The gender pay gap

[Skids]

[pietillidie]

^That wouldn't surprise because it's a classic 'macho' industry, but I can't see it being a bad thing. Standing back, that tokenism would still be fractional; the vivid examples you see just stick out in the mind because they can be so galling.

The shareholders could argue this: the full scope of the organisation, including the long run organisation, is far bigger than single job positions, and tweaking the gender mix will help enlargen the talent pool and help underwrite overall organisational quality. There is greater robustness and less group think in diversity, too. I can certainly guarantee you no reputable executive is going to publicly contradict that.

So, it can also be about future value. This is the part I mentioned above that people miss: present value is the wrong measurement, and it's certainly not where accountants and investors live. Planning, strategy and future return matter, so some of these decisions rightly live at that scale.

Also, as mentioned, demand is basic economics. So, if market demand wants a more balanced gender mix, that's what the market wants. You don't get to pick and choose market demand, and if you're in mining, which is captal intensive, investors are your key constituency because mining products don't really have direct consumer interfaces because they're largely (though maybe not entirely) transformed multiple times before they hit a consumer interface.

[Skids]

My old mates at Roy Hill just copped another kick in the guts.

NPI Superintendent role was vacant. Long standing supervisor in the department had been seconded into the role and was the obvious choice for the position.
Nope. A young female has been appointed to the $250k+ role.

No experience in the position but will be carried along regardless.
The site has a 40/40/20 target to meet and, as long as Iron Ore is sold for the ridiculous price it continues to hold, that will be the goal.

* 40% male, 40% female, 20% 'other'.

[David]

[stui magpie]

I'm tipping an explosion of miners suddenly identifying as non binary.

[David]

if even a handful felt comfortable doing so in that kind of macho workplace, that would probably count as progress. But Skids is obviously taking the piss here.

In the meantime, forget 40% – even 20% female participation in mining would apparently be an improvement, per this article from 2020:

https://towards2030.thewest.com.au/closing-the-gender-gap-in-mining-and-construction/

[stui magpie]

^

You also need the actual work to be attractive to females, which by it's nature you'd expect it generally isn't.

Trades and Construction are also male dominated, Nursing and caring roles are female dominated.

[David]

Ít's an interesting question, and one I've wrestled with before – the fact that a given industry is dominated by one or the other gender may not necessarily be a bad thing, per se, and may at least to some extent just reflect preferences. It may have nothing to do with sexism or discrimination, which raises the question: are we trying to fix something that isn't broken to begin with?

One thing that's clear though is that many industries nowadays are seeking greater diversity because they see it as having various intrinsic benefits (say, the different perspectives and energy brought by diversity). And there's also the problem of missing out on quality candidates because something is perceived as "a job for men" or "a job for women" – in any industry that's perceived as male-dominated and unfriendly to women, there tends to be a self-selecting feedback loop: the more women you have, the more you inevitably get. It's the same with male early childhood educators. Lots of people aren't going to want to be the only man or the only woman in the room.

So yeah, I think aiming for 50/50 quotas is probably a bit more of an ideological goal than a practical one. But by the same token, it's not unreasonable to look at an industry with very low female participation like mining and construction and seek to structurally reform it, and the simplest method for doing that is by (however a company chooses to go about it) hiring and promoting more women.

[stui magpie]

Good summary. My view is that, to a degree, certain occupations appeal more to one gender than the other, but that becomes a bit self fulfilling.

I'm sure there has been women who in years gone by wanted to work in traditional male dominated fields, but few would have coped with the inherent sexism in a blokey workplace. Being the only bloke in a female workforce isn't much fun either, even if you're the boss. The bitchiness of women to each other is just draining for a bloke.

Setting 40-40-20 targets in mining has to be purely aspirational, especially considering that Gender diverse people wouldn't make up anywhere near 20% of general society, but yes, hiring and promoting women even at the expense of more suitable males is a way to get more women into the workforce .

Getting men into early childhood roles has it's own different challenges. While the employers would like more men it's often the parents who have concerns about men in that environment which makes it bloody uncomfortable for the male workers.

Also, from my time in public health, men made up a tiny minority of the Nursing workforce but the majority of middle and senior management and most of them were Nurses.

[David]

^ I think that's all fair enough.

On the middle section, I very seriously doubt that any workplace on Earth, short of a radical trans vegan zine stall in Brooklyn, has a specific employment quota for gender-non-confirming people (let alone 20%). Skids is either having a lend of us or just repeating some of the banter that goes on at work around affirmative-action hiring, which I think would tend to demonstrate the problem at hand if so.

[pietillidie]

Skids, I know you must be handy with numbers given your penchant for betting odds, so I assume you're either being satirical here or you've hit the Bacardi 151 and pain killers at the same time

[Magpietothemax]

The gender pay gap is not the main issue. The main issue is the class pay gap.

[stui magpie]

^

yep, like why meat bombs on a construction site with a double digit IQ get paid double what Nurses get and triple what Early Years Educators get

[pietillidie]

Intersectionality folks, intersectionality.

[What'sinaname]