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Feminism and the Gender Pay Gap

Tenure? That's an old boys club if ever I saw one. Very hard for anyone to get into. I know one woman that's done it, but she had to move universities to do so, and not the same country at that. Many women have a story like mine, for example. Did PhD, supervisor wouldn't support them for a postdoc. Got a job in industry and left academia. I wasn't heartbroken as such, as I do not have an attitude suitable for academia (I'm too outspoken) but he said he would support me and then didn't.

I know other women who got sick of endless short term postdocs, and didn't get a tenured position, or who at some point had to make a choice between having a family or pursuing tenure. I know women who've moved to the academic support side of things because they were sick of getting grant applications rejected.

Academia needs an overhaul.
What do you mean by tenure? My understanding is that tenure is pretty much a US/Canadian thing these days, it certainly is no longer present in the UK or Australia HE sectors. I'm arguing for continuing/permanent jobs, not in favour of tenure.

I agree with you that academia needs an overhaul but that overhaul should be an increase in the number of continuing positions (as thus more job security) not a decrease. Why are PDRAs on fixed term contracts rather than continuing? Because it suits university management and grant councils to ingrain job insecurity.
 
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It's not a popular view in academia but I've long thought that there's far too many PhD students compared to the number of viable postdoc opportunities available.
There was a huge push to increase the number of PhD places a while back. Which is great apart from the fact that there was not the same increase in postdoc or tenured positions.

I've ended up in tangential positions, although I used my PhD a bit in my last job. Less so in my current one.
 
What do you mean by tenure? My understanding is that tenure is pretty much a US/Canadian thing these days, it certainly is no longer present in the UK or Australia HE sectors. I'm arguing for continuing/permanent jobs, not in favour of tenure.

I agree with you that academia needs an overhaul but that overhaul should be an increase in the number of continuing positions (as thus more job security) not a decrease. Why are PDRAs on fixed term contracts rather than continuing? Because it suits university management and grant councils to ingrain job insecurity.
Postdocs are often on fixed term contracts as they are tied to certain projects. So in many cases, the uni can't guarantee funding for a permanent position.

Lectureship and above positions are funded centrally by different funding routes (government funding etc) so if the money is there the job is permanent. So I'm talking about that type of position. Some of the admin support staff may also not be funded on a permanent basis - I had to apply for grants for my job and I was on a fixed term contract.
 
Postdocs are often on fixed term contracts as they are tied to certain projects. So in many cases, the uni can't guarantee funding for a permanent position.\
...
Some of the admin support staff may also not be funded on a permanent basis - I had to apply for grants for my job and I was on a fixed term contract.
Well this is the part I don't accept. Why don't HEIs employ PDRAs/support staff in permanent positions? Why don't research councils insist on job security measures for PDRAs? Because it suits them to have an insecure workforce.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Sure individual research projects may be fixed term but why do the research positions have to be? A research worker has a continuing contract, they work on project A for 3 years, then when that's finished there is first an attempt at redeployment and if there truly are no suitable positions available they are made redundant (and will at least get a pay out). Modern universities constantly stress transferable skills yet make no attempt to apply such thinking to a significant section of their workers.

The large number of redundancies/re-organisations mean that permanent positions are not permanent in the real sense of the word. In the Australian HE sector a department/section will undergo change management on average every three years, I don't know the data for the UK but I'd be surprised if it was much different. Rather than thinking about positions being permanent we are better off thinking about them being continuing - open ended and with redundancy provisions - and this should be how the majority of workers are employed (not just in the HE sector).
 
I worked for a university for 7 years, and iirc there were two redundancy exercises within that time frame.

Redeployment in the truest sense never seems to happen, universities or industry. Which is a shame because the organisation ends up suffering for it, as that institutional knowledge is gone almost overnight. Should it happen? Of course it should.

The fixed term contracts legislation does allow a worker on one of those contracts to request to be made permanent after 4 years of continuous employment but it rarely happens in practice as far as I can tell. I do know of a group of 6 postdocs who calculated they had over 100 years service between them who were successful in gaining permanency, but that seems to be an isolated case as best I can tell.

This is what I mean about the whole system in academia needing an overhaul. All of it needs to change not just bits of it.
 
