Career
May 19, 2024

21 percent less salary! Where is the outcry?

My last gender pay gap moment I experienced a year ago. After eight years as a freelance journalist, I once again had a permanent job. The first payroll came, and my husband, also an editor, and I bent over our net income to re-calculate how much everyone would pay into our household budget.

On our first date, twelve years ago, we had earned about the same amount. I knew that would be different now - I had an 83 percent job, he worked full time. When I saw the gap in black and white, I choked on the after-work beer: One third less, despite the same tax code. Damn, so much - how could that be? Did I fail at the salary talk? Was that the proof that my love of experimentation in the job was usually greater than my desire for security? Or did the gap also have something to do with the fact that I was a woman, to be more precise: a mother who was no longer as productive and flexible because of the children?

Maybe it was a mix of everything - and a few more reasons? That night I lay awake for a long time: How far would the scissors spread? In my circle of friends (most of them are between 35 and 55, many have children) there are exactly two couples in which she earns more than he does. For the others - and the women have by no means screwed down their working hours to homeopathic doses - the wage gap varies between ten and 40 percent. Statisticians should be happy about this: On average, this corresponds approximately to the 21 percent that separate the average gross hourly salaries of women and men. On the other hand, it just makes me angry.

Source: Federal Statistical Office 2018 (2017 figures)

The big outcry in Germany has been missing - although the facts invite to protest

For a few hundred to a thousand euros less a month depends on a whole chain of losses: Almost 50 percent less income than men gather women in the course of their entire professional life, has calculated the research director of the Hamburg Institute of International Economics Christina Boll. Depending on the industry, that adds up to half a million. Later, there is correspondingly less pension, the Gender Pension Gap is 53 percent in Germany.

Source: DIW weekly report 43/2017 (figures from 2012)

No wonder almost every fifth woman over the age of 65 is considered at risk of poverty. Almost with each of these numbers, we are well above the EU average. And for years. Already that should have driven us to the hundreds of thousands on the streets, in front of executive offices, courts and parliaments, so that the wage gap shrank like a decrepit balloon. But the big outcry? Stayed in Germany so far.

Source: Federal Statistical Office 2018

Source: Eurostat 2018 (figures from 2016)

Women should not settle for lower wages

Why? Of course, the causes of the gender pay gap are complex. Guilty lousy average salary of women is rarely the evil macho boss. But a mixture of centuries of growing disadvantages, fixed role models - and sometimes our behavior itself. Unraveling and tackling everything is time-consuming, exhausting and unpleasant, it takes time, strength and nerves.

But it also seems to me that many have come to terms with the low wages, as with the scrape of a calcified espresso machine.

Following the motto: Just enough. Researchers call this the "normative force of existing conditions".

A study by the University of Konstanz shows where the gender pay gap leads: judging women and men how fairly they rate certain salaries, both find it perfectly okay for a woman to receive a salary equal to eight percent below that the man lies. So instead of 100 euros, there's only 92 - plain, because the man who does the job has breasts instead of penis. "We are not of a lesser kind," wrote the suffragist Anita Augspurg in 1912 in her "Wake-up call to women's suffrage". Well, you have to say a century later: If it? S about salary, apparently yet.

It has to move something!

Honestly, that can not go on like this. Something must finally move in the matter - in minds, companies, parliaments. Because the chances for it are actually almost never: The economy is booming, the companies are looking for professionals, diversity is the trend word of the hour. All of this gives workers tremendous power to demand more wages, better jobs and more flexible working hours from companies.

There are countries like Denmark or the UK, which are already putting pressure on companies to fill their pay gaps.There are resourceful minds like Julia Borggräfe, former head of HR at the Messe Berlin, or Henrike von Platen from the Fair Pay Innovation Lab, who work out concepts on how to assess the work of women and men more fairly and close wage gaps in the company.

But above all, there are more and more women who are so outraged by the gender pay gap that they no longer take it for granted or blame themselves for it, but instead fight loudly and self-confidently against it. In Hollywood, Oscar winners like Jennifer Lawrence and Patricia Arquette vented their frustration on the open stage or in open letters. In Germany, actresses like Maren Kroymann or Katrin Sass talked about their own pay gap experience. The ZDF journalist Birte Meier and the master carpenter Edeltraud Walla fought for their right to fair pay through various judicial authorities. In women's strikes in Iceland or Spain - and this year on International Women's Day for the first time in Germany - millions are resigning their jobs in protest.

