren’t ambitious enough to pursue top jobs

That's the same argument twice and difficult to prove either way. Cause and effect.

The pay gap has a load of practical explanations and is nothing to do with sexism at all

This one's weird.

She links to list of anecdotes about the condescending behaviour suffered by some women in 'traditionally' male jobs. There's no doubt that this behaviour exists and it is regrettable, but it has f- all to do with the 'gender pay gap'.

And when women get together it is quite normal for them to belittle their husbands, even when their husbands are present. It's not pleasant either, but men just put up with it. What goes around comes around. (Clearly, men occasionally moan about their wives when they're among friends but seldom when their wives are present.)

"Women under-represented in"

It's a man's celluloid world: study finds women under-represented in film

Women 'under-represented in world newsrooms'

Women under-represented in academic medicine

Women under-represented in freelancing

Women under-represented in Lords despite new additions

Protestant women under-represented in PSNI

Report finds women under-represented at senior levels in radio

Women under-represented in NHS leadership

Women under represented in fund management

WOMEN UNDER REPRESENTED IN SENIOR POSITIONS IN UK

Why are women under represented in the cannabis community?

Women under-represented in UK boardrooms, says survey

Women under-represented in construction, reveals guide

Women under-represented in senior advertising jobs

Decomposing

From the Guardian

Judith Weir is to be appointed Master of the Queen's Music. Weir, 60, will be the first woman ever appointed to this role, which has existed for nearly 400 years. The title may be archaic, the job's implied responsibilities establishmentarian, but given the struggles for recognition that have faced women composers over the centuries it is still a significant crack in a crystal ceiling.
Might like to talk to this young woman

28 million copies so far, double the number of the nearest artist, male or otherwise. She's also won an Academy Award and Golden Globe for co-writing Skyfall, the Ivor Novello award for Songwriter of the year in 2012 and had both her albums nominated for the Mercury Prize.

Oh, and the two biggest selling albums in the world of the 2000s were co-written by women (Norah Jones and Avril Lavigne).

Only artist to win 2 Mercury music prizes? PJ Harvey.

Might want to rethink that theory...

Ray Mears Sparks Twitter Row by Writing Feminist Fiction

From The Guardian

He camped out in jungles, but award-winning survivalist Ray Mears is in trouble over a book he wrote and published, Backpacking in China with my Vagina.

Mears posted a picture of the book on a shelf on Twitter, with the remark: “Women oppressed by the patriarchy. I am oppressing the patriarchy".

His breezy comment, however, along with pictures of him attending a Slutwalk sparked outrage – among some – on the Twittersphere.

BBC Bans all-tall Basketball Matches

From the Telegraph

The BBC is to ban all-tall basketball matches and insist that at least one jockey is included in every line-up, the corporation’s head of television has announced.

Danny Cohen said playing a match without a jockey on the team was “not acceptable” any longer. The new rules will apply to all basketball matches broadcast.

Jockeys have complained of the ‘heightist’ culture in such matches. Frankie Dettori said “high passes between tall players" made it difficult for jockeys to get a crack at the ball.

Pat Eddery and Tony McCoy have also been critical, with McCoy claiming: “A lot of matches are dominated by tall players, because they rely on tipping balls into baskets, or blocking each others shots, which is not generally a very jockey-like thing.”

A report commissioned by the BBC in 2012 singled out the Boston Celtics and LA Lakers for having only “token shortarses” on their teams. In December last year, the BBC Trust tasked management with putting more shortarses on screen as “a matter of urgency”. As a result, the BBC’s entertainment controller, Mark Linsey, has told basketball teams there is “just no excuse for delivering all-tall player team lists”.

"Cycling Scotland advert banned over 'bare legs'"

From the BBC:

A television advert promoting safe cycling has been banned for showing a young woman cyclist wearing an above-the-knee length skirt. The advert, part of a campaign by Cycling Scotland, seeks to encourage drivers to pay cyclists as little attention as they would the back of a bus.

But the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it should not be shown on TV again as wearing provocative clothing was "socially irresponsible". Cycling Scotland said it was not a legal requirement for female cyclists to dress modestly and demurely.


An accident waiting to happen (artist's impression)

The national cycle promotion organisation for Scotland told the ASA that wearing a short skirt or open cardigan and carrying a shoulder bag in a manner likely to 'lift and separate' was a personal choice for the individual - a fact it considered was reflected in the advert with footage of various cyclists both with, and without, exposed limbs or a hint of cleavage on display.

Cycling Scotland also referred to its clothing policy, which discussed the possible undesired outcomes of partially dressed young women cycling, including causing unchaste thoughts and "influencing a driver's behaviour to be less careful when interacting on the road".

The Financial Conduct Authority sends itself up most gloriously

One of my fellow 'bloggers asked me several months ago what I thought of the FCA's Occasional Paper #1 Applying behavioural economics at the Financial Conduct Authority, and I have finally got round to reading it.

Most of it is quite sensible actually, even though it only scratches the surface and there is a spelling mistake at the top of page 45. The inside joke is on page 35:

Box 3: Detecting inconsistencies in choices

The following can help us identify whether consumers are making mistakes…

ii. Consumers’ choices changing in response to variation in irrelevant factors, such as how information is presented. For example, greater willingness to take up a personal loan offer when a photograph of a woman is added to a letter.

Inevitably, the one single photograph in the whole 71 page document is on the front page: