Dogma is the salient characteristic of Labour's Equality Bill, the showpiece of last week's Queen's Speech and the special concern of Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House of Commons and Minister for Women and Equality.
Let's start with the problem that the Bill's provisions are meant to solve. Miss Harman insists that it is necessary in order to fight discrimination. Her primary example is the pay gap between men and women: the latter, on average, earn 26 per cent less than the former. But her conclusion – that this shows that women are being unfairly discriminated against – simply does not follow.
The Government's own figures show that discrimination is not the explanation for the pay gap. Surveys by the Office for National Statistics show that women aged between 22 and 29 are, on average, paid slightly more per hour than men. The critical factor that explains lower pay is not that women are discriminated against by sexist employers, but that they have children to care for. Women with one dependent child earn on average 12.3 per cent less than men, and women with four or more dependent children earn 35.5 per cent less.
Many women who have children are more concerned about caring for them than with trying to maximise their earning power. Protecting a woman's right to return to her job after having a child is an elementary part of fairness, and it has rightly been illegal for 30 years to fire a woman for getting pregnant. That right has been extended by additional legislation, which has required employers to give longer paid maternity leave, and to keep jobs open for longer to women who left them to have a child.
Yet the effect of these changes has not been to alter mothers' patterns of employment, which have remained broadly the same: only one in 10 mothers chooses to return to full-time employment by the time their child is three years old; only half of mothers with a child of that age have returned to any form of paid work.
A friend of mine set up her own company, determined not only to employ women, but to create a family-friendly environment for them so they would stay working when they had children. She failed, but not through want of trying. Her marketing company now employs more than 30 people, but an ever smaller proportion are women with families – for the simple reason that, as she says, "most women want to have children and when they do, their values almost invariably change. They are just not as committed to their jobs as before. A small company simply cannot stay in business if it is staffed by people who aren't very committed to what they do."
Evidence from countries with the kind of anti-discrimination legislation that Harriet Harman wants to bring in confirms that it does not solve the problem of pay differentials. Sweden introduced its generous maternity protection in 1981, when men there earned, on average, 18 per cent more than women. And yet the pay gap has not diminished since that legislation was passed. It has actually increased.
The explanation seems to be that the added employment protection and benefits for women made private companies reluctant to hire them, because of the additional costs. Instead, women in Sweden work mostly in the state sector: salaries are lower, but it can afford to comply fully with "anti-discrimination" legislation because it does not have to worry about competing against rivals with a lower cost base.
All this evidence is available to – and must surely be known by – Harriet Harman and the legislators who are going to make the Equality Bill law. But they have ignored it, choosing instead to adhere to the dogma that the only explanation for differences in pay between men and women is "discrimination". If the Equality Bill becomes law, all it will do is load private companies with additional costs, and create armies of officials and lawyers to enforce the new code. But that, I fear, is its only real point.
a good friend of mine had a small company he employed three women and four men,at any one time, one of the ladies was pregnant , and the legal constraints on his company nearly drove him to bankrupcy, so he went to latvia and his firm is thriving, a lot of firms are leaving because our labor laws and womens rights in employment. tey cannot meet the costs if they are a small company.
Employ a women, you have to be joking. With all the hassle and chips on their shoulders it just isn't worth it anymore.
If Harriet Harman wants to do something honest for women that does not put them and employers through hoops - remember this.
Until 1972, women leaving the civil service on marriage lost their pension rights for the period up to their marriage because a marriage gratuity was paid - no question of leaving the contributions in the system and returning to work later on -I know, I tried in 1968.
Consequently when I went back into the civil service after trying for children (and failing), I had to start from almost the bottom - no question of me keeping the grade I had when I married.
I tried to pay the marriage gratuity back with interest because by then it was post 1972 - too late (not that anyone had told me). So I lost my grade, my seniority and my pension. In fact, I started over at 33 years old.
That meant that when I did retire my pension was nearly half the pension I could have accrued if there was real equality for women. I now receive less than �12K a year on which I pay income tax.
Result, I am still working aged 67 - thank goodness I'm fit and well and someone will pay me.
The government has never cared enough about women to examine the real-life consequences of their ill considered legislation or tried to put things right when the legislation is unfair to some groups.
I'm not alone in this - and it is not fair.
We need a Bill to ensure that all the equality laws are equal. I mean, we wouldn't want to be more equal to some at the expense of others would we?
