| The European Union and the Gender Pay Gap |
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| Written by Tim Worstall | |
| Sunday, 22 July 2007 | |
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We are indeed so, so, lucky to have those wise people in Brussels taking care of things for us. The latest is an analysis (and then some proposed actions) on the subject of the gender pay gap. From a quick reading, two major points stand out. The first is the headline announcement that the gender pay gap is 15% across the Union. While they acknowledge, in notes, that there is a different incidence of part- and full- time working between the sexes they don't point out that part-time wages per hour are everywhere lower than full-time wages per hour. So they are lumping in together two entirely discreet pay gaps and calling it the gender pay gap: in other words their headline figure is nonsense. The second is: The pay gap has a major impact on the status of women in economic and social life throughout their working lives and beyond. It constitutes an obstacle to equal economic independence for women and men. It has an inevitable impact on individual choice, with regard for example to work patterns, length of working life, career breaks or the sharing of domestic and family responsibilities.Quite breathtaking really: a complete confusion between cause and effect. As research shows, never married women with no children actually have a 3% in their favour pay gap, lesbians suffer no pay gap: it isn't that the pay gap causes the changes in time in the workforce, but changes in time in the workforce cause the pay gap. So the proposed actions, affecting an entire continent's worth of 450 million people, are based on a simple inability to understand the evidence in front of them. Can we leave yet?
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