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Ben Black, Director

The Gender Pay Gap, easyJet and $12 Trillion

Ben Black, Director

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Regular work+family updates for
HR and diversity professionals.

Not so easy-Jetting

I'm being a bit serious this week. Probably because I'm recovering from the stress of half-term. Taking 3 young children on a half-term EasyJet flight - full of middle class alpha-male families - over the holidays, is bad enough. Being told the plane won't work, but, luckily, there is another plane, half the size, on the other side of the airport and the first ones there will be OK - now that is stressful!

Gender pay gap - politically speaking

I want to talk about equality, but first, let me get political. I'm not a huge fan of Messrs. Corbyn, Hollande or Tsipras. But I can't help getting kind of excited about what they stand for. Isn't it amazing proof of the civilised comfortable societies we've created, that people actually vote for them? Put another way, China wouldn't dream of trying some of their madcap, socialist schemes until it's about 5 times richer than it is now.

Where I do agree with them is on the question of inequality. A massive gap between the richest and poorest creates all kinds of problems. It's not only the gap between rich and poor which makes society worse, the varying financial rewards between types of jobs are also wrong. Why should bankers be paid more than lawyers; lawyers more than doctors; doctors more than teachers; and teachers more than care workers?

Want to know why the Finns have an education system that is the envy of the world? The teachers are paid more and are held in the same regard as doctors. Simple.

Different genders, different jobs?

When people talk about the pay gap, they are really talking about two things:

  • It's partly about women being paid less than men for doing the same work - clearly unfair.
  • It's also about the average man being paid more than the average women - that's not quite so unfair.

Women often do lower paid jobs. What's the problem? Well the problem is obvious, if you use those little grey cells of yours. Lots of those women who have been carefully steered by modern society into lower paid, caring jobs, would be much better doing something else. By much better, I mean, much better than some of the men who are doing them currently.

If women did the jobs they were good at, rather than the jobs society told them they should do, we would be $12 trillion richer! Equally, some of those male engineers, programmers and bankers would be better parents and carers than lots of the women currently doing those roles.

Putting egos aside

If we're ever going to get to that wonderful place called 'equality', it's going to take a lot of men putting their machismo aside and admitting to their, often overlooked, caring side. And it's going to take a lot of women to admit that their partner might just be better at it than them.

We have a bit of a way to go!

Ben Black

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Regular work+family updates for
HR and diversity professionals.