Organisers hope the women’s strike – whose confirmed participants include fishing industry workers, teachers, nurses and the PM, Katrín Jakobsdóttir – will bring society to a standstill to draw attention to the country’s ongoing gender pay gap and widespread gender-based and sexual violence.
All events of the series on Gender Equality and the European Green Deal will be live-streamed on EIGE’s website and YouTube channel. The language of all events of the series is English with an interpretation to international sign language. Viewers will have the possibility to ask questions via the Slido platform. By registering you will sign up to receive updates on the event and a link to view the live-stream.
Full transparency would be good. No one should fear to disclose how much they make. The boomer Maxim of ‘it’s nobodies business how much I make’ is a bit of a false modesty.
If you earn to little, wouldn’t you like to know, and if you feel like you eraan to much, you probably do.
On 24 October 1975, Icelandic women went on strike for the day to "demonstrate the indispensable work of women for Iceland’s economy and society" and to "protest wage discrepancy and unfair employment practices". It was then publicized domestically as Women's Day Off (Kvennafrídagurinn). Participants, led by women's organizations, did not go to their paid jobs and did not do any housework or child-rearing for the whole day. Ninety percent of Iceland's female population participated in the strike. Iceland's parliament passed a law guaranteeing equal pay the following year.
It has apparently become necessary to do it a second time…
Too bad it becomes much harder to coordinate such strikes in larger nations, they would otherwise be extremely effective. No country could withstand half its population going on strike.
For those interested, this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics has been awarded to economic historian Claudia Goldin at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”.
Goldin’s work has helped to explain why women have been under-represented in the labour market for at least the past two centuries, and why even today they continue to earn less than men on average (by around 13%, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).
Although such inequalities are widely recognized, they present a puzzle for economic models because they represent not just a potential injustice, but also what economists call a market inefficiency. Women seem to be both under-utilized and under-incentivized in the labour force, even though those in high-income countries typically now have a higher educational level than do men.
Women seem to be both under-utilized and under-incentivized in the labour force, even though those in high-income countries typically now have a higher educational level than do men.
Maybe turn that around then. Why are more men stupid/uneducated enough to enter the labour force only to be exploited by their employers for little gain in areas of life that matter? Or alternatively, why do men not have the opportunity to avoid the labour force even if they do recognize it is not to their advantage to enter it?
Obviously that is a bit nonsensical too but maybe the inherent assumption that it is good thing to spend a large percentage of your time labouring should be questioned if we want to answer questions like that.
Yeah I mean it wasn’t 200 years ago that women stayed at home and provided huge amounts of value to the family. All that real-life value is being ignored so that we can ask why they weren’t working for someone else instead?
Don't get me wrong - people doing this kind of research and building up the data to prove the reality is a good thing, but the absurdity of turning to capitalism to resolve patriarchy is just much..
It's like the flip side of class reductionism - "only war is the gender war" - hey capitalists, look at this untapped resource, if you just exploit women 13% less, you can make all this extra profit!
And while I completely support this strike, I wish they too would look at the bigger picture.
The reality is that all these systems (capitalism and classism, sexism, racism, ableism, queerphobia, and so on) are interconnected and inseparable, they serve each other in many ways, and must all be abolished for us to have anything resembling a just society.
Although such inequalities are widely recognized, they present a puzzle for economic models because they represent not just a potential injustice, but also what economists call a market inefficiency.
I am always fascinated, that each time the neoclassical school of economics proves to be false, they all act like thats a totally new and singular unexpected thing, as if this hasn’t been proved time and time again for all sorts of issues…
Just a note: I don’t know what others say and what the mods prefer here, but I guess they’d agree there is no such thing as a “third world country”. Let’s call the continent or so and let us there be in one world :-)
In regular parlance it very quickly came to mean countries that are very underdeveloped, with high levels of poverty, simply because this tended to map quite closely to non-alignment.
Unless you’re reading something about cold war geopolitics, most use of the term takes this casual meaning, though you can usually get confirmation of what is meant from context.
First world countries are developed on an industrial level and a cultural level for personal liberties and democracy. The US, most of Europe, Japan, etc. are all first world countries. Second world are developed industrialy but not so democratically. China and Russia are good examples. Third world countries are those underdeveloped industrially and democratically. Most of Africa and countries in turmoil like Venezuela are good examples of third world countries.
