"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.)