Pay Equity

Stuff reports the Government has a plan to ensure woman in the public service get paid the same as men.

First of all I am pleased to see money for a pay increase for nurses. For many years they have been under paid, in my opinion, and this has led to people leaving the profession in droves. In fact I even know two former nurses who are now prostitutes (no I don’t know them like that!)

But the whole rationale of so called pay equity between male and female professions is academic hogwash theory. It is typical socialist groupthink, rather than treating people as individuals.

Nurses should be paid more, because the job requires it, not because they are women and most police officers are men.

And the whole business of comparing average pay rates for women and men is idiotic. It is a focus on trying to ensure equal outcomes rather than equal opportunities.

It is only in the last 15 years that women have started to go to university in large numbers, and it takes time for this to flow through. Incidentially we now have a situation where almost 50% more women than men undertake tertiary study, so in 20 more years men may be lower paid on average than women.

Again I don’t really care about what the averages are. I care whether there are barriers or discrimination against individual women (or men) stopping them from achieving their best. In a country where women head the government, the judiciary, the largest company etc – I would suggest we are not doing too badly.