I agree that most redeployment exercises are pretty much just going through the motion but at least the worker gets paid while the process is happening, as well as any redundancy pay out at the end.
This is what I mean about the whole system in academia needing an overhaul. All of it needs to change not just bits of it.
Absolutely. Which is why I'm skeptical about the new programme at Eindhoven, without tackling issues like casualisation and job insecurity achieving gender equity is not going to happen.
 
I worked for a university for 7 years, and iirc there were two redundancy exercises within that time frame.

Redeployment in the truest sense never seems to happen, universities or industry. Which is a shame because the organisation ends up suffering for it, as that institutional knowledge is gone almost overnight. Should it happen? Of course it should.

The fixed term contracts legislation does allow a worker on one of those contracts to request to be made permanent after 4 years of continuous employment but it rarely happens in practice as far as I can tell. I do know of a group of 6 postdocs who calculated they had over 100 years service between them who were successful in gaining permanency, but that seems to be an isolated case as best I can tell.

This is what I mean about the whole system in academia needing an overhaul. All of it needs to change not just bits of it.
where i used to work, shelvers were on one year rolling contracts until this 4 year rule came in and then everyone was transferred en masse to permanent contracts.
 
I've been commenting on a similar thread run by The Engineer magazine.

I'm sure all of you are shocked to hear it's dominated by lots of men, and mine as far as I can tell are the only ones made by a woman experiencing the gender pay gap.

It's irony in real time...
 
I've been commenting on a similar thread run by The Engineer magazine.

I'm sure all of you are shocked to hear it's dominated by lots of men, and mine as far as I can tell are the only ones made by a woman experiencing the gender pay gap.

It's irony in real time...
Are the men denying that there is a gender pay gap?
 
The myth of the gender pay gap is the outcome of substituting "average-person pay” (median) with “average person-pay” (mean) as the measure of central tendency.

Feminist ideologists do this in order to artificially inflate the apparent pay of ordinary men and women in pursuit of further economic, legal, and social privileges for women.

The trick in this instance is to include the incomes of the tiny minority in the top 5% of all earners, who earn more than all other earners combined. The fact that men are overrepresented in that group says nothing about the distribution of incomes amongst ordinary men and women. (In fact, in significant cohorts, men now earn less than women e.g. men and women in their 20’s, as the more pernicious effects of feminist education ideology translate into falling educational outcomes and punitive hiring, promotion, and remuneration policies for boys).

[Note: this is separate from and in addition to the facts that men are disproportionately represented in occupations that attract higher pay in return for the increased likelihood of death and permanent injury, that 3 times more men than women work 45+ hour weeks, etc.]

Like most of feminist pseudoscience, it’s intellectual dishonesty but, ironically in a workplace that rewards numeracy, works well enough amongst the innumerate.

Here’s a little picture to illustrate the trick ...

 
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There are genuine of criticisms of how the gender pay gap is calculated and used politically. But this crap has nothing to do with those and is just a load of man rights garbage.
 
Here are the stats for 2016-17.

Median pay (all): 23,600

Median for women: 20,800

Median for men: 26,100

The distribution across ages is also relevant, I think. The gap is smaller among the young. Women's median pay starts off about the same, but then rises to a lower level than men's and drops off more sharply past the 50+ age than men's. Every age group has women's median pay lower than men's though.

So women's rises a bit more slowly, peaks earlier and at a lower level than men's then falls earlier and more sharply than men's.

That's median only. So comparing like with like.
 
I might have gone and looked into that but I think it's safe to say that graphic has come from somewhere weird incel types wallow in their own filth so I'll give it a miss.
Which part of referenced government data, excel plotting, and the excel “mean” and “median” functions are you taking exception to?
 
The myth of the gender pay gap is the outcome of substituting "average-person pay” (median) with “average person-pay” (mean) as the measure of central tendency.

Feminist ideologists do this in order to artificially inflate the apparent pay of ordinary men and women in pursuit of further economic, legal, and social privileges for women.

The trick in this instance is to include the incomes of the tiny minority in the top 5% of all earners, who earn more than all other earners combined. The fact that men are overrepresented in that group says nothing about the distribution of incomes amongst ordinary men and women. (In fact, in significant cohorts, men now earn less than women e.g. men and women in their 20’s, as the more pernicious effects of feminist education ideology translate into falling educational outcomes and punitive hiring, promotion, and remuneration policies for boys).

