- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.de
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.de
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.
Asking from third world countries, there is a gap between genders?
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.
What is the wage gap amongst the same job role?
For example, are female cashiers paid 80% what male cashiers are?
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.
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?
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.
Still amounts to more time in the workplace, forced or otherwise.
It isn’t a comment on whether that is what men want or are ok with. Ditto employees generally.
Certainly a major strand of reducing the gender pay gap will be about fixing rights, practices & attitudes surrounding paternity leave.
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!
Neither!
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.
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.
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.
Yes, and it’s substantial.
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
https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/stories/op-ed/2022/09/the-gender-pay-gap-hard-truths-and-actions-needed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_inequality_in_China#Workplace_inequality
https://borgenproject.org/gender-wage-gap-in-egypt
https://borgenproject.org/gender-wage-gap-in-kenya
https://www.moneyweb.co.za/financial-advisor-views/the-long-term-impact-of-gender-pay-disparity
https://www.statista.com/statistics/803761/argentina-gender-gap-labor-market-category
https://www.industriall-union.org/brazil-enacts-law-to-ensure-equal-pay-for-women-and-men
It’s huge in general but varies from country to country
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 :-)
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.
Nah man there’s still third world countries for sure. Even second world is still relevant for now.
Third world country used to mean a country that wasn’t on the side of either the US or the USSR during the Cold War. Not sure what it means now.
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.
I don’t see it used as much as in the past.
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.
This is how it is used colloquially (though I have never heard the term second world country), but goes contra to the actual definition of the word.
I much prefer the term developing country, because it conveys what you actually want to describe in the first place.