Just another step along the road to everybody becoming a socialist clone, doing what they are told and provided with pocket money from those in the dachas.
If she is all for equality then she should take up the case of the pensioners who live abroad in places like Canada and Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. These pensioners paid into the system the same as everyone else but because they chose to retire to those places I mentioned , they are cheated by having their pensions frozen when they leave. Now should you be emigrating soon this is important and could make you stay in the UK if one of those countries is your choice. Oh, I did'nt mention that if you retire to the USA, the Phillipines or anywhere in Europe you will get your full pension uprated each year. Now that's discrimination !
One can't help but feel that pay, for the same job should be equal, however similarly that the rights of a man to stay at home and care for his children should be the same as a woman's.
Like Trevor Phillips, Baroness Har-fwit needs inequality: He to keep his job and her to prevent the rest of the country totally ignoring her 1970s women's lib, bra burning rantings.
She is the last person to lecture anyone on equality.
"I am Harriet Harman, you where to find me."
Every woman is equal but she is patently more equal than others.
It is so good that people are finally waking to see that the reality of feminism has nothing to do with "equality" and everything to do with gaining power and hating men.
For nearly thirty years I have maintained that feminism is a self defeating concept. In the end it will implode as a political idea. It will self destruct because it cannot be sustainable as its foundations are all based upon lies, hatred, sexism, projection of false guilt, deceits and the re-writing of history.
Women need representation but not through feminism. Feminism is actually a poison for women and for relationships between the genders. That is now becoming abundantly clear. What is more, the feminist claim to speak for all women is patently false as this article makes clear.
What is a great mystery to me is why the political classes have been so easily duped by the claims of feminists? As far as I am concerned, it is more evidence that the so-called "professional classes" are just as thick as the rest of us and their air of superiority is as much of a myth as a feminist study on domestic abuse or drug rape.
Feminists are now attacking the business classes and they want the power that is contained in them to create their little Marxist matriarchy. I would advise everyone to go and find out what happens in matriarchal societies before they swallow any more feminist bull.
They have done enormous damage in this country since they arrived from the States in the nineteen sixties. It is interesting to note that every single one of the prominent leaders of the radical feminists was a member of the Communist party also. Though some tried to hide that fact.
I used to fear them but today I realise that the more power they gain the less credible they become and their extremes will wake people up. It is happening today. The only downside is the damage they can do before they are finally wiped out and sanity returns.
BTW, women only list for imams/mullah/sheikh jobs, obligatory for UK vacancies!
Oh, by the way, there must be included in the bill that women, in religious terms, can be priests in ALL religions, have no special obligations or disabilities in the religions, and of course that men must also menstruate during prime years.
So, there will shortly be female Mullahs and clerics, women can divorce men in Islamic law by stating three times I divorce thee, and forcing this on the Muslims and clerics and disapplying the Islamic laws on custody etc of children.
C'mon Harridan, do that and you will have done a large number of women a tremendous service. Anything less and you are a fraud, well we knew that anyway. You make laws and then happily ignore them and have the temerity to want to plead not guilty when the witnesses say you were talking on your mobile. Time of accident and mobile telephone records??
Given that you are repeat offender, the penalty needs to be greater as you should lead by example, and of course your particular knowledge of the law.
Go for it Harry! Million to one odds you will not.
Bosses are invariably not the fathers of the child so why should they pay for the choices women make. Admittedly a sexist point of view. If women want equality then they can have it, but no children.
What would happen to a man who decided that every few years he would take time off to do something (unrelated to children and procreation), but expect his job to be there when he comes back? He would be out of a job.
Employers employ people to work for the boss, not to have to pay the employee for doing something that gets no work done for the employer or to have gaps and expect the job to be there when they decide to come back, if they come back.
What benefit to the employer? None. The benefit to the worker is they have their wish, offspring, and to play fast and loose about whether they go back, and when. Unfair I hear yelled. Yep, life ain't fair and that is a fact of life. Unfair that men, generally die younger than women, women have diseases related to sexual organs, as do men, but different, men are more prone to heart disease due to hardening of arteries than women. Men are physically stronger than women, but women commit more verbal assaults with impunity.
When a women starts a physical assault on a man and gets more than she bargained for, the man gets the blame, and that ain't fair.