[Note: this is separate from and in addition to the facts that men are disproportionately represented in occupations that attract higher pay in return for the increased likelihood of death and permanent injury, that 3 times more men than women work 45+ hour weeks, etc.]

Like most of feminist pseudoscience, it’s intellectual dishonesty but, ironically in a workplace that rewards numeracy, works well enough amongst the innumerate.

Here’s a little picture to illustrate the trick ...

Your post reeks of hatred of Feminism.

Its obnoxious to say the least.

"the pernicious effects of feminist ideology
" This really is right wing.

in pursuit of further economic, legal, and social privileges for women.

Privileges? This is about equality not about women getting privileges over men.
 
BBC Radio 4 - Analysis, The Real Gender Pay Gap

The Real Gender Pay Gap

Just finished. On I player now.

Programme has two interlinked themes. How stats show women earn less. Secondly how forms of Labour are not recognised and not included in traditional economics GDP. Work such as caring.

Breast feeding is exmple. Bottle feeding ends up being included in GDP. Breast feeding isn't. Despite it being good for babies long term development. Economist on programme worked out its worth three million a year.

Emotional Labour is another example.

I think the programme was part critique of conventional economics. Feminist economics includes reproduction of society. Emotional Labour and various forms of caring- which is imo part emotional Labour.

In this country the programme said the ONS calculate unpaid work. But don't include it in GDP in UK.

I would guess its gone up in UK. Tory "austerity" to bail out the parasites in the City means more unpaid work to keep social services going that help to bring up children. See this in my area.

Im not keen on commodifying all aspects of human existence in a Capitalist GDP. But , to be realistic , I think showing how work in the broadest sense should be recognised is positive.

To quote myself for Falcon benefit.

What you don't take into consideration Falcon is historically and now Women's unpaid work.

Aside from argument about equal pay is the labour that Capitalism gets for free to reproduce society. Which is mainly women's work.

I've posted more on this on the Feminist theory thread.

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Works of Feminist Theory, Philosophy & History
 
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Paying women less than men for the same work has been illegal in the UK for 50 years. Undeterred, feminist ideology proposes the myth that there is a “patriarchy”, through which men contrive to ensure women are paid less than men for the same work - the so-called “pay gap”.

The absurdity of this proposition is evident from the pattern of business failures, and the behaviour of management and shareholders implied by feminist cant, as follows:

1. The number of UK business deaths (i.e. deaths of businesses, not deaths of employees in businesses) increased from 288,000 to 357,000 between 2016 and 2017. Some of these could have been avoided or delayed by reducing workforce cost.

2. If the feminist ideologist’s claim that women are paid less than men for the same work were true, then we would predict that firms facing bankruptcy would replace their male workforces with female workforces to lower their cost and extend their viability.

3. There are no examples of firms doing so for economic reasons (there are examples of firms attempting to do so for ideological reasons).

To explain this, feminists therefore have to claim one of more of the following propositions to be true:

1. Women prefer to be paid less and / or to be made redundant than take their employer to court for the illegal practice of paying women less for the same work (absurd).

2. Managers prefer to allow their enterprise to fail and lose their own livelihood rather than compromise a supposed patriarchy by replacing men with women (absurd).

3. Managers prefer to violate their fiduciary duty to shareholders to maximise profit rather than compromise a supposed patriarchy by replacing men with women (absurd)

4. Shareholders prefer to lose their investment rather than compromise a supposed patriarchy by replacing men with women (absurd).

There are pay gaps due to total differences in hours worked, remuneration rates for hazardous work, etc. Where there are historical pay gaps for the illegal practice of paying men and women differently for the same work, they are challenged in court and eliminated. There is little evidence of firms exploiting such illegal behaviour to avoid collapse. There are cohorts that contradict the pay gap myth in which women earn more than men (part time work, men and women in their 20’s, etc.)

Feminist ideology most closely resembles religious belief or pseudoscience in its reliance on articles of faith that have no explanatory power, and which are trivially falsifiable by observable reality.
 
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