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We need to take a stand for men’s issues in 2015

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If we want to make a difference for men and boys we need to take a stand in 2015 says Mark Brooks of the ManKind Initiative.

We all know there are a multitude of challenges facing those of us who work, volunteer and advocate for charities working to overcome the problems and barriers that men and boys face. Two challenges we regularly face are the exclusion of men and boys in the public story (often on purpose, which is a form of discrimination by omission) and also the problem of Straw Man arguments. There were examples of both of these at play in Parliament this month.

Discrimination by Omission

This discrimination by omission phenomena is more often than not created deliberately, but then is unknowingly taken on, unchallenged and accepted as a truth – especially if it fits snugly into an accepted political framework (men=bad, women=good).

The exclusion from the public story can be seen in discussions where a debate affects men and boys as well as women and girls. It doesn’t matter whether women and girls are the main victims (eg sexual violence, domestic abuse etc) or if  men and boys suffer the most (eg educational attainment), the debate is focussed women and girls either way-if there is a debate at all (eg homelessness, suicide, family law, male cancer etc).

The recent debate here at insideMAN about the Guardian’s exclusion of including boys in the circumcision debate is one example of discrimination by omission.

Straw Men

Straw Man arguments are those to try and misrepresent the views and/or actions of people as a means of attacking them. Last year te ManKind Initiative video, ViolenceIsViolence, was successful at raising awareness of our double standards around violence between men and women. The video demonstrated how the public is more tolerant of violence by women against men.   An article on the blog “we hunted the mammoth” claiming our video was a fraud, is a classic example of a  Straw Man argument.

Parliamentary Business

This month in Parliament there were two clear examples of discrimination by omission and straw men arguments.

Firstly, there was the First Reading of the Equal Pay (Transparency) Bill proposed by Sarah Champion MP. The purpose of the Bill is to ensure the employers with more than 250 employees publish data on the pay differences between male and female workers. The government already have the powers to force companies to do so under the Equality Act 2010 but they have chosen so far not to invoke the powers. The Bill went through to its Second Reading with 258 voting yes with 8 noes.

We can debate the gender pay gap for hours and whether it is due to lifestyle choice vis a vis the family unit or direct discrimination but if the debate and the Bill were really about equal pay for everyone then why was there no mention that men between 22 and 39 are on average paid less than women.

This gap will surely grow as in the very same week, UCAS highlighted the gender university gap whereby 34% of 18 year old women go to university but only 26% men – the equivalent of 32,000 missing males. Ironically in Rotherham, Ms Champion’s constituency, 24% of 18 year old women go to university and only 14% of men, a gender university gap of 42%.

So was the debate really about just equality and ending discrimination because if so the debate and the Bill’s intention would not have omitted the statistics above. And was it also a Straw Man to paint men in a bad light as if we all sit in smoke filled boardrooms actively discriminating against women?

Excluding male victims of domestic violence from help

The following day, another Bill was proposed this time the Women’s Refuges (Provision and Eligibility) Bill 2014-15.

And as can be seen by the debate, it did what it said on the tin and failed to recognise the awful situation in the UK where for male victims and their children there are only just over 50 safe house/refuge places run by 11 organisations.

There are huge swathes of the UK – London, North West, Scotland, East Anglia for example, where there is not one place (London has nothing for heterosexual men). I recognise there are not enough places for female victims but to ignore male victims and fail to call for provision for men in the same way as for women shows another clear cut example of discrimination by omission. It is a straw man argument as it suggests that only men commit domestic abuse. How can this Bill be about equality when it purposely ignores 40% of domestic abuse victims?

So what we do about it?

For me, 2015 has to be the year where those of us I mentioned at the start of the article have to be bolder in speaking up for our causes and challenging those who ignore them – whether on purpose or through the belief in what they have been told is true or the full story. As set out in a previous article for iNsideMan, there are ways to address this, but the examples from this month shows we have to up the ante – we have no choice, we have to speak up on behalf of those we fight for.

—Picture credit: Flickr/Karen Roe

Mark Brooks is Chair of The ManKind Initiative, a charity that helps and advocates for male victims of domestic violence. Follow them on twitter @ManKindInit.

The views expressed in this article are not necessarily the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

10 Reasons why men still feel pressure to be the main breadwinner

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Men are three times more likely to feel pressured to be the main breadwinner in their relationship, according to the first national audit of masculinity published by the male suicide prevention charity CALM last month.

 

So why do men feel pressure to be the main breadwinner? Here we explore 10 possible reasons and we’d like to hear your theories in the comments section below.

1. You can’t beat biology

The ability to earn money used to be defined almost entirely by biology. However the world of work is no longer so divided. It is a little known fact that single women earn more than single men in the UK—so the pay gap is not simply caused by biology or sex discrimination.

The pay gap is mostly a parenting gap but it’s also a relationship gap. While single women earn more than single men, the moment men and women enter into a relationship with each other a relationship pay gap emerges.

So even in couples where there are no children, men earn more than women on average. Why does this happen? Do men lean in to the provider role? Do women settle in to being provided for? We don’t really know, but we do know it happens

When kids arrive, the parenting pay gap gets bigger with each extra child. This is where biology is definitely playing a part. Men can’t gestate or lactate so having kids means mums spend less time in the workplace and dads take on more responsibility for bringing home the bacon.

There is some sex discrimination at play here. On mum’s side, campaigners claim that 60,000 mums are pushed out of work every year; on dad’s side, unequal parental rights prevent dads having an equal opportunity to be the primary carer (and mum’s having a equal opportunity to be the main breadwinner).

2. Work is a man’s world

Is the world of work still a “man’s world” that favours male breadwinners?

According to the “dissident feminist”, Camille Paglia, “the modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author”.

Paglia was speaking int a debate about The End of Men, Hanna Rosin’s celebrated book in which she claimed that the emerging postindustrial society is better suited to women. This isn’t simply a lef-wing, feminist fantasy. Trevor Nelson, editor of the right-wing Spectator magazine has made a similar observation saying:

“The economy is changing shape, in a way that is to men’s collective disadvantage. Occupations requiring physical strength are rapidly disappearing; a quarter of manufacturing jobs have vanished in the past 10 years. In their place come posts where “work” means grabbing a coffee, heading to the office and getting along with people. The qualities of social intelligence, communication skills and multi-tasking are not ones where men have any innate advantage. The recession has simply accelerated the emasculation of the economy.”

For now, it seems, the economy still favours male breadwinners, making it the obvious choice for most couples to rely on dad to earn most money, but for how much longer?