As someone from a third world country living in a first world country, yeah the difference is still there and depending on where you are in the third world, it's not decreasing.
I think it’s mostly the term that is being criticised. It originated from the capitalist/communist/irrelevant categorization of countries during the cold war. As such it does not actually describe much. No one would call Russia a second world country. The definition and colloquial use has diverged.
The term developing country is in my opinion much more descriptive.
There’s just more nuance to it than the way you and others on both sides in these comments are presenting it. There is an 16% gender pay gap, true, but it’s actually a complex issue and just presenting that one fact in isolation leads others to believe “… and it is fully attributable to discrimination”, which isn’t the case.
Some of that is explained by “job choice” and choice of university degree, meaning women are self-selecting into certain lower paying jobs and fields of study. Like how women are underrepresented in STEM. This isn’t to say women are bad at STEM. There are just societal barriers that prevent them from pursuing those career choices. Everything from the pervasive notion that women “don’t like math” to harassment in male-dominated fields to our society enforcing the idea that women’s role in society is to care for others - and the “caring professions” are not high-paying.
The gap is not wholly explained by these factors, and we should try to mitigate them while continuing to decrease gender discrimination. But don’t pretend like these factors aren’t also at issue. Meanwhile, the gap is closing due to women becoming more represented both in universities (outnumbering men in the US), various old-fashioned notions going away, etc.
There are plenty of studies that support this, I saw several both from Harvard (some of which I was familiar with) and many more from other reputable universities and institutions. Also some from irreputable, conservative think tanks - it’s easy to see how this issue can be weaponized by them, but ignoring that job choice and other factors play a role is not helpful to closing the gender pay gap. This is from a US perspective, I can’t guarantee it holds true in all “Western” countries - but I know it’s the case in US and Canada
The US government has found that: "Specifically, differences in the industries and occupations where men and women work explain 42.0% of their variance in earnings. ": dol.gov/…/WB_issuebrief-undstg-wage-gap-v1.pdf (source on the chart in page 2 of the writeup, comes from 2020 study by the US Census Bureau). This is a sizeable effect and we should not ignore it.
It is objectively true that women are overrepresented in lower paying jobs. This is due to a variety of reasons, including societal and social factors thay discourage women from going into higher paying, traditionally male fields. The gap is narrowing especially now that, at least in the US, there are more women attending university than men and we have robust laws to prevent/punish discrimination based on sex.
Here’s a good summary/explanation by Pew Research Center in a writeup of a survey of theirs on the Gender Pay Gap:
“Much of the gender pay gap has been explained by measurable factors such as educational attainment, occupational segregation and work experience. The narrowing of the gap over the long term is attributable in large part to gains women have made in each of these dimensions.
Even though women have increased their presence in higher-paying jobs traditionally dominated by men, such as professional and managerial positions, women as a whole continue to be overrepresented in lower-paying occupations relative to their share of the workforce. This may contribute to gender differences in pay.”
They go on to say that a gap still exists, even accounting for these factors, but it’s smaller than the commonly cited 84% figure (though 84% is correct if you don’taccount for other factors).
The US government has found that "Specifically, differences in the industries and occupations where men and women work explain 42.0% of their variance in earnings. ": dol.gov/…/WB_issuebrief-undstg-wage-gap-v1.pdf (source on the chart in page 2 of the writeup, comes from 2020 study by the US Census Bureau)
Basically, there is a pay gap, some of it is explained by factors other than gender, but we should work to try to eliminate those factors by removing barriers for women to enter certain fields as well as gender discrimination.
That’s a way to read that. Another is that the effect largely vanishes (but not completely) when you correct for the factors that cause the gender gap.
This means that we understand HOW women are paid less, but not necessarily WHY.
In large parts it’s because of the choice of employment and losing out on work experience when staying home.
It should be socially accepted to work what the hell you want. But I don’t see any way to codify a fair gender ratio into law. So this is a really tough nut to crack, because it requires a mind change by all of society.
Arguing for equal compensation regardless of experience makes no sense. Unfortunately only one parent is equipped with the hardware to make and raise kids. So we need a way to enable more equal distribution of work. But if women are just naturally more inclined to care for kids (which would make a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective), then this gap will persist unless we force people by law to work or take care of kids more.
