Repost: Would the construction crew on "The Block" benefit from quotas?

Informative analysis of a construction TV show and the pay gap for women in Australia:

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By Marina Go / Feb 21, 2014 6:52AM

A female chippie joined The Block last night. Of the hundreds of tradesmen swarming the building site, the producers did everything short of shining a stage light on her to highlight her presence.

And then it began. A segment devoted to the fact that there was a female carpenter in the group and ... she was a LEADER. Surely not. Apparently this clearly rare breed of tradesman could not only use a drill, she could also tell the blokes what to do. Footage was shown of her drilling and also directing the workflow.

A couple of male contestants then proceeded to discuss how great it was to have a female chippie on The Block leading the troupes. But did the producers have to include the comment that the very idea of it was "a bit hot"?

The only male contestant who actually is a tradesman exclaimed that he hadn't really met a female chippie before. And host Scott Cam, another chippie by trade, wanted to know if she was good at being the leader. He actually asked her.

It was the most patronising three minutes of television that I have witnessed in a while. The female chippie looked as capable as the next guy and anyone who hasn't just woken from a fifty-year coma knows that female leadership is increasingly not a miracle to behold.

I almost feel bad about calling out The Block for this because I actually believe that the producers were naively thinking they were doing a positive thing for women to highlight the woman. But true equality can only be achieved when women can get on with the business of working in jobs that were once the domain of men without it being made to feel token. Flooding The Block's construction crew with women would have been a better step forward for gender equality. It would have looked a lot less awkward.

The Block wasn't the worst thing about being a woman in the construction industry yesterday. The Australian Bureau of Statistics released it's latest gender pay gap figures and although on average the overall gap has slightly declined to 17.1% compared with a 17.5% gap a year earlier, the gender pay gap in the construction industry has blown out in the space of 12 months from 18.2% to 20.1%.

Construction isn't even the industry with the greatest gap. That honour falls to Financial and Insurance Services with a gap of 31.9%. My own industry, Information Media and Communications, has a gender pay gap of 18.6%, also worse than the national average. The best industry for female pay equality is Wholesale Trade with a 7.2% difference, down drastically from 17.2% a year earlier.

The thing is there doesn't have to be a gap at all. There are highly skilled female leaders in most industries waiting for an opportunity to show you what they can do. I have five women in my leadership team of eight. I will readily admit that I would rather have a 50:50 mix because I am aware of the benefits of diverse thinking at the leadership level. But I also have a broad spread of age groups, ensuring that there is a healthy mix of experience and fresh ideas.

There isn't a pay gap based on gender in our small slice of the media industry, so there must be organisations where the actual pay gap is much greater than the industry average. Those companies are undoubtedly feeling little real pressure to do anything about the gap because the industry figure lets them off the hook: everyone else in the industry must be in the same boat so how can they be expected to feel responsible for an industry issue?

I won't apologise for being a supporter of quotas. It's called good planning. Has anyone else managed to get their company to equality using a different strategy?

View the original article at http://www.womensagenda.com.au/.

Repost: Miss Utah’s Question is Worth Answering

by PATRICIA SHIU on JUNE 20, 2013

Marissa Powell’s comments on the pay gap at the June 16 Miss USA competition have gotten a lot of attention in the news – but for all the wrong reasons.

Gossip sites and even respectable media sources have homed in on her grammatically shaky response, but let’s not duck the question; it is well worth answering again and again.

As judge NeNe Leakes acknowledged and as I’ve noted myself many times in this blog, there is a persistent wage gap in this country, despite the fact that women play an increasingly crucial economic role in America’s families. Leakes asked what the pay gap says about society, and I think it’s an important question. The fact that the pay gap has decreased over the past 50 years shows that our society is open to change – but the fact that it exists at all shows that change is slow and requires constant support.

Workers can take some responsibility by educating themselves about typical pay scales within their industries and the laws that apply to pay equality, particularly Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act, which was passed 50 years ago this month.

They should also know the federal agencies that are available to assist with education and enforcement, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as well as the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which I lead, and its Women’s Bureau. We are constantly updating the department’s equal pay website to ensure that women have the tools and resources they need to level the playing field.

While Ms. Powell’s shaky response reflected the stress of responding to an unexpected question in a public forum, her clarification the next day got right to the heart of the issue: “This is not OK. It needs to be equal pay for equal work; and it’s hard enough already to earn a living, and it shouldn’t be harder just because you’re a woman.”

With her response Sunday night, Ms. Powell inadvertently drew more attention to this important question than she could have with a straight answer. That’s one small flub for a woman, one giant meme for womankind. And it’s a conversation we can all benefit from. After all, the pay gap costs individual women thousands of dollars in lost pay every year – and hundreds of thousands across their working lifetimes.

Closing the pay gap has deeply personal repercussions for women around the nation, but it has even greater resonance for society at large. Equality has long been one of cornerstones of our national culture, and its benefits are widespread.

As the president said on the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, closing the pay gap is “part of a broader agenda to create good jobs and to strengthen middle-class security, to keep rebuilding an economy that works for everybody, that gives every American the chance to get ahead, no matter who you are or what you look like, or what your last name is and who you love.”

Patricia Shiu is the director of the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.

View the original article at http://social.dol.gov/blog.