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Pay equity logic doesn’t add up

While reading the Aug. 26 guest editorial, I thought I had experienced a time warp, and it was really April Fool's day, or some date in 1950.
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While reading the Aug. 26 guest editorial, I thought I had experienced a time warp, and it was really April Fool's day, or some date in 1950.

The issue of gender equality in pay is complicated and I suggest that Art Betke read some of the reports by Kevin Milligan (UBC) to get a better understanding of the complexity.

I found the arguments by Mr. Betke to support his assertion that government should butt out of pay equity, and let market forces prevail, bordering on offensive.

It is just not true that it is "relatively rare that men and women are paid differently for doing the same job." While much of the wage gap between men and women is due to lower pay for traditionally "women's work" compared to "men's work" (a problem in and of itself), and a higher rate of women in lower wage occupations, an estimated 10 to 15 per cent of the wage gap is due to gender-based wage discrimination.

A report in 2012 on Strengthening Canada's Research Capacity: Gender Dimension found that despite equal numbers of female and male students in Canadian universities, the proportion of female faculty declines with increasing rank, and women in the same rank as men, doing the same job, are paid less than their male counterparts.

Census data shows that gender wage gap is two-thirds due to within occupation differences compared to between occupation differences (although these are large occupational categories).

The second slap in my female face was the suggestion that "many women aren't willing to do what it takes to get the higher pay."

The real evidence is that there is an increasing rate of women obtaining higher education, which is known to be a major step towards jobs that pay more.

It has been documented time and again, that there is an absence of women from the highest paying jobs, which again has several explanations, but one of them is what Milligan refers to as horizontal segregation, and the concretization of gender roles.

This results in societal pressure on women to stay in traditional female roles and sometimes women who are in traditionally male jobs face obstacles if they threaten the traditional male identity (note the news over the past year regarding firefighters and police officers).

It is true that women, more than men but not exclusively, have to make choices regarding careers and care-giving and that variations in priorities contribute to the gender wage gap.

However, for women who are able to pursue a career, through their own hard work and other personal circumstances, there should be absolutely no reason why their wages should be different from their male counterparts.

But they are, and government "meddling" is essential when part of that reason is simply discrimination.

Kathy Lewis

Prince George