On average women get paid 10% less than their male counterparts that work equally as hard. On average a female executive will earn a £93,434 a year while a man sitting in the next office working the exact same job with the same job title will get paid £103,230 on average. The wage gap of nearly £10,000 a year seems hardly fair and could amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds over your career.
Although discrimination towards women is prohibited within the work place statistics show the alarming rate in which women are increasingly get paid less to do the same job.
So why is it women get paid less than men? Manager of a retail store Wilkinson’s claims that this is because women are more afraid to demand a higher pay even if they feel they are entitled to it whereas men will demand higher pay for the same job. So is it in fact women’s fault for getting paid less? Should we be less afraid to ask for it?
Statistics provided by the Chartered Management Institute suggest however that female executives start off earning just as much as men, but as soon as they start having children the wage gap starts to show. After maternity leave is over many women arrive to find that their job has been filled by a man who the company manages to pay more to do the same job. The Charted Management Institute claims that this is because companies fear that women with children won’t be able to commit the same amount of time to a job as a man.
Discrimination towards women goes beyond wages, on average women are forced to pay more for the same services as men. Women often have to pay more for a haircut then men. Although it seems fair to charge a woman with long hair more than a man with short hair, what about a woman who has equally as short hair to an average man? Surely it should cost the same price for the same service. Hairdressers Tony and Guy claim that the reason they charge up to £40 more to trim a woman’s hair is because they often use more products and styling time takes longer. But do they really use £40 worth of product on our hair?
Women are also often forced to pay higher fees for dry cleaning then men, while most Johnsons dry cleaners offer to dry clean a man’s shirt for just £2.50 it costs £3.50 for the same service to a woman’s blouse. They claim that this is because it takes more time to press a woman’s blouse because of the curves and stitching. So what if a woman wants a plain shirt similar to that of a man’s dry cleaned? Johnsons claim that this will still cost more than a mans because the service of £2.50 is only open to male customers.
Although the price difference for haircuts and dry cleaning may not seem like a lot, when teamed with earning on average 10% less it seems that women stand the chance of missing out on a lot of money. Women are also charged on average a higher fee for life insurance because they are deemed more likely to be ill than men… maybe it’s the financial stress that makes us inclined to be ill.
Do you think it’s fair to charge women more? Do you get paid less than your male colleagues?
Tanesha x