That’s a good overview of the first order effects, but there is some nasty stuff at the edges.
For example, trans men report being able to negotiate higher salaries after transition. For example, jobs that transition from traditionally male to traditionally female dominated see a depression in salaries.
I’m not sure how to fix it, but there are serious reasons to believe we are far from “equal pay for equal work”.
I didn’t mention it, because I have no idea how that could even be solved on a large scale. This is a problem that arises from the individual’s ability to negotiate. Unless you work in a unionized job, where salaries are more often clearly defined in a table and negotiated for everyone at once
Not really. The easily quotable figure is 84% but in reality it doesn’t take into account important differences in profession, qualifications, type of employer, seniority, hours worked or many other things that go into deciding compensation. The only thing the gender pay gap really shows is that men hold more high paying jobs than women, or have worked in industries for longer and therefore have more compensation.
The gender pay gap has narrowed over the recent decades, at least in the EU and the US, but it still exists. And this is also true for the adjusted pay gap, taking into account education, seniority, etc.
In addition, women are overly represented in low-wage jobs such as personal care, which adds to economic inequalities.
That depends heavily on which country you’re looking at.
It seems that the issue in Iceland isn’t as much getting equal pay for equal work, but rather that women don’t get equal work opportunities for cultural reasons.
We could say that their issue is of why “typical womens jobs” pay less than “typical mens jobs” (regardless of the individual employee being woman or man).
The same situation still exists in all the countries that rank better on the equality lists, whereas the low ranking countries probably have more basic discriminatory issues that need to solved first.
They’re tying it in with domestic violence and this might be a way to address the cultural issues.
Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with. Hopefully it will make actual changes for the entire sectors rather than just a mindless gender bonus which could make things even worse.
In most of Europe, it is illegal to pay differently for equal work, so a female cashier would be paid the same as a male cashier.
The gap arises where men are able to take more hours, obtain more qualifications, develop more experience, enter more lucrative industries, get more promotions & they are far less likely to leave paid employment to raise children.
Some of that is due to personal choice, which is fine, but most of it is down to societal hurdles outside of work which determine how women approach the workplace.
The gap arises where men are able to take more hours, obtain more qualifications, develop more experience
Men are able to, or they are practically forced to? Because when I took paternity leave, I heard managers describe it as a “vacation”, which is a term I’ve never seen used to describe maternity leave. And when I left my job to take care of my second child, my co-workers described it as “career suicide”, which again I’ve never seen used to describe a woman’s decision to raise her child.
So I have to wonder: how many fathers out there would rather be raising their kids but don’t get a real chance to do so because they know their careers would suffer disproportionately to their female coworkers?
But it is worthwhile to rephrase the issue in this way.
Do we want women to work more, or do we want men to take on more house and care work? These are two different things. Both are “enforced” by society, to the detriment of people who want to go against the social norm. The former focuses on the issues faced by women, while ignoring the suffering of men. And vice versa for the second phrasing. But both are faces of the same coin!
The idea is to remove these societal distortions, or grain if you will, so that everyone is free to structure their lives as best suits their needs, abilities and preferences.
There can be no ignoring of the suffering of men in examining the pay gap, because it is inextricably linked to the pay gap, which in itself is just one tiny aspect of the many things which are awry with the workplace and how everyone accesses it.
And when I left my job to take care of my second child, my co-workers described it as “career suicide”, which again I’ve never seen used to describe a woman’s decision to raise her child.
Ironically the same could and arguably should be said about a woman choosing to raise her children. Because this is what makes up the vast majority of the gender pay gap, after accounting for the profession. And it makes total sense because raising kids for two, four, six years leaves you with much less experience compared to your peers who did not have children.
Taking time off from work to raise your children is particularly detrimental to your career when you are a father, and I suspect it is one of the biggest reasons why we don’t see it more often.
No study has ever gotten an adjusted pay gap correct. Its all propagandized crap meant to distract you from the bigger issue. In the free world woman have just as much opportunity for high paying jobs as men. Its personal choice that limits them in job choice or life choices.
I don't know what you consider "third world", but I've picked some examples from all over the world, I'm sure you could easily find the relevant information for your own country, and spoiler alert: there will be a pay gap
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