Wednesday, 18 November 2009

Women working for free from today until the end of the year

The Pay Equity Challenge Coalition that today is the day that women start working for free, until the end of the year, as they are on average paid 12% less than men:
Women subsidise the economy by nearly $4B a year!

NZ women earn at least 12% less (on average hourly earnings) than men. It's as if from 18th November until the end of the year women are working for free.

Nearly 1 million people miss out on nearly $4,000 million in wages every year - because they are women.

How does this happen?
  • Women don't always get equal pay for the same work as their male colleagues. Often they don't even know what male colleagues are earning. Do you?
  • The majority of the workers in lower paid jobs are women.
  • Occupations dominated by women (such as social work) are often underpaid in relation to comparable work in which men dominate
  • Women are often in roles with short career ladders, limiting their opportunities to improve their pay through promotion
  • Existing pay equal pay and opportunities legislation needs to be enforced.
So to this end there's an event on in Welly to mark the day:
1200 Pay equity debt collectors leaving CTU for Midland Park - (dressed up)

1220 Meeting for leafleting in Midland Park

1235 Angela will do a brief welcome; union representative, MPs asked to give brief statement of support

1245 Photos in front of invoice ( you should see it - it is massive )

1255 More leafleting and finally;

1.15 Coffee at Astoria
Sounds fab!

4 comments:

Psycho Milt said...

The Pay Equity Challenge Coalition that today is the day that women start working for free, until the end of the year, as they are on average paid 12% less than men

All this says is that the Pay Equity Challenge Coalition really could do with some members who understand statistics.

Julie said...

Then so could the people who do the Tax Free Day thingy, who from my recollection seem to largely be right-wing economist types.

Are you trying to say that women can't count? ;-)

Good to see you are still reading PM, I thought this post might flush you out.

There are some media statements that have come out since I did this post, in support of the day:
'Work for Free Day' resonates with education workers
and
Women's six weeks freebie accepted by employers

Psycho Milt said...

Absolutely still reading, was just away for a few weeks.

If anything, tax-free day is of even greater foolishness (on the basis that it not only misapplies average figures to individual situations, it assumes that taxes are income you give to the govt for no return). At least the PECC is guilty only of egregious failure to understand the meaning of the word "average." (At least, I'm politely assuming it's an error rather than a deliberately self-serving misrepresentation.)

Anonymous said...

For anyone interested, the stats are in this report... http://www.mwa.govt.nz/news-and-pubs/publications/indicators-for-change
Well done the PECC for highlighting the issue of the gender pay gap