- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.de
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.de
Organisers hope the women’s strike – whose confirmed participants include fishing industry workers, teachers, nurses and the PM, Katrín Jakobsdóttir – will bring society to a standstill to draw attention to the country’s ongoing gender pay gap and widespread gender-based and sexual violence.
What is the wage gap amongst the same job role?
For example, are female cashiers paid 80% what male cashiers are?
In most of Europe, it is illegal to pay differently for equal work, so a female cashier would be paid the same as a male cashier.
The gap arises where men are able to take more hours, obtain more qualifications, develop more experience, enter more lucrative industries, get more promotions & they are far less likely to leave paid employment to raise children.
Some of that is due to personal choice, which is fine, but most of it is down to societal hurdles outside of work which determine how women approach the workplace.
Men are able to, or they are practically forced to? Because when I took paternity leave, I heard managers describe it as a “vacation”, which is a term I’ve never seen used to describe maternity leave. And when I left my job to take care of my second child, my co-workers described it as “career suicide”, which again I’ve never seen used to describe a woman’s decision to raise her child.
So I have to wonder: how many fathers out there would rather be raising their kids but don’t get a real chance to do so because they know their careers would suffer disproportionately to their female coworkers?
Ironically the same could and arguably should be said about a woman choosing to raise her children. Because this is what makes up the vast majority of the gender pay gap, after accounting for the profession. And it makes total sense because raising kids for two, four, six years leaves you with much less experience compared to your peers who did not have children.