The Conservative Party's report 'Women in the World Today' is commendably sensible in not attributing the 17.2% difference in average male and female earnings to sex discrimination. It's common to hear the whole of the pay gap explained this way, but as Equal Opportunities Commission data quoted in the report demonstrates, once differences in employment experience, education and choice of career are taken into account, the gap is less than 5%.
But while Theresa May rightly notes that "There is still a gender pay gap of 17.2% in the workplace, which Labour's mountains of legislation have failed to solve", I wonder if the report was actually too kind to the government in not considering that its legislation may have contributed to that pay gap. Tim Worstall's archives on this issue are a must-read. He argued last year:
I do wish people would grasp this most essential of points: the gender pay gap is caused (at least in part) by the very existence of such things as extended maternity leave. At it's most simple, of course someone who takes three or four year long absences from the labour force is going to have less human capital than those who slog though full time. We can also point to the way in which never married childless women do not suffer a gender pay gap, nor lesbians. That the gap is virtually non-existent under the age of 30, widens then shrinks again from the late 40s onwards.
Taking long periods of time out and insisting on being able to work part time (part timers cost more per hour to employ than do full timers) inevitably reduce the wages paid. So, as in so many things, there's actually a choice that has to made here. Which do you want? Child friendly policies, parent friendly ones ... or no gender pay gap? The thing is, it looks like you've got to choose one or the other: you can't have both, they're mutually exclusive.