3. Fathers don’t have equal rights to care for their children

Fathers still don’t have equal rights or opportunities to be involved parents and this pushes men into the breadwinner role. According to the best-selling author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernier—who is a patron of the charity Families Need Fathers—there is a “general mythologising of fathers as irrelevant and feckless abusers” and the family courts treat “fathers heartlessly as mere sperm donors and bankers”.

At the other end of the fatherhood experience, new dads also face discrimination. As the former Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) commissioner Duncan Fisher said, when a Welsh dad whose partner died in childbirth was legally prevented from leaving hospital with his new born child:

“In UK law, a father can only be a father if the mother approves him. She can do this in two ways – marry him or invite him to sign the birth certificate. If neither of these happens, he is not the father until the family court approves him. A man has to be vetted by the mother or the state before he is allowed to be a father.”

When fathers don’t equal rights to take on the role of involved parent, they are inevitably pushed into the role of being the primary breadwinner.

4. Men have narrower choices

The latest British Social Attitudes survey also tells us that:

  • Only 28% of people think mums should work full time once the kids start school
  • 73% of us think dads should work full time

Put another way, nearly three quarters of the British population—men and women—think men should be the main breadwinners.

What’s happened in the past 50-60 years is that women’s choices have diversified and they have been able to do so because men’s choices have remained relatively stable. Men, for the most part, have continued to provide the economic security that has enabled most modern mums to make one of three life choices:

  • To stay at home until the children start school (which 33% of people support)
  • To work part time until the children start school (which 43% support)
  • To work full time once the kids start school (which 28% support)

When it comes to work-home balance, men simply don’t have the same range of choices:

  • 73% of us think dads should work full time
  • 5% of us think dads should work part time
  • ZERO percent of us think dads should stay at home full time

 5. Parental leave benefits don’t give dads equal support

Until very recently, the UK has had one of the most unequal parenting leave entitlement regimes in the world which was described by the Fatherhood Institute as a major driver of gendered responsibility in earning and caring.

This sexist legislation was introduced by the New Labour government in 2006 and attempts to reform it were opposed by an unholy alliance of big business and women’s groups including the feminist Fawcett Society.

In 2011, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg promised to reform this system saying the laws on parental leave marginalise dads and deny them the chance to play a hands-on role. The new laws on shared parental leave are a big step forward but still discriminate against fathers. According to Ben Moxham at the TUC “the incentives in place for fathers are so poor that even the government estimates that only 2 to 8 per cent of dads are likely to take this leave” and there is still a huge gap between the parental leave pay mums and dads can expect. In the higher education sector, for example, some of the UK’s most generous universities are paying mums over 60 times more than some dads get paid when they take parental leave.

When such huge gender gaps in parental leave pay exist, it is little wonder than men are pushed into the breadwinner role when children enter the equation.

6. Female workers don’t have the same financial ambitions

According to the job website, Adzuna, male job seekers are more ambitious when it comes to earnings, with men being twice as likely as their female counterparts to aspire to top jobs, paying over £100,000.

Adzuna’s survey showed that nearly a third of women would be content with salaries between £20-30k, while only half that number of men claim they would be happy to receive the same level of pay.

A recent survey of graduates made a similar discovery, revealing that while a third (34pc) of male graduates were aiming to earn over £25,000 when they leave university onlya fifth (20pc) of female graduates have the same ambition.

If even the most qualified young women in the country are aiming to earn less than their male counterparts it is inevitable that more men will end up in relationships where they feel pressured to be the main breadwinner.

7. Women don’t want put the same hours in as men

While there are more women in the workplace than ever before, men are still responsible for nearly two-thirds (61%) of the one billion hours people in the UK spend working every week and are three times more likely than women to put in more than 45 hours of paid work each week.

This pattern is set to be repeated by the next generation of workers with male graduates being 50% more likely to say they are prepared to work more than 45 hours a week, than female graduates.

As more men are prepared to work longer hours than women, they are more likely to earn more than their partners and feel pressure to take on the role of main breadwinner.

8. Gentleman prefer work

According to preference theory, there are three key choices facing men and women and these are:

  • To prioritise careers, espouse achievement values and lead a work-centred lifestyle
  • To prioritise family life and sharing values and lead a home-centred lifestyle
  • To combine paid jobs and family work without giving absolute priority to either activity or the accompanying values and lead an adaptive lifestyle

Proponents of preference theory claim that the majority of women are more family orientated while the majority of men are more work orientated and these preferences lead to more men taking on the breadwinner role.

9. Women prefer high achievers

This may seem like an outdated concept, but research suggests that women all over the world still look for breadwinner qualities in their mate and are more likely than men to favour traits related to resources, like ambition, industriousness and earning capacity.

10. The rules of masculinity/femininity

According to the psychologist Martin Seager, there are three ancient rules of masculinity that still inform our experience of being a man today. They are:

  • A real man is a fighter and a winner
  • A real man is a provider and a protector (of women, children and others)
  • A real man retains mastery and control

According to CALM’s audit of masculinity, the majority of men and women (76%) say they believe that men and women in relationships should share equal responsibility for financial matters. The figure is higher for women (83% ) than it is for men (68%).

But what does “equal responsibility” mean? Most of the research in this area suggests that it doesn’t mean bringing home equal amounts of money as nearly three quarters of people think fathers should work full time, while just over a quarter think mothers should work full time.

In CALM’s survey 31% of male respondents said the thought men should be mostly responsible for financial matters. This is lower than the percentage of men who actually end up being the main breadwinner in their family.

Perhaps men are three times more likely to feel pressured to be the main breadwinner because although most men think financial responsibility should be equally shared, in reality, the majority of men still end up doing an unequal share of the breadwinning in their relationship.

And despite the fact that the majority of women say that financial responsibility should be shared equally; the cold, hard reality is that the majority of women, don’t make a equal financial contribution in their relationships (for a variety of reasons)—leaving men more pressure to be the main breadwinner.

WHY DO YOU THINK MEN FEEL PRESSURE TO TAKE ON THE BREADWINNER ROLE IN THEIR RELATIONSHIPS? TELL US WHAT YOU THINK IN THE COMMENTS SECTION. 

—Photo Credit: flickr/Annie Mole

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

If you liked this article and want to read more, follow us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook

The pay gap is caused by personality not gender, so what personality will earn you more money?

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Researchers have found that personality is a greater cause of the pay gap than gender. Pete Nicholls explains what type of personality you need to earn big.

There is a gender pay gap, but it’s not quite the result of what you might think. On average, women as a discrete demographic earn less than men. The amount of difference may vary slightly from one jurisdiction to another but the general pattern is indeed there. That variance may, in time, come to expose something about how we are brought up (therefore how we advantage/disadvantage each gender) but that’s for another piece of research.