Harridan has a massive chip on her shoulder, and her equality bill must address the downsides of the different sexes and legislate them away, setting earlier dates of death for women to balance the books, and impose on men the female diseases, and make women go to the gym to build up their strength to equal men, with penalties for failure, and then immediately change the pensionable age and the contributions to be made. Having children is no excuse for not having an equal contribution made by women in money terms.
On divorce, totally equal and no greater sum for having children (assuming that they belong to the man being divorced, about 1/5 are not) as they can work, but they choose not to. That is unfair. What about spacial abilities, must legislate for that, and also make it an offence for women (stiff penalties, no puns please) to use their sexuality in getting them a job or their way, just as men cannot use their strength or get special consideration because they claim to have been discriminated against, Wimmer e.g and post natal depression, ban it or impose it on men, cannot be done.
In reality, there will never be equality, the different sexes are designed for different things, and adapted over eons for that purpose. Oh, by the way, how about bigger brains, or smaller brains for men.
Dearie oh dearie me, just how to achieve? Fact, it will never happen, just as Mugabruin legislation not to allow more than 50% deficit in 4 years time. This proposed equality bill was allowed to distract us from the the problems we all have.
Oh by the way, what about accommodation for fathers and pay them for siring children, the more children the more pay. C'mon, fair is fair, equality means just that. We cannot afford that I hear you say and there is no need as men can do their own thing. Yep, but it is about equality. So if the men cannot have it, women shouldn't get it. The was a time that couples only had children when they could afford it. The state should not pay someone for having children, it is unfair, not only to men but to those who follow the ancient wisdom/tradition.
When condemned to death, women fell pregnant because there was a stay until the child was born, but not such thing for men. Why not? Not fair.
As said, life ain't fair, and never will be and words on paper are not going to change anything, not one iota. Do the job properly, and the statute will run to a library full of provisions and still not change reality one iota.
And I have two daughters, and I still maintain the line that equality is an impossibility, notwithstanding the lunacy of Harridan.
Oh, by the way, there are to be no men only competitions and women only competitions, that is sexist, but Harridan will not change that. That is unfair. Commonsense is not one of your strong points, Harridan. Get some.
Girls maturing earlier, that too must change, but how to achieve? Wake up Harridan, you are like Canute, making laws will not stop the tide going in and out, nor meteors entering Earth's atmosphere, not volcano eruptions, nor earthquakes, tempests etc.
The differences go on and each must be covered, but then being a nutter, she will ignore those and pass a law that will make women even more unemployable. Merit is to be the only measure and the continuity of work will always be the employers criteria. Claims of discrimination will prove the employers right in many cases that the person wasn't up to the job, and seeking an unfair advantage. Next thing, for example, will be in a car crash, women need special consideration because her 'ability' is different, perhaps impaired by sex, as inability to help in an emergency because she didn't have the strength, one way or another, to change things. NOT ON. The above thoughts don't even begin scratch the surface of the requirements to bring about equality.
Oh, how about giving men the ability to have children and conceive and women the ability to impregante them?
At the beginning of this article, I was itching to point out that you cannot compare apples and pears...that working full-time is not the same as working part-time, which would probably explain most of the pay differential. The article and one of the early posts went on to explore these themes.
I am a full-time working mother. I have no idea how my pay compares to that of "other" employees, but it's the salary I was employed on, based on my experience and skills, and freely negotiated. I suppose this isn't what Harman is compaining about, and neither should it be. That's the free market for you and if women don't like it, they should learn to be better negotiators (actually I know I don't earn as much as other men but that's my fault, not the men's, as I don't blow my own trumpet and frankly I have to accept it and get on with it).
Although of course this analogy doesn't work in the public sector from what I can work out, but equally from what I have read, the gender-discrimination cases seem to revolve around tea ladies get paid less than dustmen. To me, that is not discrimination: discrimination is when the tea man gets paid more per hour, or where the dustbin lady gets paid less.
So, as usual, a lot of words about something, but the wrong something. There should be no gender discrimination but there are only certain jobs which you can compare with others (these being lower-paid ones, probably) but even then, it is not clear cut. Given the constitutional, financial, educational and cultural crises that we are currently in, one would have hoped/thought the Government would have better things to "harp" (pun on "Harperson" intended) on about.
[laughs so much at this thought nearly falls off chair)
I think Rosemary may have missed the point. What the article cogently argues is that women are not generally paid a lower hourly rate than men in the same jobs. The implication is that women stay home and look after the children, not because the household income is higher that way, but because they make the choice to do so. Your point that fathers pay little or no attention is based not on economics, but on genetics - men simply aren't 'programmed' to behave as maternally.
