There are two very important issues here, one being the fact that the figures are conveniently distorted as all the opponents lookout are gross earning. What they should be looking at when making comparisons are hourly rates, a case of don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.

The second issue which has a huge bearing on' their numbers' is paid parental leave as this places many women in the 'don't go there bracket' from an employers point of view.

So to the feminists out there continually banimg on their victim drum, paid parental leave was always going to make your case stronger as the simple answer, as always, is for every action there is a reaction.

You have your paid parental leave you pushed so hard for, so enjoy it as you can't have your cake and eat it.

Actually rehctub, that is not true, in fact many unskilled "woman's" work areas attract higher wages than skilled men's work.

A relative was boasting about this just the other day. Her only training was 3 months of an administration assistants course at the local council. when she left school. Now 23 her only skills are those picked up in office jobs.

She has just started a job in admin for a defence force contractor who has a 2 year contract to overhaul mobile plant, including generators, compressors, welders, chain saws & the like. She is filling out job cards, & allocating work to various areas of work.

She was boasting she is being paid more than the mechanical & electrical qualified people actually doing the work.

With such poor pay we will find no one has trained for these critical skills. Just look at how long it takes to get a plumber, & what they charge, to see where we are heading with these crazy pay scales

Agree with Hasbeen. I had quite a few jobs in my time, and women were paid the same as I was. I don't have a clue what the problem is with women and what they reckon they don't get.

TTBN,
The problem isn't women it's Feminism and disinformation spread by Feminists.
When I started work at 15, in a smallgoods factory the women were paid slightly less but they did nowhere near the amount of work that them men did. All of the women on my shift worked on one machine, all they did all night was cryovac the specialty pressed hams. Most of the time they had me and another boy loading the crates at the end of the line and moving them back to the chiller with the pallet jacks and oh the whinging if the foreman would dare come and take us off to do other jobs. Nowadays the situation is no doubt the same but everyone would be on the same wage, every manufacturing or kitchen job I've ever had the women had it easier than the men. The female apprentices in a restaurant where I worked for about five years never touched the dishwashing machine or washed a pot, yet the boys were expected to fill in if the dishwasher was away or if it was quiet and he was sent home and one of the male apprentices received a written warning for going over the chef's head and complaining about it to the owner.

Il tell you wha nthe problem is, it's missimformation.

When these femists rant about gender equality in the workplace they only look at how many dollars men earn and compare them with women's gross earning.

As I say, why let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Best-practice employers take steps to ensure that
gender-based pay discrimination is not part of their
remuneration system.

Fairness, respect and equality are essential components
of building harmonious, co-operative and productive
workplaces.

Foxy, with all due respect can you not see the lies being preached here, they don't care how well women are treated, they only look at how much a woman earns compared to a man.

It stands to reason that if a man on average works more hours then their gross pay will be higher.

It's a total sham.

Dear Rehctub,

I don't agree with your reference to "lies"
being preached regarding the pay-gap between men
and women in this country. However, I do agree
that the whole story is not being told just by
giving only the sensationalist statistics.
That is misleading.

Mikayla Novak, a senior researcher with the Institute
of Public Affairs wrote an interesting article
a while back for The Age. You might find it interesting
as well:

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/pay-gap-due-to-womens-choices-not-gender-bias-20150307-13y5bl.html

She states that instead of just focusing only on the average
pay-gap stats between men and women - we should instead
try to discuss the respective roles, attitudes, preferences,
cultural norms and policies in shaping economic and social
opportunities for women as well.

Foxy that is exactly what is wrong with the whole pay rate system.

What we should be focusing on is not who does the job, & particularly not on the nebulous "She states that instead of just focusing only on the average pay-gap stats between men and women - we should instead
try to discuss the respective roles, attitudes, preferences,
cultural norms and policies in shaping economic and social
opportunities for women as well"

What we should focus on is the skill & or training required to do the job, & how much doing it can earn the employer wanting it done.

Business are not, & should never be expected to become yet another welfare provider, which is what your author is wanting them to become.

Skills and training, All being equal there is no need for different pay scales because of gender. These days there are set limits that persons can lift or carry, which further levels the tasks that are needed to be done.
Women are capable as any man with identical training or skills, the armed forces are coming to that conclusion. So why not workplaces, nothing other than blatant discrimination.