If we break this difference down by specific job, there is no difference. So whats going on?

Preference theory suggests that we choose our roles and that this alone accounts for our resulting pay, and since men and women tend toward choosing differing roles (when looked at en masse), this then accounts for the difference we see in pay between the genders. Its seems this is not the full story.

Men and women get paid the same per hour when they do the same job

The theory assumes that what people get paid per hour/day/week is the same for the same job regardless of gender; and certainly this is what employment and equality legislation across the developed world ensures.

The theory suggests there is something about women that causes them to end up in these lower paid jobs, and I would agree. So far the debate has been one of arguing between free choice and ability. Conventional wisdom suggests choice; hence preference theory.

Some advocating gender discrimination would instead suggest ‘lack of choice’ being the issue, but the facts simply do not back this on any scale outside of individual cases. For the differences that we see to be fully explained we need to look at a wider as yet unseen systemic cause.

However, in the meantime, to address this perceived discrimination / lack of choice, we have seen a move towards encouraging women into roles traditionally dominated by men. Examples might include moves to increase numbers of women in engineering, science and senior leadership. Arguably it’s not been particularly successful because the numbers are yet to see wide scale female representation and on the same scale as men. Put another way, the pursuit of  policy to ensure women get into traditionally male roles does not seem to have resulted in women doing well in those roles when compared to their male counterparts. There are of course many exceptions but we are looking at general trends here.

Are we then being told the full story about the gender pay gap?

Is job choice (or lack of choice) the real factor here? Does it explain what we empirically observe? The evidence suggests its only one part of the driver, and a relatively minor one at that.

A number of researchers across the developed world have over the past few decades concluded that another critical force is actually at play. Personality.

Personality is typically measured by psychologists via a set of metrics commonly known as the ‘Big Five’; namely:

(1) inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious

(2) efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless

(3) outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved

(4) friendly/compassionate vs. analytical/detached

(5) sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident

Each of us tends to sit somewhere on the scale described above for these five traits. These traits make us who we are and importantly what we are suited to and good at.

If you want to earn more, stop being so agreeable

A number of studies now suggest quite strongly that number (4) also known as the measure of agreeableness, and number (5) also known as the measure of neuroticism, are the greatest singular predictors of ultimate income. Put another way, the more agreeable and neurotic we are as individuals, the less we tend to earn.

Being agreeable and emotionally sensitive might result in more friends but it’s unlikely to land us in a highly paid job or one that requires such behavioural traits.

Therefore, being disagreeable (‘pushing the boundaries’) and combining it with being even tempered (‘emotionally stable’) seems the best all round predictive factor for income, taking into account every other known factor, including gender.

On self reported scales, men tended to rate more highly on disagreeability and lower on neuroticism, women the direct opposite. This is in turn supported by a number of related studies looking at personality traits by gender.

High earning women are disagreeable too!

Where these gender differences are inconsistent with expectation of the individual (due to their gender), then the male and female earning differences evaporate. i.e. It is not gender that drives income but rather personality.

Look around you, at the place in which you work; would you be surprised by this? Successful people exhibit certain common personality traits regardless of their gender.

The fact is, specific personality norms are predominant in people based on one demographic above all others – their gender. That much is established fact. It may not however be so clear to what extent such traits are the result of nurture versus nature but I would lean towards a significant influence being nurture.

Meaning, how we bring up our children, who they mix with as they grow up and the social norms they are exposed to, has significant impact on how they end up acting and therefore their future earning potential and likelihood of success. Which is why I mentioned above that looking at how different parts of the world bring up children (therefore priming their earning ability) might be quite insightful but that’s for another time.

Here’s the simplified rule that emerges from a cross reference of several studies:

  • Pushy and even tempered = higher earning potential.
  • Any other combination of the above two factors = lower earning potential.

Regardless of gender, if we want our children to grow up and get on, to be successful and to earn a relatively higher salary, we will need to ensure they are taught to question constructively and to do so in an emotionally stable manner.

Psychologically, given that such ‘success’ related behaviors are diametrically opposite to those typically exhibited by ‘victim’ mentalities, one might draw obvious conclusions from efforts to address the gender pay gap through a lens of active discrimination. If researchers are right about success factors then logically, efforts to address gender pay gap through actively impacting perceived discrimination is the least likely strategy to achieve a positive outcome. i.e. Programming someone to think like a victim makes them far less likely to succeed.

Bottom line, businesses are there to succeed. That is their purpose beyond the colourful rhetoric they may otherwise espouse. Put simply, employers that are not up to the job will – and do – go out of business and it is wider society (that business’s customer base) that decides if it lives or dies. There is no conspiracy based on gender as far as customers are concerned, particularly when half the customer base generally happens to be female. The fact is, people with certain traits succeed, others do not.

Maybe its time we focused our energies where they mattered most and not on bogeymen originating out of political ideologies that necessarily rely on support that stems from creating victims.

Deep down, we all know people that are successful and we have a view on their personalities. That personality came from somewhere and certainly we can start by helping the next generation of girls and boys to develop the optimal behaviors to help them succeed in life, work and otherwise. Anything less will do women (and sensitive agreeable men!) a disservice that no amount of gender quota correction will ever address. The business’s customer base will make damn sure of that.

Pete Nicholls is a leading international expert on organisational culture and a single dad to a teen girl he wants to see succeed in life.
If you liked this article and want to read more, follow us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook
The views expressed in this article are not necessarily the views of the insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to to join the conversation about men, masculinity and manhood. Our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

Pete’s recommended reading list:

  1. Assertiveness and competition Hofstede, 1980
  2. Discrimination  Auster, 1989; Blau & Ferber, 1986
  3. Career choices Jackson & Grabski, 1988
  4. 6 Facets of agreeableness Costa and McCrae’s 1992
  5. Interpersonal dimension of job performance Hurtz & Donovan, 2000
  6. Agreeable less likely to enact voice behaviors constructively challenging existing practice LePine & van Dyne, 2001
  7. Agreeableness and friendship Graziano & Tobin, 2002
  8. Social role and congruity Eagly, 1987; Eagly & Karau, 2002
  9. Advocating for position during conflict van de Vliert & Euwema, 2004
  10. High sense of psychological entitlement Campbell Bonacci, Shelton, Exline, & Bushman, 2004
  11. Disagreeableness and favorable settlements in distributive negotiations Barry & Friedman, 1998; Liu, Friedman, & Chi, 2005
  12. Power of nice Thaler & Koval, 2006
  13. Kindness revolution Horrell, 2006
  14. Disagreeableness and psychopathy Derefinko & Lynam, 2006
  15. Agreeability adheres excessively to social norms Paulhus & Trapnell, 2008
  16. Trait manifestation in behaviour Fleeson & Gallagher, 2009
  17. Agreeableness does not equate to success Ng et al., 2005; Mueller & Plug, 2006; Nyhus & Pons, 2005; Rode et al., 2008; Spurk & Abele, 2010
  18. Disagreeableness Balch & Armstrong, 2010
  19. Study of human capital Weinberger & Kuhn, 2010
  20. Do nice guys–and gals–really finish last? Judge, Hurst, Livingston, 2012

Gender pay gap? Twice as many men aim for higher wages

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The job website, Adzuna, has found that male job seekers are more ambitious when it comes to earnings, with men being twice as likely as their female counterparts to aspire to top jobs, paying over £100,000.

