Our thanks to Michael for this piece in the Express. For once, a piece on the ‘gender pay gap’ written by a male journalist. Extracts:
The Institute of Economic Affairs has shown that the so called pay gap between between men and women aged 22 to 39 is “negligible”…
The study, which involved data from the Office for National Statistics, appears to blow apart the claims made by the feminist Fawcett Society which says the pay gap is 14.1 per cent in favour of men…
The IEA report focussed on the Equal Pay Day campaign aimed at closing the alleged gap in wages and argued it was based on a “myth”.
Large companies are being required by law to publish their ‘gender pay gap’. We predict companies and public sector organizations will do the following to reduce it:
Promote women at the expense of more able men
Increase the remuneration of women solely, regardless of merit
Increase remuneration in disciplines largely staffed by women (including Human Remains), while reducing remuneration in disciplines largely staffed by men, over time (maybe giving men lower annual increases)
Justice for Men & Boys 
Your 3 things that result have been a feature of Public Services in England for a decade or more as the result of Union Pressure in a highly Unionised labour force. In fact recently there have been successful cases mounted by mainly male workers (Parks and Gardens, Hospital orderlies and maintenance, drivers) challenging the wholesale pay cuts they experienced as part of Equal Pay Reviews. Having worked in councils and the NHS for over 30 years I thought I’d list the “positive action” (direct discrimination is actually illegal) now embedded in HR practices in Public Services (the services that are “unrepresentative” of the population because their workforces are nearly 80% female!)
Promote women at the expense of more able men
This is done through offering women only coaching or confidence courses (“Women into Management” Etc.) and/or targeting paper qualifications (offering bursaries or day release to women). And putting both or either in the “Person Specification” as either desirable or essential.
Increase the remuneration of women solely, regardless of merit
One common way of doing this is by having job or Role “evaluations” for individual posts or creating new posts and giving higher weighting to office skills and/or exaggerating responsibility levels of administrative staff. Good examples of these are the ones that get into the papers where the Job has highly suspect titles. Usually these include words like “Culture”, “Interface” “Client relationships” and of course “Equality” or “Cohesion” . Frequently quite peripheral administrative or PR Jobs given exaggerated importance (and Salary) in a management structure.
Increase remuneration in disciplines largely staffed by women (including Human Remains), while reducing remuneration in disciplines largely staffed by men, over time (maybe giving men lower annual increases
The most common way of doing this is by having job or Role “evaluations” throughout the workforce and giving higher weighting to office skills and/or exaggerating responsibility levels of administrative staff. In effect demoting more “hands” on work (usually the male roles actually or figuratively “getting their hands dirty”) Hence in public services clerical and administrative jobs are very much better paid (at the moment) than the private sector equivalents.
We can expect to see all these as Companies try to “do something” . It will be interesting to see if those companies who have a reverse pay gap (which is quite likely in some law firms, publishing, fashion, health or care firms) feel compelled to do something.
As no one will tell them I do think organisations like yours could keep reminding men that direct discrimination is illegal and that some of the “positive action” can and has been challenged successfully. Frankly the best ally the feminists have is men’s ignorance of the rights they do have.
LikeLike
Promoting women at the expense of more capable men is a form of communism,whether we like it or not. And whether we do this in the name of Karl Marx or the gentleman doctrine makes no difference. We are wrong doing this !
LikeLike
“Promoting women at the expense of more capable men is a form of communism”
Can we please not drag old political battles into an arena that affects men from all parts of the political spectrum? It merely reduces our chances of success.
LikeLike
“Communism” is a slippery designation and is typically seen as left-wing (though as Herr H. made clear last century, socialist don’t tend to like communists). Even though some forms of communism are based on Marx, not all are.
More aptly than labelling it ‘communism,’ promoting the incompetent over the competent is a feature of Marxism, with the trend of paying and promoting women more than men (to get women out of the home and seperate them from their children) is a feature of Cultural Marxism, which is based on concepts by Lukacs and Grimsci, using the writings of Karl Marx and Baron Engels.
What is wrong is to equate Cultural Marxism with either left or right of politics: Cultural Marxists can be from any colour of politics, as is shown by the current UK Prime Minister.
LikeLike
I would take issue with much of what you say here, but I think this is not the forum for such discussion. My point is precisely that whatever our views on Marx, the Left and the definition of communism, men from all political persuasions are affected by what is happening today, and we need to appeal to them on that basis. Coming as I do from the political Left (with Marxist sympathies to boot) I do not find the terms “Marxist” or even “communist” to be obvious negatives. I know this can be a jolt to many here, but men come in many varieties yet are all in the same position in regard to their rights in today’s society.
LikeLike
Thanks Fred. Of course men across society suffer, and working class men the most. So why are Lefties still pandering to feminists, not criticising them at every opportunity? One of the first things Corbyn did upon becoming leader was to be interviewed by The Jewish Chronicle, and expressed his support for the criminal offence of MGM.
