Gender pay gap 'a reality' for many in New Zealand

Monday, 14 August 2017

Jackie McCullough had been working for two years when the gender pay gap became a reality for her.

It was 2001, and she was in her first job as a medical laboratory scientist after graduating with a four-year bachelor's degree. She had worked across two different departments by the time the company hired a new graduate, who had the same qualifications as McCullough but obviously less experience.

One day, the new employee's wage was accidentally posted on an internal bulletin board. It was quickly taken down, but McCullough was shocked to see the young man was earning 'between $3000 and $5000' more than her, despite her years of experience. 

'It really pissed me off because he was useless and had a bad attitude to boot,' she says. 

**READ MORE: 

* Jacinda Ardern says Labour won't rest until women have equal pay

* National's EV pledge, Labour on equal pay

* Equal pay bill due for first reading**

She didn't speak to management because she was 'sure that it would result in nothing'.

'Asking for a pay rise, I felt, would not result in any change.'

Instead, she found another job.

'Best decision ever.'

On Saturday, at a rally fighting for equal pay, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern announced her party 'will not rest' until pay equity is achieved in New Zealand.

'In 2017 there should be no such thing as a gender pay gap in New Zealand,' she said. 

'I am committing that Labour will not rest until we have pay equity in New Zealand.'

While she was applauded by the crowd at Auckland's Suffrage Memorial in Khartoum Place, she was later ridiculed and berated by commenters online. The story of Stuff's Facebook page, for example, gained plenty of comments saying the pay gap is a myth.

It's important to note the pay gap isn't a fixed statistic experienced by every woman. It shrinks and grows depending on other things such as race, industry, and geography.

According to New Zealand's Ministry for Women, the gender pay gap is 'a high-level indicator of the difference between women and men's earnings'. It compares the median hourly earnings of women and men in full and part-time work. In 1998, the gender pay gap was 16 per cent. Last year, it was 12 per cent. 

People have a lot of different theories about why this is. So in March 2017, the Ministry for Women released a report, called Empirical evidence of the gender pay gap in New Zealand, which looked at the causes behind it.

The report showed factors such as differences in education, occupations that men and women work in, and the fact women are more likely to work part-time, only accounted for around 20 per cent of the current gender pay gap. The other 80 per cent was owing to 'unexplained' factors such as conscious and unconscious bias.

The website explains: 'Bias occurs when we automatically, and often unconsciously, use shortcuts and stereotypes that distort, generalise, ignore or emphasise information, and is sometimes described as 'fast thinking'. The disadvantage is that we do not take all the relevant information into account when making a judgement or decision, which can lead to poor-quality decisions.'

But Prue Hyman, a Wellington economist and author of Hopes Dashed? The Economics of Gender Inequality, said while it was important to acknowledge unconscious bias, 'that stuff can be exaggerated'.

'It's a good excuse for governments to regard everything as unconscious bias, because then it's all the employers' fault, they need to get education, it's nothing to do with us.'

More concerning, she said, is that female-dominated industries are undervalued: 'That to me is a very major thing that doesn't get talked about enough — that's what the Kristine Bartlett case is all about, of course.'

Bartlett, a Lower Hutt aged care worker, is the woman behind the landmark decision by Government to give pay equity to about 55,000 of her low paid, mainly female colleagues.

The crux of it, as the Court of Appeal determined, is that the Equal Pay Act from 1972 could apply to pay equity. Bartlett's initial case against her employer, TerraNova, depended on a notion that some kinds of jobs are predominantly male and some, including care workers, nurses, teachers and teacher aides, are predominantly female, and that workers in the latter have historically been more poorly paid.

But while there are ongoing issues with the legislative approach to pay equity, changing mainstream attitudes is an even slower process. 

'You've got to keep on hammering away that it's power essentially that determines what people are paid. I mean obviously skills and length of training make a difference … at least trying to reduce the ridiculous differential.

'How can a chief executive be worth $4 million or $6m? It's complete rubbish. It's just the fact the boards and chief executives all want to pay each other that sort of amount. And can get away with it.'

While we say we value caring work — particularly in the context of our aging population — even under the new rates, Hyman said, 'you look at the job description of those people and what they have to do for their $20 to $24 per hour, and compare that with overpaid consultants …'

We even assume women's skills depreciate when they pause their careers to have children, she said, but in reality, being a mother requires 'a hell of a lot of skills' which are applicable to any workplace.

'Nowhere in the world has got pay equity right,' she clarified. 'It's a very slow and difficult thing.'

When I asked one commenter to explain what he meant when he said the pay gap is a myth, he said: 'While I don't doubt there is some sexism responsible for who gets selected for some jobs in some industries, the majority of the gap is due to differences in choices that people make in education, employment, who stays at home with the children. If Jacinda [Ardern] wants to change that she will have to change the sorts of choices people make, that sounds like social engineering and quite frankly scares me.'

But if she wants to change people's choices not by legislation, 'but by using her profile to influence hears and minds', he said, he would 'genuinely wish her every bit of luck in that endeavour'.

'And it was unfair to ask her about baby plans,' he added. 

Across the globe, the gender pay gap has narrowed but persisted since the 1980s, according to Pew Research Center. And the research shows it's true women are still more likely than men to take time off work to care for their family, and these types of interruptions can have an impact on long-term earnings. Women as a whole also continue to be over-represented in lower-paying occupations. Other parts of the pay gap are likely owing to gender discrimination, with women about twice as likely as men to say they had experienced such discrimination.

It doesn't help that New Zealanders have an aversion to talking about pay, McCullough said, 'so we don't know when we are being ripped off'.

For the last six years, she has been back in the medical laboratory profession. Her company has moved to an open, transparent system for pay where experience and good work moves employees up a step each year. 

'It's a move in the right direction,' she said. 'It makes me happy to know it is a standardised approach across the country, and that I am rewarded for experience and good work in the same way as my male colleagues.'