The findings follow in the wake of a separate survey by graduates that found young men still expect to earn more, work longer hours and be less satisfied in their job than female graduates.

Adzuna’s survey showed that nearly a third of women would be content with salaries between £20-30k, while only half that number of men claim they would be happy to receive the same level of pay. Although men dreamed of earning top salaries, male workers in Britain rate their salary as the least satisfactory element of their working lives. In fact one third (31%) of male employees rated their salary as top on their list of workplace annoyances.

It isn’t just financial aspects of careers that split the genders either, there are also difference between which industries that they aspire to work in. Women are more likely to pursue jobs in Media, PR & Advertising, Charity & Volunteer work and Teaching, whereas many of the male workforce hope to work in Digital / Technology & Engineering roles, according to the survey.

Male employees are also more confident about fulfilling their ambitions with 36% of men believing they will reach their goals or surpass them, compare to 16% of women. Men are more likely to blame internal factors for failing to reach career goals, saying laziness and lack of motivation is the main reason for ailing to reach your career goals.

Women, on the other hand, say lack of confidence could prevent them from reaching their goals along with external factors like family commitments and competition for jobs.

Should women sports stars get equal pay when they underperform men?

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A new report found that 70% of sports now pay women the same  prize money as men. Glen Poole considers the arguments for and against “equal pay” in sport.

I love women’s sport. One of my earliest sporting memories was running home from school at the age of eight, to watch Virginia Wade defend her Wimbledon title in 1978.

There have been other favourite over the years including Tessa and Fatima fighting for javelin gold in the eighties; Sally Gunnell breaking the 400m hurdles world record in the nineties; the GB curling team winning gold in Salt Lake City in 2002; Kelly Holmes bagging two golds in 2004 and the great list of women’s gold medallists in the rowing, boxing, cycling, equestrian and taekwondo at London 2012.

I’m also a champion of gender equality, so you may assume that I’m an unequivocal supporter of equal pay for women in sport. However, my love of sport’s raw individualism  and the caring collectivism of equal outcomes don’t make the best of companions.

Should the winner take it all? 

For those of a rational, objective mind who have no issues with the individualistic, hierarchical nature of sport— paying female champions the same as male champions makes no sense whatsoever.

Take a look at this table of world records for example:

Event Men’s Record Women’s Record
100m 9.58 seconds 10.49 seconds
100m freestyle swim 46.91 seconds 52.07 seconds
Cycling 1km time trial 56.303 seconds 69.01 seconds
Ski Jump 809 feet 418 feet
Weightlifting (Clean & Jerk) 263 kg 192 kg
Javelin 98.48 72.28
Long Jump 8.95m 7.52m
High Jump 2.45m 2.09m
Pole Vault 6.16m 5.06m
Marathon 2:02:57 2:15:25

If you believe in equality in its rawest form, measured by hard scientific units like seconds and metres and kilograms, then there is no argument for “equal pay” for women in sport.

At the 2012 Olympics, not one single sprinter in the 100m Women’s Final ran faster than the slowest male sprinter who got knocked out in Round One, Heat One of the men’s competition.

When you think about performance-related pay, the question isn’t whether the gold medallists Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Usain Bolt should be worth the same prize money, the question is should Fraser-Pryce be paid more than Holder da Silva of Guinea-Bissau, who crossed the line last in Round One, Heat Four of the men’s competition in a time that would have won him gold medal in the women’s event.

Why is Holder da Silva worth less than Fraser-Pryce when he can run faster? Because he is a man. To some, that paradox, speaks not of gender equality, but “positive discrimination for women against men”.

Should female champions be given equal value

One example often cited by those who oppose equal pay for female sport champions is the tennis, a sport in which men often have to play more sets than women.

Some claim that his is unfair because men have to spend more time on court for the same pay. This is a weak argument. All tennis champions train for thousands of hours in their careers to reach the top of their game, the argument that they should be paid less because they may (or may not) spend a few hours less on court to win a championship is a minor detail.

It is reasonable, however, to argue that women should be paid less, because they play at a lower standard to men. Some campaigners for equality disagree and have successfully argued that the top women should receive the same as the top men in 70% of sports.

This is an example not of “equal pay for equal work” but of “equal pay for work of equal value”. It has been deemed, that winning a women’s competition is of equal value as winning a men’s competition.

This is a difficult concept for many sport fans to understand. When two men throw a javelin, it is easy to measure which throw has greater value in sporting terms—-it comes down to a simple, objective question—how many metres did he throw the javelin?

But when it comes the question of whether winning the women’s competition is the same value as winning the men’s competition—-this is a subjective question that will always produce conflicting answers.

One of the deciding factors seems to be whether a sport is seen more as a business asset or a cultural asset.

Take boxing, formula one and football as three examples. It’s extremely difficult to imagine the businesses behind these sports paying women the same as men.

However, when a sport is seen as a cultural asset, it becomes easier to make a case for the top women to be paid the same as the top men, because this is seen to be the right thing to do, from a cultural perspective.

The problem with equality is it never ends

In the vast majority of sports, if women were made to compete against men they would never be among the top earners. So we have created a tradition where women don’t have to compete against the best in their sport, they only have to compete against the best in their gender.

So if most sports have already come to the conclusion that special allowances should be made for women to create equality, then what about other groups? Why don’t we:

  • Pay disabled competitors the same as able-bodied athletes
  • Pay people over 80 the same as people in their twenties
  • Pay the best black swimmers the same as the best white swimmers
  • Pay the best white sprinters, the same as the best black sprinters
  • Pay the best transgender athletes the same as their “cisgender” peers

If Serena Williams is worth the same as Andy Murray when they win a grand slam, why isn’t the best wheelchair tennis player worth the same as Serena Williams? Does sport think that able-bodied women are more valuable than disabled men?