Dear Hasbeen,

She's actually focusing on quite a bit more.

Perhaps you should re-read the link again.

Doog, if a man can lift say 20kilos in a workplace and a woman only 14, how is that being equal? So in such a case the mans wage should be higher.

On the same token, if a woman can process far more data than a man then she should be paid more.

But the real issue here is about how these feminists arrive at their numbers as they on,y look at gross earnings, not hourly rates and that's simply distortion of the facts.

If there is continuous lifting over 15 kg, mechanical aids must be used.

Rechtub I don't think women are that stupid as not to know an hourly rate as against a gross wage.

maybe make the women play the men in the tennis grand slams. Many Western women already get paid much more for performing well below men's standards.

Reminds of the quote -

"A woman who wants to be equal to men,
lacks ambition."

Sorry runner, the equality card is only ever played when it suits.

Having said that, I wonder if they Include women's football, cricket and golf players in the mix, where their wages/prize money is decided by viewer following.

Doog, it's my understanding they compare gross earnings when collecting their data and use this anomaly to their advantage when playing the victim card.

Rechtub I think your vision of female gender is twisted, just like your mentor Abbott. You think women are stupid. women are not capable. women are not competent workers. women are lesser than men. women are inferior.
My interpretation of you is written all over your posts now and previously. You should get over that.

Good one, Foxy :)

Doog,

15 kg ? That's 33 lbs in real weight. Back in the late sixties, I worked in a pie factory where the weight limit was 40 lbs. The union bloke tried to stand over us, on behalf of the employer, to kick it up to 48 lbs, or about 22 kg. Everybody ignored him. They were mostly Greeks, kala paidia, kaloi ergatoi, good blokes, good workers, they didn't put up with bullsh!t from some lackey.

15 kg ? What a bunch of pussies !

Cheers,

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Welcome back.

You've been missed.

Dear Foxy,

I've been around, I've been just trying to be a pain in the arse on other threads :)

On-topic: In my limited experience, women have either

(a) done similar work to what men do, but with more commitment, dedication and enthusiasm. I guess I'm thinking of Indigenous student support here;

or

(b) done the crummier, more repetitive, dirtier, jobs, which are paid at lower rates. I'm thinking of factory jobs, bakeries, Kodak, etc.

Maybe situations are different now, but earlier, women workers in factories where they had to start, say, at 5 a.m., usually didn't have cars, so they had to get taxis to start work. Blokes usually drove.

And of course, it's women who have to take time off to raise small children, which buggers up their careers. Perhaps their child-care should be counted as years of service. Which it is, of course.

Still a long way to go, ay Foxy ?

Love,

Joe

Show me one instance of where a woman legally gets paid less in this country simply because she's a woman.

Anyone?

Its a load of crap.

What you guys have to understand is that this is part of a UN 'equality for women' agenda.

Its designed for Africans.

It does not really have any bearing on our country or way of life but our leaders lick up to globalist UN agendas.
And it gives the feminists free reign to carry on with all sorts of illogical rubbish.

Dear Armchair Critic,

Things have definitely improved for women but
women still occupy very few high-paying
positions. Its something like only 8 of every
1000 employed women holds a high-level executive,
managerial, or administrative job. Even when men
and women do similar jobs, they often have different
titles and pay scales. The male becomes an "administrative
assistant," the female, merely an "executive secretary."
Women represent 85 per cent of elementary school teachers,
86 per cent of librarians, 84 per cent of cashiers,
96 per cent of nurses, and 98 per cent of secretaries.
Their department heads are usually men.

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

We need to ask why, when women have flooded into
the work-force, does the pay-gap persist?

There are several factors that seem to be responsible.
One big one to me seems to be that women's traditional
family responsibilities may affect their careers
especially if pregnancy and child-raising causes them
to drop out of the labour market for long periods.
Also there is strong evidence that some employers still
perceive women as less able than men and don't take
them as serious candidates for promotion unless they
perform exceptionally well. In short social arrangements
have evolved in such a way that the female-dominated
jobs, such as librarians earn less than carpenters,
nurses less than accountants, and so on.

As a result - "equal pay for equal work" offers little
benefit to most female workers. It does not help much
if male secretaries are paid the same as female
secretaries, when most secretaries are female and
the job is a poorly paid one.

