If you ever encounter a woman complaining about the gender pay gap, agree it’s a scandal, then tell her than for both part-time and full-time employees, women earn more than men, on average. The gap relates to the median hourly pay of men and women. Should the woman express incredulity – as a businesswoman did recently, whilst interviewing me for a TV documentary on the subject – simply point them to a piece by William Collins – here. Collins shows that in the case of p/t employees the gap has been in favour of women for 20 years (it’s currently about 5%) while for f/t employees, as a result of progressive tax rates impacting on more men than women, the post-tax gap has averaged about 2% in favour of women in the recent three years.

Now, what do feminists propose should be done about the problem?

A Gentleman – hatchet-faced trout

Our thanks to James for this garbage in The Guardian. My sole reason for doing this blog piece is that it was written by Amanda Gentleman . Hell, even Kate Smurfwit could extract humour from a woman who’s A Gentleman. An extract:

The disparities in some of the most high-profile companies have already been well aired. The hourly rate for women at easyJet is 45% lower that of their male colleagues, and 89% of the best-paid staff are men, while 68.9% of the worst-paid are women. These differences have been shrugged off as simply reflecting the fact that cabin crew tend to be women and pilots tend to be men, as if that makes everything OK… [J4MB emphasis]

But pluck almost any organisation at random and there is a similar picture. At Abingdon Flooring, on an industrial estate near Newport, 86% of the best-paid employees are men. At Rowe Farming in Doddington, 94.9% of the best-paid staff are men.