And what about the sports that allow women to enter both the women’s and the men’s competitions, like snooker and darts? If women can step up into the men’s game, how about letting boys under 16 (for example) enter women’s competition and see how they compare?

Most people believe in equality and think men and women should have equal pay for equal work. Most people are also comfortable with the idea that workers who consistently perform better are likely to get paid more.

But the trouble with “equal pay for work of equal value”, in sport and in wider society, is that it is an ever-changing concept defined by what certain people “feel” should be of equal value, from one week to the next.

So in conclusion, which approach is right—paying women the same or paying men more? Ultimately it’s down to sport’s governing bodies to make these decisions. but there is one thing worth remembering: men may get more prize money in 30% of sports, but they outperform women in 99% of sports.

—Photo Credit: K.M. Klemencic 

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

If you liked this article and want to read more, follow us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook

 

So much for sex equality, ZERO per cent of Brits think mums should work more than dads

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Is the idea that men should have the same choices as women when it comes to balancing career and family the last remaining taboo in the gender revolution?  Glen Poole examines the evidence. 

What’s the biggest remaining taboo when it comes to male and female gender roles in 21st Century Britain? Is it women being soldiers or men being midwives? No, it’s neither, because while 11% of people think women shouldn’t be soldiers and 16% think men shouldn’t be midwives, there is ZERO per cent support amongst the British public for mums working more than their male partners.

That’s correct ZERO per cent.

And this statistic doesn’t come from a straw-poll taken down my local pub or a Mickey Mouse survey of 100 shoppers in the Milton Keynes branch of Mothercare last Tuesday—this comes from the 30th British Social Attitudes survey, which is described as “a critical gauge of public opinion [which is] used by the Government, journalists, opinion formers and academics”.

So this isn’t a survey that makes a passing contribution to the public discourse on gender once a year, it’s  a highly influential survey  that informs the Government policies which shape our everyday lives as men and women. According to the survey’s authors, the “gender role revolution”, which took off if the second half of the 20th Century has been matched by a marked change in public attitudes since they began collecting data in the early Eighties.

In 1984, for example, 45 per cent of men and 41 per cent of women agreed with this statement: “A man’s job is to earn money; a woman’s job is to look after the home and family”. By 2012 only 13 per cent of men and 12 per cent of women agreed.

So is the sexual revolution complete?

If you think that the sexual revolution is all about transforming women’s roles and opportunities, then the job is all but done when it comes to public attitudes. Only 13% of people agree with the man-hunt-woman-cook approach to gender and it’s a belief that’s fading fast with each passing generation. In total, while 28% of those over 65 support the gendered division of labour, only 4% of 18-25 year olds share this view.

But before we chaps throw our bowler hats in the hair and join our womenfolk in a chorus of Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves, what about the question of gender that is so taboo, that is doesn’t even warrant a passing mention in the narrative of the British Social Attitudes survey? I’m talking about the radical idea that dads might earn less than their partners.

You see, the idea that women take sole responsibility for home and family may well have disappeared and yet women, on average, still take prime responsibility for the home. This idea is covered quite extensively in the survey under the heading “attitudes have changed but have behaviours?” which provides the following factoids:

  • 6 in 10 women consider they do more than their fair share of the household work
  • Both men and women agree, that women spend much more time a week on average, both on household work and looking after family members

Is this the last big gender taboo?

But nowhere in the survey does anyone ask if women do their fair share of paid work. In fact the survey simply accepts the culturally held given that when it comes to family life, men will always be the primary breadwinners.

So while there has been a seismic shift away from the belief that women should be solely responsible for taking care of home and family—any movement away from the belief that women should the primary homemakers, while men should be the main breadwinners, is imperceptible.

This shows up in two key questions in the report. Firstly in questions about attitudes towards parental leave, which asked how mums and dads should share this entitlement. What they discovered was that 59% of us think women should take all or most of the parental leave entitlement, while 22% think it should be shared equally. The rest of us either haven’t got an opinion or think that nobody should be entitled to parental leave. But what about, dads taking all or most of the parental leave, well:

ZERO percent thought dads should take all or most parental leave

The second area of the survey that reveals a total lack of support amongst the British public for the idea that mums should “lean in” and take primary responsibility for paid work while dads “lean out” and take primary responsibility for the home and kids, is found in the answers to this question:

“What is the best and least desirable way for a family with child under school age to organise family and work life by sex.”

What this question reveals is possibly the most deeply ingrained, sexist belief, that is held by both men and women and impacts the life choices available to every young man and woman in the country.

In 21st Century Britain this is how we still think about gender roles:

  • 69% of us think dad should be the primary earner
  • 9% of us think mum and dad should share the earning responsibility equally
  • 19% of us are undecided
  • ZERO percent think mum should be the primary earner

There is very little difference between men’s and women’s attitudes on this question:

  • 71% of men and 68% of women think dad should be the primary earner
  • 9% of men and 10% of women think think mum and dad should share the earning responsibility equally
  • ZERO percent of men and women think mum should be the primary earner

What choice do men have?

What’s striking about this survey (apart from the fact that it fails to even question these ingrained beliefs that men should be the primary earner), is the lack of choice available to men, compared with women.

For women, there is fairly even support for the three main options of motherhood, which are to stay at home, to work part time or to work full time. As the survey reveals:

  • 33% of us think mums should stay at home until the children start school
  • 43% think mums should work part time until the children start school
  • 28% think mums should work full time once the kids start school

This range of choices simply isn’t available for most men, so much so, that the question of whether dads should stay at home, work part-time or work full-time isn’t even asked in the survey. What we can read from other questions in the survey is that:

  • 73% of us think dads should work full time
  • 5% of us think dads should work part time
  • ZERO percent of us think dads should stay at home full time

When you take this into account, it’s little wonder that there’s a “gender pay gap”; that dads get sidelined from their children’s lives when parents are separated and that men don’t do their “fair share” of unpaid work.

So how do we respond to this? Do we demand equal opportunities and choices for men? Do we demand that women start to do their fair share of paid work? Or do we simply accept that men and women have different and unequal desires when it comes prioritising career and family? We’d love to hear your views…….

—Photo credit: Flickr/Antony Pranata

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Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Why are we paying men who work part-time less than part-time women?

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Glen Poole examines why part-time men are earning less than part-time women on average. 

Last month we revealed that the biggest gender pay gap for people under 40 is experienced by men who work part-time and we looked at the selective use of statistics that keeps this fact hidden from the general public.

This week we decided to take a closer look at the part-time gender pay gap and discovered that in every age bracket, the average man who works part time will earn less than the average woman who works full time per hour.

