Heard on the radio/read in the news papers, etc....
As a tax payer I'm shocked and dismayed at this situation!
Why hasn't the Government sacked all the males working for them, and hired only females? They'd save up to 39% on their wages bill that we, taxpayer shell out for!
Back to the real world. If the government were really paying women up to 39% less than men, they'd have up in court years ago, for breaking the equal pay act (or whatever it's called)
Did some research.
http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/income-and-work/Income/gender-pay-gap.aspx[/url]
Statistics NZ give a rundown on how they calculate the 'pay gap'. It seems to me that they discount every factor that will lessen or even remove the 'pay gap' and only use any factor that will prove their 'point' (like global warming 'science')
For example:
We present the gender pay gap as a percentage, which we calculate as:
That is: we subtract female pay from male pay, divide the result by male pay, then multiply by 100.
If males and females received exactly the same pay, the gap would be zero. If males received twice as much pay as females, the gender pay gap would be 50 percent.
At Statistics NZ we have three main ways to measure pay: hourly pay, weekly pay, and annual pay. Each measure would give a different picture of the gender pay gap.
- Hourly pay is preferred because it measures pay for a fixed amount of work (one hour). It is not directly affected by the number of hours a person works, or periods without pay.
- Weekly pay is affected by the amount of pay received per hour, and the number of hours worked per week. If a person works part time, they have less pay than if they work full time. Weekly pay is less suitable for measuring pay equity because it reflects differences which are due to hours worked.
- Annual pay is even less suitable for measuring pay equity because (along with hours worked) it is also affected by periods out of work, and by unpaid leave. If a person stops working during the year, they receive less annual pay than if they had worked continuously.
If we want to understand the fairness of pay (do males and females get equal pay for equal work?) the hourly pay measure is the best. It allows us to compare male and female pay for a fixed amount of work (one hour).
In an ideal world, we would also match males and females on characteristics that influence pay, and see if there is any remaining difference. For example, we expect occupation and qualifications to affect pay. So we would compare the difference in pay for males and females within the same occupations, and holding the same qualifications.
However, we don't do this analysis because it isn't possible to control for all factors that influence pay (and we don't measure all factors). We are also limited by our surveys' sample size.
And for for some sanity:
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11575013