What has to happen to make women more equitable?

We present five strategies for women to be paid fairly (strong laws, more money for social professions, more women in STEM professions, part-time taboo shot, more talk).

But there is still a sixth. Admittedly, it costs a great deal of nerves, but it is also particularly important: we should often contradict those who want to persuade us that women are mainly to blame for the pay gap. Because they worked part-time too often, poorly paid occupations chose, too soft negotiating. And the rest, the so-called adjusted gap of around six percent, which is actually based on direct discrimination, is now really a Kinderpups.

Source: Boll / Lagemann 2018: Gender pay gap in EU countries based on SES 2014, DOI: 10.2838 / 978935

If you meet someone like that, please invite him for a coffee. And first calculate how much six percent for a German average gross annual income of 34 285 euros mean: 2057 euros. Is that really trivial?

Then dedicate yourself to the debt theory: If the women want more money, why are they no longer working, become a top manager of an IT group and negotiate at the next opportunity so hard that the bonuses just bubble? Women are already working a lot, with an average of 45.5 hours per week even an hour more than men.

Source: Second Gender Equality Report of the Federal Government 2017 (Figures from 2015)

The problem is that they get paid only a third, the men more than half. The solution would be: more unpaid work in male hands, more paid in female hands. But the implementation fails, as is known often.

A scandal: mothers earn significantly less than women before the birth of their children

Only recently, an international research team calculated that mothers in Germany earn only 61 percent of what they got the year before birth ten years after the birth of their first child - mainly because they have since then only half-days or no longer working. Exactly: That's a scandal.

But that's not just the fault of the mothers, who supposedly prefer to realize themselves between diaper pails and mops than at work. But just as often fathers who are afraid or just do not want to reduce their working hours in favor of children, superiors who keep men in part-time or parental leave, and - surprise - the often much lower salaries of women who (especially in combination with a tax system that has fallen out of time, keyword: spouse splitting) a 50:50 division of housework and employment often make economic madness.

The wage level of a male-dominated industry decreases when more women work there

Your counterpart interjects, with a good-earning engineer in the house, the situation would look different? Correctly. But it probably would not help if suddenly all women in STEM professions changed, after all, there is also a shortage of skilled workers in old people's homes and day-care centers.

Quite apart from that, studies show that increasing the proportion of women in a once-male-dominated industry does not automatically lead to women suddenly making huge profits there. But that the average wage level of the industry often falls - because the women get less there compared to their male colleagues.

In addition: In many "men's industries" is the rise in the really well-paid positions for women particularly difficult. The engineer also suffers under the gender pay gap - admittedly at a higher level than the social pedagogue.

Crazy! Women who demand more money contradict the notion of femininity

Then the women should negotiate harder, calls your interlocutor. Also correct. The only question is: would that help? The behavioral economist Iris Bohnet has made convincing arguments on the basis of numerous studies, why it is much harder for women than men to score in salary talks. The very fact that they demand anything contradicts the general idea of femininity.Crazy? Right.

But instead of getting excited about it, Bohnet recommends playing open cards with the next salary poker: Point out to the negotiating partner the problem of stereotyped clichés and then get into the ring in a friendly but determined manner. From a behavioral economic point of view, trying to adapt as a woman in the job to the rules of men, namely anyway a run in the hamster wheel. Bohnet's conviction is really only progressing with equal rights when the rules change. For example, instead of handing over items and money, companies would have to disclose why who earned what and how much and on which post. Only then will discrimination become visible. And could be fought.

The gender pay gap must not remain a taboo subject!

Whether you convince with these arguments your coffee invitation? Honestly, I do not know. But you two have done at least something that still hardly anyone dares: You have talked. About women and men and money - according to the sociologist Jutta Allmendinger a great taboo subject of our time. If we want to fill the gender pay gap, we have nothing left: we have to break this taboo. Because so much depends on it. Therefore: Discuss! Question! Hassles! In the job and at home. With the partner, the colleagues, the supervisor. And right away start with: When was YOUR last gender pay gap moment?

Exchange in the ChroniquesDuVasteMonde community: And how are you?

We see exchange and transparency as an important step towards change. What are your experiences with the Gender Pay Gap? Do you get what you deserve? Also compared to the male colleagues? Or is the salary the same, but with allowances or bonuses the men are considered more? What experiences do you have with your superiors, salary discussions and everyday misogyny at work? Have a chat in the ChroniquesDuVasteMonde community - we look forward to exciting discussions!