There are currently around 2 million men working part time in the UK. Here we provide 5 little known facts about the part-time gender pay gaps that impact men based on figures from the Department of Culture Media and Sport and the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE).

1. Men who work part-time earn less than part-time women

According to the Government’s provisional figures for 2013, the average median pay for men who work part-time across all age groups is £7.90 per hour, compared with £8.40 for women.

This equates to a 5.4% gender pay gap in favour of women. Using the same calculation for full-time workers, the average median pay for men who work full-time across all age groups is £13.73 per hour, compared with £12.15 for women (a gender pay gap of 11.5%).

Women Men Pay Gap
Full-time workers average hourly pay £12.15 £13.73 11.5%
Part-time workers average hourly pay £8.40 £7.90 5.4%

Put simply, men who work part-time earn less per hour on average than women who work part-time.
2. The part-time pay penalty is 58% bigger for men than women

When you look at the gaps between full-time pay and part-time pay for men and women, it’s clear that the gap for men is considerably larger.

Men who work part-time experience a pay gap of 42.1% compared to men who work full time, while women who work part-time experience a gap of 26.7%.

Full Time Part Time Pay Gap
Men’s average hourly pay £13.73 £7.90 42.1%
Women’s average hourly pay £12.15 £8.40 26.7%
Differential 11.5% 5.5% 57.7%

Put simply, men who work part time will fall further behind their full-time peers, in terms of their earnings, than women who work part time.

3. The part-time pay gap is bigger for men who work in the private sector

When we compare the public and private sector we find that the majority of part-time workers are found in the private sector. This is particularly noticeable for men who are four times more likely to be working part-time in the private sector than the public sector.

The average median pay for the 1.2 million men who work part-time in the private sector across all age groups is £7.13 per hour, compared with £7.33 for the 2.9 million women who work part-time in the private sector, a gender pay gap of 2.7%.

There are also 291,000 men working part time in the public sector, accounting for 14.2% of the part-time workforce. They earn 17.5% more than the 1.8 million who work part-time in the public sector on average. This is presumably because of the large number of women working part-time in lower paid, public sector jobs such as childcare and social care.

There are a further 200,000 men and 582,000 women who work part time and not classified as working in either the public or the private sector.

Men Women Pay Gap
Private sector part-time hourly pay £7.13 £7.33 2.9%
Public sector part-time hourly pay £12.70 £10.48 17.5%
Unclassified £10.76 £9.26 13.9%

Put simply, most part-time men work in the private sector and they earn 2.9% less per hour than their female colleagues.

4. The part-time pay gap for men is found across multiple occupations

The tendency for men to earn less per hour when they work part time is found across nearly all occupations. The only exception is the professions where both men and women who work part-time earn more than colleagues of the same sex who are working full time.

One of the key cause of the gender pay gap is the fact that more women work part time and end up earning less than the majority of male colleagues who are more likely to work full time. This trend is repeated in reverse with men who work part time earning less per hour than female colleagues who work full time.

The biggest gender pay gaps for part-time men (compared with full-time women) are found at management level (8.4%) and amongst administrative staff (11.2%).

Job Types Part-Time Men Full-Time Women Pay Gap
Managerial £15.06 £16.44 8.4%
Professional £21.64 £18.49 17%
Technical £12.59 £13.53 6.9%
Administrative £8.75 £9.85 11.2%
Skilled trades £7.50 £7.97 5.9%
Leisure and care £8.03 £8.25 2.7%
Sales and customer service £6.85 £7.14 4.1%
Process, plant and machine operatives £7.55 £7.61 0.8%
Elementary occupations £6.48 £6.69 3.2%

Put simply, men who work part-time earn less than male and female colleagues who work full time in all occupations except for the professions.

5. The part-time pay gap is biggest for men in their thirties

Men who work part-time earn 5.4% less than part-time women on average, based on median hourly pay. However, the part-time gender pay gap varies with age. For part-time men, for example, the biggest gap occurs in 30-39 age group where the gender pay gap is 7.8%.

Another notable difference is that the part-time male workforce continues to increase its average earning power throughout their career, rising from a pay of £6.50 per hour in the teen years to £9.86 per hour at 60+.

Part-time female workers follow a different earnings trajectory rising more rapidly from £6.40 per hour in the teen years to a peak of £9.40 in the 30-39 age range. After 40, part-time women continue to earn more than the under 30s, but earn increasingly less each decade, falling back to £8.65 per hour at 60+.

This is presumably due the seniority of part-time positions that men over 40 take on when compared with women.

AGE Male Part Time Female Part Time Pay Gap
All Ages £7.95 £8.40 5.4%
18-21 £6.50 £6.40 1.5%
22-29 £7.40 £7.47 0.9%
30-39 £8.67 £9.40 7.8%
40-49 £9.70 £9.00 7.2%
50-59 £9.81 £8.97 8.6%
60+ £9.86 £8.65 12.3%

Put simply, men who work part-time earn 5.4% less per hour than part-time women on average, but men’s part-time earnings improve slowly with age for men.

—Photo Credit: Flickr/Mary Hutchinson

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Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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The top 10 ways men are getting a raw deal in the world of work

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Work brings men many rewards, but it can also carry repercussions, expose us to risk and lead to lifelong regrets, writes Glen Poole.

Both men’s and women’s experience of work tends to be heavily gendered in terms of the sectors we work in; the types of jobs we do; the hours we work and the importance we place on our careers.

This issue is often explored from a female perspective, but rarely from a male perspective. With this in mind we decided to create this list of the Top 10 negative impacts of work that are known to have an unequal effect on men.

Unless otherwise stated the statistics in this article are taken from the Office for National Statistics bulletin on the UK Labour Market (July 2014).

1. Men spend more of their lives at work than women

In 2012, the Australian nurse Bronnie Ware, wrote a book called The Top Five Regrets of Dying, based on her experience of caring for patients in the last weeks of their lives. One of the key observations of the book is that every male patient she nursed wished they hadn’t worked so hard, because they missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship.

The average man in the UK still spends more of his life at work than the average woman. At the latest count, eight out of ten men in the UK are in work (78.1%) compared to seven out of ten women (68.1%). In total, men are responsible for nearly two-thirds (61%) of the one billion hours people in the UK spend working every week. This means that for every ten hours the average woman works, the average man works 15 hours and 38 minutes.

Men are also three times more likely than women to be working more than 45 hours a week, with 4.6 million men putting in the long hours on a regular basis. For self-employed men the gap is even bigger with five times more self-employed men working over 45 hours a week than self-employed women.