Given this fact, the only way to make women's pay 'equal' by Harriet Harman's definition is not only to pay women a higher hourly rate for the same job as a man, but to give them accelerated promotion - regardless of their capabilities - to make up for the time they take out of their careers. But even then this would achieve nothing for the 50% of women who choose not to return to work at all when their children reach the age of three.
All in all, a recipe to completely trash the private sector and leave you with a country resembling - funnily enough - Sweden.
Rosemary
on November 21, 2009
at 05:25 PM
"You say that women "have children to care for". For every woman with small children needing care there is a man who would be just as capable of doing the job. Once nursing is over there is no reason to assume that the mother is responsible for childcare. All too often, even when mothers do go back to work, they have to organise childcare while fathers pay little or no attention to the necessity.
If this problem were dealt with equitably - and a good start would be to pay both parents to the same standard - then more fathers would choose to take a caring break, more women would be able to follow their careers and more children would grow up with close bonds to both their parents."
This is the typical radical feminism that Harriet Harman and every other Mille Tant is renowned for.
1. Women by the very fact that they carry a child for 9 months have a bind to that child to nurse and care for it until it's able to look after itself.
2. The traditional way, which lasted for thousands upon thousands of years has been utterly demolished by modern feminists who are quite happy to continue on their emasculation of the male of the species.
3. If women want to have a career they should either not have children or have children far later or very early in life.
This is what angers me. Women within society don't want equality whatsoever. They want complete and utter, total control. They want to be able to go to work, get pregnant and take maternity leave, demanding cash from their company, which in many situations small companies are unable to afford. Women have to be without a doubt the most selfish of the species. Their duty is to their offspring whiel the male is to going out and providing for the family. Matriarchal societies have never flourished, Plato wrote about. However we are moving more and more into one as women simply demand, demand and demand. They have not one care whatsoever that they are destroying men, causing serious psychological problems, because THEY want a career! Childcare and being a mother is a full time career. It is simply that women nowadays have forgotten how to be mothers and simply want to entrap men into having sex with them so they can give birth to a child that will be their BEST FRIEND.
British society is going down the plughole. Ironic as well when you think that under this Labour government there have been far more women politicians. What good have they done apart from espouse their feminist views, completely unbalancing nature and causing chaos within society? You will of course say they don't and I will say two words FERAL YOUTH. This is the product of feminism. It's the product of living in a matriarchal society, where women with their Marxist, socialist views believe that they know far better than their previous generations on how to bring up a child, which of course is utter rubbish. They however do not care. They choose to turn women into men and men into women and it's working. I shouldn't imagine it will be long before men have womb transplants and women men reproductive transplants.
Women don't want equality, they want to be like men. They want to control and they are angry because of what nature has given them. They do not want to be mothers, but fathers also and then they begin to wonder why children start going off the rails? To that of course it's the same old, same old - It's the fathers fault, probably the very same father they decided they didn't need, but of course still had to pay child support.
Women should either have children and be proper mothers or else forget about it and have a career. You can't have your cake and eat it, but women nowadays want both. They want everything and they'll do whatever it takes in order to do so, even if it means turning society into complete and utter chaos in the process.
The council of a northern city has already adopted this equal pay scheme and their solution to removing the pay gap between men and women was to simply reduce the salary of all the male employees to same rate as the women however until the men return to work from the picket line I�m not really sure whether it can be called a success.
By the way why are some footballers paid more than others, why do some council executives earn more than others and why does Harriet Harman earn more money than many other male and female MPs aren't they all equal?
The only thing that I can find equal in Britain today is that 129.2 tons of shit is equal to 646 Members of Parliament
Never mind the EU; we have plenty of our own 'non-entities' in British politics and the voters of Camberwell and Peckham have a lot to answer for !
You say that women "have children to care for". For every woman with small children needing care there is a man who would be just as capable of doing the job. Once nursing is over there is no reason to assume that the mother is responsible for childcare. All too often, even when mothers do go back to work, they have to organise childcare while fathers pay little or no attention to the necessity.
If this problem were dealt with equitably - and a good start would be to pay both parents to the same standard - then more fathers would choose to take a caring break, more women would be able to follow their careers and more children would grow up with close bonds to both their parents.