C

Dear Foxy,

It's women who have to take time out to raise children. So the relatively smooth career progression that men may expect is not duplicated by most women: each child means years out of the work-force, and an interrupted career path, not to mention having to pick up and re-learn and re-skill, and compete for promotion against some snotty-nosed kid just a few years out of uni. How's that for stereotyping ?

Instead of paid parental leave, maybe the Abbott government should give some thought to ensuring that mothers are less disadvantaged when they return to the work-force, that their time off raising children is at least partly counted as part of their work experience. Perhaps some sort of sliding scale could be devised, say one year of work counted for every two years of child-care, including superannuation benefits. What do you reckon ?

Love,

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

You have excellent suggestions.

I remember how difficult it was for me to return to
the workforce after having had my two babies.
I virtually had to start from scratch. So I took
whatever job I could get in a library - and I went
back to doing further studies to up date my
qualifications. I can proudly say
that I finished my studies at Uni while working full
time and raising a family. Of course none of this
would have been possible without the strong support and
help of my husband, my mum, and my in-laws. It was a team effort -
for which I will always be grateful.

Dear Foxy,

My dear wife was luckier in some ways: she'd had both babies before she was twenty, then when we went to New Zealand, got very heavily involved in the Playcentre Movement there, where mothers came together to run their own little kindergartens: she was its Education Officer for the Auckland region (voluntary of course, no pay: I wonder how many other Indigenous people would do that) by the time she was 22.

Back in S.A., after a bit of factory work, she grabbed the opportunity to run an Aboriginal pre-school up on the Murray, and from there - when the kids were close to secondary school age - back down to Adelaide, and onto teaching qualifications. She certainly had ups and downs, as the first Aboriginal graduate in the four-year B. Ed. course in S.A. (she'd upset the controllers of Aboriginal people [not their official titles] so was denied any employment by the Ed. Dept.). So she went back to do more study.

But luckily a job came up in the CAE and she grabbed it with both hands. There's a lesson there: grab opportunities, they may come along only once. She finished up after 23 years - not perhaps with a professorship, as so many other Indigenous people seem to do after two or three years, but as a Senior Lecturer, in charge of support services for three hundred Indigenous students at ten centres.

She held those numbers at a time when many other programs were going down the drain, banking everything on supporting only Indigenous students enrolled in Indigenous-focussed courses (and ignoring Indigenous students in mainstream courses who weren't 'playing the game'). She was vindicated in her support for ALL Indigenous students: nowadays, 98 % of the current sixteen thousand Indigenous students at universities are enrolled in mainstream courses. And goodo.

The next problem - since two-thirds of them are women - will be to ensure that they get proper employment, and are not shunted into the Aboriginal domain. For life. How racist is THAT ?

Life is certainly a steeple-chase, especially for women.

Love,

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Thank You for sharing your wife's experiences.
I only wish that I could have met her. She
sounds like an extraordinary lady.

Dear Foxy,

She certainly was: the eldest of ten kids, she left school at fifteen to take the burden off the family, and worked as a domestic servant (yes, there were such things even in the sixties). She must have worked really from the time she was five or six, helping her mother (literally: they lived in a shed, with no water or power, so I suspect one of her jobs after school was to go over to the nearby farm and collect water), and then right through until the end. No retirement for her, no standard Indigenous bludge jobs for life, either.

When they say " ... until death do us part", they sometimes get it wrong: it doesn't part you. It's forever.

Cheers,

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

My parents taught me at a very early age
that when dealing with life's ups and downs
think of yourself as a rubber ball - the
harder the hit the bigger the bounce.

Dear Foxy,

Yeah, that should be the national motto of Lithuania :)

By comparison, Australia really seems like the safest, luckiest, most comfortable, Lotus Land on the planet.

Oh well, back to topic .......

Love,

Joe

Women need more money than men. They buy four times as many clothes as men, and spend ten times as much as men on 'Beautifying" themselves with perfumes, makeup, hair styling and so on, and many times more than men on decoration of their bodies with baubles, bangles and bright shiny beads. They also discard used clothes at a rate many times that of men, and cost more to feed with their diets of special fad foods.
So they need more money - it's as simple as that.