2. Men are more likely to be unemployed

As well as spending more time at work than women, men are also more likely to experience unemployment. The majority (55%) of the 2.12 million unemployed people in the UK are men. Men are more than twice as likely to experience long-term unemployment. There are currently 415,000 people in the UK who have been unemployed for more than two years and seven out of ten of them (68%) are men.

The gender divide in unemployment starts early in life. According to the latest figures, 76% of long-term youth unemployed aged 16-24 are male, as are 62% of the half a million (534,000) of the UK’s unemployed young NEETs (people not in employment, education or training).

3. Men are less likely to be economically inactive

The economic inactivity rate for men has been gradually rising since 1971, while the rate for women has been gradually falling. Women are still nearly twice as likely as men to be economically inactive, with women accounting for 63% of the 8.8 million people in the UK who are of working age, but not in work or registered as looking for work.

Being economically inactive can be viewed as both a positive and a negative experience, depending on the individual and the reason for their economic activity. A positive experience for economic inactivity could include study, early retirement and choosing to prioritise home and family. A negative experience could include long-term illness, giving up on looking for work and feeling you have no choice but to prioritise caring for a family member.

Men who are economically inactive are more likely to say they haven’t chosen their situation, with 28% saying they want to work, compared to 24% of women. Men also account for the majority (63%) of the 38 thousand people who say they are economically inactive because they are “discouraged” with the world of work.

4. Part-time work doesn’t pay for men

Men are twice as likely as women to be at work full time, with two-thirds of full-time workers (64%) and a quarter of part-time workers (26%) being male.

There are currently around two million men in the UK have part-time jobs and fewer than half (46%) say they are working part-time because they don’t want a full-time job. In contrast, 75% of the six million women who work part time say they choose to work shorter hours because they don’t want a full-time job.

Men who take part-time roles can face a hefty financial penalty and are at the bottom of the pile when it comes to hourly pay as they are paid slightly less than women who work part time and receive considerably less pay than full-time workers. The pay gap for male part-timers is 74% compared to male full-timers, 56% compared to female full-timers and 5.6% compared to female part-timers.

5 More men face the uncertainty of the private sector and self employment

Men are less likely to enjoy the security of public sector employment and more likely to face the job insecurity that sometimes accompanies private sector employment and self employment.

Men account for a third (34%) of public sector workers; six out of 10 (58%) of the UK’s private sector employees; seven out of 10 (68%) of the country’s 4.6 million self employed workers and eight out of 10 (81%) self-employed people who work full time.

6. Male workers are more likely to be hit by recession

Men’s jobs are generally less recession proof than women, a fact that led some commentators to dub the global economic decline of 2008-2012 the “great mancession”.

In the UK for example, the number of men in work fell at nearly 50 times the rate of the number of the women in work. By the start of 2012 there were 387,000 fewer men in work (a net fall of 2.4%) than in the first quarter of 2008, according to a report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. By contrast the number of women in work was only 8,000 (0.05%) lower.

Research on the impact of the recession found that the most recent economic crisis was linked to an additional 1,000 suicides in the UK and 84% of these recession suicides were men.

7. Men are at greater risk of redundancy

Even when the economy isn’t in crisis, men are at greater risk of redundancy and less likely to be re-employed once they become redundant. In the past 12 months, for example, men in the UK have been nearly 50% more likely to be made redundant accounting for six out of ten (59%) of the half a million redundancies (477,000) recorded from June 2013 to May 2014. This isn’t simply a result of there being more men in the workforce as a higher proportion of men than women face redundancy every week. In the most recent quarter, for example, the redundancy rate was 5% for men (down from 6.1% in the previous quarter) and 4% for women (up from 3%).

8. Work is more dangerous for men

A staggering 96% of people who die at work are men as are the majority of the 20,000 people who die of work-related causes each year. Men are four times to die of work-related cancers for example.

9 Men pay more tax than women

It is said that nothing is certain but death and taxes. One inevitable consequence of men spending more time at work is that they also pay more income tax than women on average. We all benefit in some way from the combined financial contribution that men make to the country through wealth creation and taxation. In a typical year, male workers are currently responsible for paying 72% of the money collected by the UK Government through income tax.

10. Men have shorter retirements

Women in the UK have long enjoyed the right to retire earlier than men, though the retirement is now due to be equalised in 2018. In the meantime, women of working age are nearly twice as likely to be economically inactive because they choose to retire early, accounting for 65% of the 1.3 million people in this category. Men are also 50% more likely to be working beyond traditional retirement age, accounting for 60% of the 1.14million people in the UK who are still working after the age of 65.

In 2010, the average age of retirement was 64.6 years for men and 62.3 years for women. The average life expectancy for men aged 65 in 2010-2012 was 83.4 years and for women it was 85.9 years. This means that the average man in the UK who reaches 65 can expect a retirement that is five years shorter than the average woman.

The final word

In summary, while many men reap the rewards that work can provide, we are also disproportionately more likely to suffer the risks, repercussions and regrets associated with the world of work.

When compared with women, men spend more time at work; less time in retirement; are more likely to be killed at work; are at greater risk of redundancy and unemployment and are more likely to be lose our jobs in a recession.

I’ll leave the last word to a woman, Bronnie Ware who has spent time with enough dying men to know what our final thoughts on this matter are likely to be as we shuffle off this mortal coil:

“All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.”

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—Photo credit: Flickr/CarbonNYC

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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If you’re under 40, the biggest gender pay gap is experienced by men

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Today David Cameron became the latest to declare war on the gender pay gap by announcing companies that pay men more than women will be “named and shamed”. But when you look at the underlying data, you discover that the story we are being sold is a great big statistical lie.

In this article published by insideMAN last year, Glen Poole gave his response to the Labour Party’s own declaration of war on the gender pay gap which it said would take 60 years to close at the current rate.

How many times in your life have you heard that women are getting paid less than men? It’s one of the top three reasons given to support the claim that it’s a man’s world, the other two being “men have all the power” and “all women live in fear of violence by men”.

We’ll probably have a look at power and violence another day, but in the meantime, has anyone ever told you that the gender pay gap is a lie?

Last week the Labour Party-who were criticised by the UK Statistics Authority for misleading the public on the gender pay gap last time they were in power—declared that they would put closing the 19.7% gender pay gap at the heart of their next manifesto.

What the Labour Party didn’t tell us was that women under 40 in the UK are now earning the same or more than men! If you don’t believe me then here’s the official line from the government’s Department for Culture Media & Sport (DCMS):

“The full time gender pay gap is very low for those in the age groups between 18 and 39, for whom the gap now sits at or around zero.”

