WomenNC Blog

Laura Douglass

Day 3

The Pay Gap

I had a very great day.  

Before this fellowship I found myself on the fence when it came to the pay gap. I went to a panel on the discussing it today. What has always bothered me about the pay gap is that people have always addressed it as clear discrimination and that bothered me. From what I have learned in the past women pick majors that make less money and they renegotiate their salary way less of the time. So I would always get very upset when people would complain about the pay gap, because I felt the facts weren’t properly displayed.

Then Caroline Dinenage, the Minster for Women and Equalities for the United Kingdom completely destroyed everything I had originally thought to be truth. She said that the pay gap isn’t pay discrimination. It’s way deeper than that. One of the major issues she sold is that young girls view people that work in tech as geeks who have hair coming out of their ears and wear glasses. We need to engage girls in these higher paying jobs to break through these barriers. She also talked about how typically women in finance are more efficient than men and they get paid less and receive fewer bonuses than men.  She said this could be combated by more transparency by requiring wages to be published, which is what is happening in the United Kingdom.

She said that society needs to get away from an area where we measure work by the number of hours spent at the desk instead of the quality of one’s work. Allowing more accessible family leave would allow for women to not bare the burden of childbirth alone. Also she made sure to say that there weren’t boy’s jobs and girls jobs but simply jobs.

These are all paraphrased. Also attached is a picture of us.

While I did go to a session on violence against women that was powerful and directly impacted my research, a panel on abortion as well as an amazing reception this women has completely changed my viewpoint and I feel blessed to have met her.