Saturday, 10 May 2025

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE 8 - The Pay Gap

I still absolutely believe in equal rights and opportunities for women however. I used to believe that the world would be better run by women but now I don't think it would be much different. Women in power behave as badly as men – not because they’re corrupted by the patriarchy but because power corrupts men and women equally. Women are absolutely as capable as men as behaving badly. So I’m not anti-women or anti-feminist. My view is something far more controversial - that men and women just aren’t all that different anymore. 

[I’m talking mostly about the UK. Things are much worse in other parts of the world, and I would absolutely back more women’s rights campaigning there.]

[I will be using the word ‘woman’ throughout in a generic way, responding to many conversations and interactions I’ve had over the years. Obviously it’s #notallwomen so should not be taken personally.]

Things have changed massively in my lifetime but many women don’t seem to have noticed. Compared to my mum when I was a kid in the 60s - what women can do now compared to what she could do then - the difference is immense. She couldn't have had a career, couldn't have owned property, couldn't have divorced, had an abortion, had casual sex, driven a car, been a single mum, run her own business, gone to uni, gone out for the night on her own, sat in a pub and had a pint, worn sexy clothes out, gone through life unmarried, been a lesbian, hitchhiked around the world on her own, been loud and sweary in public, called the police if she was being attacked by her husband, been a prime minister, a journalist, a vicar, a CEO, a soldier, a doctor, a lawyer…

Sadly modern feminists continually move the goalposts in order to prove that things are as bad as ever and keep the faithful riled up. But it’s no longer good enough for women to simply blame men when things go wrong. It’s time for women to take responsibility for their part in the problem. Women can no longer just say “A man made me do it.” 

All over the place I'm being told that everything is still so much worse for women than for men - despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. There seems to be a very strong need to say that men don't suffer in any way that really matters. If you say bad things happen to men you'll get a long list of bad things that happen to women - but the question is not whether bad things happen to women - of course they do - the question is do they happen MORE than to men? If you want equality you need to know both sides of the equation. Generally though the assumption is that men have nothing much to complain about. 

I could write a huge list of bad things that happen to women – I used to be a staunch feminist and I’ve been reading about this most of my life. I take it as read and don’t see the point in rehashing it all here. Now I’m just an egalitarian with a special interest in how men and women interact, and I know we all suffer. The world is not set up for any but a small minority of mostly old white men – and there is no patriarchal trickle-down effect. (Though there is an old-boy network it’s not going to involve anyone I know any time soon.) Violent men also have a kind of power, but most men are not violent. Rape does not benefit all men as I’ve been told - I see no benefit in being distrusted by half the population. Power no longer rests in physical strength but in money and technology. The most powerful men in the world are hardly paragons. Violence is mostly a desperate last resort for people who have no power. Genuinely evil psychopaths are far rarer than the movies suggest.

The fact though is that most people have no power to speak of at all. Most people are poor, working class, and minimally educated. The fact that so many people seem to think that you can tell who has the power in a relationship simply by knowing their sex (or age, or race) strikes me as hopelessly simplistic. Life is so much more complicated than that. As I've said many times before, there are too many old white men in top jobs (we all know this) and that skews the income distributions and creates the pay gap. At the moment in the UK it stands at about 9% I believe, however, that does not mean that men typically get 9% more than women. As usual it’s more complicated than that. In the UK, for people on lower incomes and for the under 40s the pay gap is very small, and among school leavers girls are doing better than boys. There are more women living in poverty but because they’re mostly single mums they usually get some sort of accommodation and benefits. The truly destitute and homeless are mostly men. Although there still aren’t as many women in those few top jobs, by far the most significant inequality now is not between men and women but between those old white guys and the rest of us, and that gap is widening. 

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