The real statistics paint a different picture 

And here, if you need further proof, are the figures from the DCMS’s 2014 report, Secondary Analysis of the Gender Pay Gap (catchy title huh?):

>18-21 year olds, men working full time earn 1.4% more an hour on average

>22-29 year olds, women working full time earn 0.3% more an hour on average

>30-39 year olds, men working full time earn 1% more an hour on average

And for part-time workers:

>18-21 year olds, men working part time earn 1.2% more an hour on average

>22-29 year olds, women working part time earn 0.9% more an hour on average

>30-39 year olds, women working part time earn 8.2% more an hour on average

And yet we are still told, with the help of official figures, that the pay gap for all workers under 40 still favours men:

>Men aged 18-21 earn 3.5% more than women an hour on average

>Men aged 22-29 earn 5.3% more than women an hour on average

>Men aged 30-39 earn 12% more than women an hour on average

But hang on a goddam statistical minute, how is this possible?

If women in their twenties are earning 0.3% more than men when they work full time and 0.9% more than men when they work part time, how on earth can they those same men be earning 5.3% more an hour than women on average?

As the government itself acknowledges “the pay gap for all employees still exists” and “the differences between part time and full time pay are significant in driving this”. This is not surprising when women are twice as likely to be working part time in their twenties and 4.5 times more likely to be working part time in their thirties.

Put simply, part-timers get paid less; more women opt to work part-time and therefore women on average earn less than men.

The gender pay gap is a problem for men

So why is the gender pay gap a problem for men? Well, earnings for women aged between 30 and 39 have risen faster than any other group since the late nineties to the point where they now earn 1% less than men working full time and 8% more than men working part time—and yet because the misleading headline figure tells us women in their thirties earn 12% less than men the pressure is on employers to keep narrowing this statistical gap.

What campaigners for “equal pay” are essentially arguing is that women in their thirties (for example) should be paid more than men per hour in order to reduce the headline pay gap—and then we’ll have gender equality. Put another way, when one sex (men) earn more than the other sex (women) we need to correct that statistical inequality by paying one sex (women) more than the other sex (men)—and then all will be well in the world.

It sounds absurd, but this is the logic that is driving our national and international thinking on gender equality in the workplace—it’s a gender political narrative that wants you to believe that all women have problems and all men are the problem.

For women under 40 working full-time there is no pay gap

And yet for women under 40 who are working full time— which is 72% of women in their twenties and 62% of women in their thirties— there is no pay gap. The most significant pay gap for people under 40 is not the gap between women and men, but the gap between full-time workers and those who choose, for whatever reason, to work part-time which is:

>18-21: 50% of men and 65% of women

>22-29: 15% of men and 30% of women

>30-39: 8% of men and 38% of women

The pay gap is certainly a minority problem, but for people under 40 it’s not women who are in the minority but part-time workers, both male and female. Of course the loudest voices campaigning on the pay gap don’t want you to know this because they aren’t driven by the politics of equality, they are driven by the type of gender politics that advocates for all women and against all men.

So why should men be bothered about this? If only 8% of men in their thirties are working part-time, who gives a shit if those men get paid less? They could just get their fingers out and get a full-time job like the other 92% of hardworking men aged 30-39!

Well my dear brothers, you could be next!

Employers are under constant social pressure to keep closing the headline gender pay gap and the only way to address this statistical anomaly at present is to pay women more per hour than men.

Men in their thirties who work part-time are now paid 8% less than their female counterparts so who’ll be next? Well men in their twenties are already earning slightly less than women—whether they work part time or full time—and the gap looks set to keep growing, with full-time male workers in the thirties the next in line.

The question for all men is this: is this a trend you want to continue or do you want men and women to have an honest and open debate about pay equality—a debate that isn’t based on the big white lie that the “gender pay gap” has sadly become?

If you want to help us make this debate happen, why not try asking a few people if they knew that the only group under 40 to suffer a significant gender pay gap are men in their thirties who work part time—and see how they respond.

Oh and let us know how you get on in the comments below, we’d love to hear your experiences of starting discussions on this issue.

—Photo credit: Flickr/Images of Money

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Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Lack of men in childcare driving gender pay gap says UK fatherhood charity

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Men and boys are being actively excluded from careers in the UK childcare sector and this discrimination against men is contributing to the “gender pay gap”, according to a leading fatherhood charity.

In a briefing paper to the Government, the Fatherhood Institute argues that “women in the UK are still substantially disadvantaged in relation to men” and that “occupational segregation” is a “substantial driver” of the gender inequalities that women experience.

With the childcare sector still overwhelmingly staffed by women, the pro-feminist, fatherhood think tank argues that professionals providing careers advice should be required to “examine their own prejudices……and promote the interests of boys and men in pursuing childcare and caring work” in order to improve “gender balance” in the sector.

Jobs for the girls 

According to the Fatherhood Institute, childcare is still largely seen as a “job for the girls” and this causes women to “internalise the notion that caring is something women ‘do better’ or, even, that such caring comes ‘more naturally’ to women”.

“When professional childcare is defined as ‘women’s work’, women’s identities as carers-for-children are reinforced in the private sphere, both boys and girls see caring as a role for women,” says the charity’s briefing paper.

“All this has direct impact on women’s earnings and on national productivity, as the majority of mothers pursue the ‘mummy track’ of relatively low-paid part-time work. This, above all, drives the gender pay gap.”

Men are scared of what people think

An estimated 98% of childcare workers in the UK are women and recent research by the London Early Years Foundation revealed that 50% of male childcare workers are worried about what others might think of them. They fear facing peer pressure; negativity from parents about issues like nappy changing and the risk of false allegations of child abuse, says the charity.

On the upside, 98% of female nursery workers want male colleagues and 77% of the public are in favour of men becoming early years workers. Research also suggests that a significant minority of 14-15 year old boys are open to childcare work with one in four saying a career in caring “sounds interesting” and one in eight saying they are interested in working with children.

The government must take action

According to the Fatherhood Institute, the Government needs to take a strategic approach to increasing the number and proportion of men and boys who undertake care work. The actions it recommends include recognising that boys and men are actively and passively discouraged from pursuing careers in childcare; making a positive case for how young children benefit from more men looking after them professionally and campaigning to support both men and boys and women and girls to work in non-traditional sectors.

The charity proposes an “Inspiring Men” campaign to introduce male volunteers into schools to talk about being an involved father; working in non-traditional job roles and balancing work with childcare and caring.

The benefit to women, says the institute, is that getting more men into childcare will help address other areas of gender inequality which it says include: “women’s over-representation in low and unpaid work in both public and the private spheres; inequalities in remuneration for equal work or work of equal value; the gender pay gap more widely; and under-representation of women in senior management, local government, national government and on Boards.”

—Photo credit: Flickr/John Benson

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