Tomorrow is the day – so get your fax template ready to go, or your email or letter written!
Heaps more details at The Hand Mirror, as well as a great list of writing about pay equity on the net.
Over the next few years we’re going to watch National trying to give more to the most wealthy by taking away from the poorest – this is a chance to tell them they’re wrong.
Which have trained for longer?
Which are at more day-to-day risk?
Which get paid more?
In the pay equity debates we tend to focus on the argument about the effect and value of child raising, perhaps because it’s a handy dead end. In fact, however, the gender pay gap exists between whole professions: why are police officers paid so much more than nurses? There are plenty of other examples of pairs of equally trained equally skilled professions where female dominated one is paid significantly less than the male dominated one.
There’s a straight forward gender pay equity issue, but also questions of how we value women (why is the kinds of things women do worth less than the things men do?). By extension there is a question about why we value professions which care for people lower than professions that care for things, as that tends to be the gender split in professions as well.
But to come back to original question, is it right that we pay nurses significantly less than police officers and, if so, why?
[For a broader discussion of pay equity, try Julie’s Pay Equity Hub at The Hand Mirror or Queen of Thorns who’s hosting the Down Under Feminists’ Carnival]
Over at The Hand Mirror Julie is co-ordinating a pay equity faxathon.
This is a great way to mark International Working Women’s day by telling Tony Ryall that women deserve pay equity, and that National should uncancel the programmes that would have addressed the pay inequality affecting female social workers and school support staff.
So pop on over to The Hand Mirror, download the fax, collect some signatures, and tell National that women are worth it!