LikeLike
Being fair, with some notable but rare exceptions, Conservatives of the Party Political variety pander almost as much. With Corbyn I suspect it has more to do with the gynocentric nature of society as for all his pandering he has been on the sharp end of feminists within his party (till he proved not the electoral poison people presumed). Within labour circles there are mass changes in councillor “de selection” etc as Momentum take over. Amongst the clear out are a lot of the Champaign socialist feminists who have formed alliances with the likes of Soubry and Leadsom in Parliament to benefit from the “Pestminister” debacle.
The “hard left” are generally seen to be aggressive and toxically male within lefty circles. After all the Pestminster frenzy began with labour accusations from labour women, May could have left well alone but legitimised it and unleashed a slew of far more trivial “pest cases” in her own party. A gift to Corbyn as now no one is talking about Labour, which kicked off with an accusation of rape and includes now a suicide.
LikeLike
I am not arguing against any political viewpoint, merely suggesting that we acknowledge the situation today – modern feminism and all – for what it is. Its origins make no difference to that. Indeed, if what Douglas Milnes says is the case (though I would take issue with his version, as would many others) then the outcome that we see is precisely why it is a bad thing. No delving into a disputed past is necessary.
LikeLike
“I do not see how to appeal to men on a basis of supporting an ideology that removes their children from them, disparages the family unit, and directly leads to concepts like multiculturism and the promotion of queer sexual practices.”
Douglas, those are precisely the things we are trying to point out! That is exactly what we should be campaigning on. I guess you misunderstood me. I, a man from the political Left, am opposed to these things, and so I would imagine are many, many men who come from left-wing backgrounds.
Mike, I don’t think that working class men are the same as those Lefties you mention. Insofar as they do support feminism I imagine it’s because they believe in equality and haven’t seen through that. It is our job to help them do this, but we will fail if we write them off straight away as “Lefties”.
LikeLike
I do not see how to appeal to men on a basis of supporting an ideology that removes their children from them, disparages the family unit, and directly leads to concepts like multiculturism and the promotion of queer sexual practices.
The young baron Engels had no idea what he was talking about when he brought his weak understanding of collectivism to Marx. If the two of them had been more influenced by Stirner and less by Fourier, they might have come up with a half-decent ideology, given an additional few decades of maturity. As it is, the Baron’s later works written in his 40s onwards show a distinct departure of thought from when he co-formulated Marxism in his early 20s.
But one could almost put aside the entire political theory. What can’t be ignored so easily is Cultural Marxism, that scourge of thinking that ripened within the ‘Frankfurt School’ and forms the basis of feminism today. I tried ignoring feminism — I really thought it could never amount to much. Instead, it amounts to far too much, with a huge budget and a carefully crafted influence that would have its founders grinning with maniacal glee if they were still alive.
LikeLike
They would indeed. They certainly underestimated the way in which those they thought of as the bourgeoisie, which upheld tradition and stood squarely in the way of revolution, have embraced the very ideas designed to undermine them! The sight of the Conservative Party fuelling accusations within its own because it believes in the “power” of men over women would I’m sure make them jump for joy.
LikeLike
I once went to a home appliance and gardening equipment superstore and asked a female employee in her ’20s to show me a product which happened to be placed on an upper shelf. Accessing it required a ladder in order to bring it down. Immediately, she glanced at one of her male colleagues of the same rank and he readily volunteered to perform this task for her.
I was astounded by her willingness and expectation of her male colleagues. I was astounded even more by her male colleagues’ willingness to perform this task for her ! I asked myself a question as to why she did not perform this most rudimentary task, but waited for her male colleagues to do it for her. I thought to myself, either she was on her period and did not feel up to it, or she was providing other type of service to her male colleagues in return. No matter what the reason, as far as I am concerned, she was not capable of performing her job duties as required. And that kind of explains why male workers tend to earn more on average. At least to me it does.
LikeLike
But male workers with the same job description do not earn more on average than women. That is illegal.
What is much harder to pin down than enforcing equal pay for equal work, is enforcing equal work for equal pay. The men in that store do more work (and slightly more dangerous work) than the woman, yet are expected to put up with equal pay.
LikeLike
Exactly so. my comments below simply describe the process that have been used for the past 20 years in public services to reach the similar point of apparently “equal pay”. Clearly the same will be promoted to the private sector on the back of their Gender Equality Data.
LikeLike
The truth is slowly filtering out in this ‘zombie’ story – it’s dead but it won’t lie down.
Interestingly men, stoical, slow to anger, are not surprised when things aren’t fair and life presents problems.
“Being used to trouble we anticipate it, all the same we hate it – wouldn’t you…”
LikeLike