PM will take part in stoppage by women and non-binary people calling for pay equality and action on gender-based violence

Organisers hope the women’s strike – whose confirmed participants include fishing industry workers, teachers, nurses and the PM, Katrín Jakobsdóttir – will bring society to a standstill to draw attention to the country’s ongoing gender pay gap and widespread gender-based and sexual violence.

        • ALoafOfBreadEnglish
          31·
          1 year ago

          There’s just more nuance to it than the way you and others on both sides in these comments are presenting it. There is an 16% gender pay gap, true, but it’s actually a complex issue and just presenting that one fact in isolation leads others to believe “… and it is fully attributable to discrimination”, which isn’t the case.

          Some of that is explained by “job choice” and choice of university degree, meaning women are self-selecting into certain lower paying jobs and fields of study. Like how women are underrepresented in STEM. This isn’t to say women are bad at STEM. There are just societal barriers that prevent them from pursuing those career choices. Everything from the pervasive notion that women “don’t like math” to harassment in male-dominated fields to our society enforcing the idea that women’s role in society is to care for others - and the “caring professions” are not high-paying.

          The gap is not wholly explained by these factors, and we should try to mitigate them while continuing to decrease gender discrimination. But don’t pretend like these factors aren’t also at issue. Meanwhile, the gap is closing due to women becoming more represented both in universities (outnumbering men in the US), various old-fashioned notions going away, etc.

          There are plenty of studies that support this, I saw several both from Harvard (some of which I was familiar with) and many more from other reputable universities and institutions. Also some from irreputable, conservative think tanks - it’s easy to see how this issue can be weaponized by them, but ignoring that job choice and other factors play a role is not helpful to closing the gender pay gap. This is from a US perspective, I can’t guarantee it holds true in all “Western” countries - but I know it’s the case in US and Canada

          The US government has found that: "Specifically, differences in the industries and occupations where men and women work explain 42.0% of their variance in earnings. ": https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WB/equalpay/WB_issuebrief-undstg-wage-gap-v1.pdf (source on the chart in page 2 of the writeup, comes from 2020 study by the US Census Bureau). This is a sizeable effect and we should not ignore it.

    • ALoafOfBreadEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      It is objectively true that women are overrepresented in lower paying jobs. This is due to a variety of reasons, including societal and social factors thay discourage women from going into higher paying, traditionally male fields. The gap is narrowing especially now that, at least in the US, there are more women attending university than men and we have robust laws to prevent/punish discrimination based on sex.

      Here’s a good summary/explanation by Pew Research Center in a writeup of a survey of theirs on the Gender Pay Gap:

      "Much of the gender pay gap has been explained by measurable factors such as educational attainment, occupational segregation and work experience. The narrowing of the gap over the long term is attributable in large part to gains women have made in each of these dimensions.

      Even though women have increased their presence in higher-paying jobs traditionally dominated by men, such as professional and managerial positions, women as a whole continue to be overrepresented in lower-paying occupations relative to their share of the workforce. This may contribute to gender differences in pay."

      They go on to say that a gap still exists, even accounting for these factors, but it’s smaller than the commonly cited 84% figure (though 84% is correct if you don’taccount for other factors).

      https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/03/01/gender-pay-gap-facts/

      The US government has found that "Specifically, differences in the industries and occupations where men and women work explain 42.0% of their variance in earnings. ": https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WB/equalpay/WB_issuebrief-undstg-wage-gap-v1.pdf (source on the chart in page 2 of the writeup, comes from 2020 study by the US Census Bureau)

      Here’s a brief writeup of a Harvard study that talks about how women self-select into lower-paying jobs: https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/effect-task-choice-and-task-assignment-gender-wage-gap-experimental-study

      Basically, there is a pay gap, some of it is explained by factors other than gender, but we should work to try to eliminate those factors by removing barriers for women to enter certain fields as well as gender discrimination.