One of the most infuriating things a person could hear is that they are not being paid on par with another person who has the same qualifications and who does the same job. This is why we have to be so careful about declaring the accuracy of pay-gaps when examining statistics.

Karl Deeter laid out the statistical issues in this are in the Sunday Independent this week and showed that for a myriad of reasons women can appear to be paid less than men but that in part it’s due to how we collect the statistics rather than due to any undercutting of earnings by women based on their gender.

The extract it starts with is below, the full article is in the link at the end of the extract.

Logically, if it was cheaper to hire women than men you would never hire men as the savings would be too great, unless a business values misogyny over capital. I say that not as an objective analyst, but as a business owner who values capital. Paying a person less for the same job based on their sex is wrong, unethical and should not be tolerated.

But the ‘gap’ is full of quirks.

A pay gap exists. But there are reasons for it which may not be as offensive as some headlines imply – we must look at the underlying information.

Pay is a factor of knowledge, experience, productivity and, perhaps most importantly, time. If two people are the same in all but one of these areas they can be paid vastly different amounts.

A highly-knowledgeable doctor who sees a lot of patients but who only works two days a week will earn less than another doing the same who works five days a week irrespective of their gender (continue reading)