THE GENTLE TOUCH?

  By David Vance | August 31, 2011 - 9:00 am |

Did you see the BBC running with the faux outrage from the usual suspects that it could take..gasp..almost another HUNDRED YEARS before UK women managers are paid the same as their male colleagues? Here’s the link. I heard a comrade on from the Trade Unions on saying that at least they were fighting the good fight for equality in the Public Sector but those evil males may still be earning more! I was intrigued to read that the author of the report is Lord Davies of Abersoch. He was elevated to the Lords by Gordon Brown and worked alongside Peter Mandelson. So, no hint of bias there. Leftists love to whinge about the imagined pay discrimination in the work place, suggesting that employers are intrinsically sexist and discriminatory. We’re not. But we base salary on experience, continuity of employment and competence. That. of course, flies in the face of the utopian logic employed by Lord Davies and willingly lapped up by the BBC.

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8 Responses to THE GENTLE TOUCH?

  1. Pirran says:
    August 31, 2011 at 11:02 am

    …Not to mention ACTUAL hours worked, gaps in employment (you know, kids), lack of desire for the most intensive career paths…etc, etc.

    When will this trope EVER END?

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  2. Carruthers says:
    August 31, 2011 at 11:28 am

    Yes, I heard this on Today this am. The issue of women’s pay aside, the coverage was pathetic beyond belief. First the data and conclusions were given no analysis or scrutiny whatsoever – funny, given the ‘discussion panel’ consisted of the woman who produced the report from the Chartered Management Institute (who of course have no courses or consultancy to sell off the back of this) plus a woman from the TUC who agreed with everything being said! Is it not possible, for example, that the average age of the men sampled is higher, or their experience greater, or that their roles require qualifications at different levels? Or that maybe women were receiving other benefits than pay, such as pension, job security etc and are more likely to work in the public sector. Secondly, why did the professions examined not include publishing or media or teaching or medicine or local government or social services or any of the other areas long historically made up of large numbers of female staff and managers. Thirdly, there was no mention whatsoever of a key human right, freedom of contract. Why should I not be able to negotiate the pay and conditions I want? And if organisations really are discriminating against women, surely in a free society talented individuals will go where they are rewarded best according to their own set of values.  Fourthly, the story can go absolutely nowhere – nobody except Harriet Harperson would dream of requiring by law all managers in all industries to comply with aggregate, sexually determined pay levels, or publishing of all staff pay, or recruitment to different roles to be on a gender quote basis. So we are asked yet again by the BBC to feel there is a grievance when the evidence is slim to non-existent except in the minds of Left wing peers and ‘consultancies’ with something to sell companies who are afraid of future socialist government diktats.  Not to mention the section headlines on the web version are such evidence based, non-inflammatory stuff as ‘Damaging Businesses’ and ‘Ongoing War’…..

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  3. Millie Tant says:
    August 31, 2011 at 11:38 am

    DV: Is that ”We’re not” because the report says the gender pay gap is widest in Northern Ireland? Oops! Mind, with the level of public sector employment in NI, does this mean that the government with the most exhaustive and stringent equality legislation and procedures in the UK is paying its women less than men? Perish the thought!

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  4. DJ says:
    August 31, 2011 at 11:42 am

    And then there’s this…

    http://tinyurl.com/3q48c2s

    Any agonised BBC items over this? Perhaps tear-jerking interviews with victimised twenty-something blokes?

    Meanwhile, in the real world, people wonder if there’s something that happens to thirty-something wimminz that distracts them from swimming throgh the open sewer of corporate life. Don’t expect the BBC to ask though… unless the women in question is standing for the Republican nomination.

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  5. Mr Natural says:
    August 31, 2011 at 5:12 pm

    “Is equality of income what we really want? Do we want everyone to have an equal chance to work 80 hours in their prime reproductive years? Yes, but we don’t expect them to take that chance equally often.”

    Professor Claudia Goldin, quoted in Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell (p89)

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  6. Grant says:
    September 1, 2011 at 6:42 am

    Haven’t the BBC been accused of discriminating against older women presenters ?  Damn hypocrites !

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  7. Sres says:
    September 1, 2011 at 8:47 am

    I heard a comrade on from the Trade Unions on saying that at least they were fighting the good fight for equality in the Public Sector but those evil males may still be earning more!

    –

    Someone remind me how many female trade union leaders there are?

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