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Young women are now earning more than men – that's not sexist, just fair

Gaby Hinsliff
Gaby Hinsliff
Yes, there is greater equity between the sexes, but overall, the pay gap continues to favour men
It is not often, in these dark times, that one stumbles across a snippet of good economic news. So it's strange that one such shaft of sunlight in the gloom has gone mostly unsung. According to official statistics released last week, the pay gap between men and women – that barometer of shifting power between the sexes – has quietly shrunk to a record low and among younger women has shot clearly into reverse. Women in their 20s now earn a solid 3.6% more on average than men their age, after narrowly overtaking them for the first time last year. The rise of the female breadwinner, it seems, was no blip, but the beginning perhaps of a social and sexual sea change.
For an angry but vocal minority, that is a change too far, yet more proof that they are the underdogs now, trampled beneath the stilettoes of supposedly over-mighty women. The conservative family policy expert Jill Kirby even suggested that "the pay gap we should be worrying about is the one that shows young men falling behind", not the one that still sees men earning more than women for every other decade of their working life.
Losing ground is admittedly never easy, even if that ground wasn't always earned, as one glance at the Tory backbenches, boiling with resentment at young women being promoted over older male heads, confirms. The trouble with shattering the glass ceiling is that someone inevitably ends up ducking the flying fragments.
But it's worth remembering that, barely a century ago, the great male fear was not of alpha females with intimidatingly large salaries but their polar opposite: women were seen, rather like immigrant labour now, as dangerously liable to undercut men's wages by doing the same work for less. Equal pay was sold not as a threat but, rather intriguingly, as a promise.
As the then mayor of New York put it in 1911, explaining his decision to grant 14,000 female teachers the same salaries as men: "Instead of lessening the number of male teachers this will increase it" by removing the financial incentive to hire women. Even in 1946, the Royal Commission on Equal Pay set up in Britain argued that equality would mean women losing their jobs, since "at equal pay for men and women, a man will always be preferred". Why on earth would you hire a woman, unless she was going cheap?
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Half a century on, it seems incredibly mean-spirited not to allow young women at least a moment's triumph over proving such arguments wrong, before making them hang their heads in shame for the men they have left behind. But instead, the same reproachful message has been drummed into them since their teens, when they outstripped boys at GCSE and A-level only to face howls of protest about education being rigged in their favour.
It's not that this argument was without any merit. Where boys are failing, schools should question what's happening in the classroom. It's just depressing that the debate so often contrived to make young girls' strengths – greater social confidence and maturity or a conscientiousness that makes them better at coursework – sound strangely like cheating, since these skills have turned out to be undeniably handy.
After all, those same girls went on to beat boys at degree level, to form the majority of trainee barristers and solicitors and fast-track civil servants by the middle of the last decade. They're the same girls who, a graduate recruiter once told me, shone so much at interview that they left the boys standing.
And they grew up into the same junior managers who, according to a recent survey for the Chartered Management Institute, now out-earn their male counterparts for the first time since 1974. Even if the pay gap between senior executives still yawns so wide that the CMI estimates it will take a century to close, they must have been doing something right.
What is emerging now is a striking generational divide. The pay gap for full-time workers is biggest now for women in their 50s – those least likely to have been encouraged when young to pursue a career or hang on to one after children. But it narrows with every decade subtracted from a woman's age.
Roughly speaking, as girls' horizons have widened and their skill sets swelled (only a quarter of girls went to university in the 1960s, for example, whereas by 1996 they outnumbered boys), their earning power has risen in tandem. Legislation, industrial action, a greater emphasis on traditionally "female" skills, such as communication, and sheer bloody-mindedness all helped.
But one reason young women now get paid more than their mothers is simply that they're worth it, a basic fairness that matters more to a cohesive society than perhaps we used to think.
After all, what fuels the festering anger at rocketing boardroom pay isn't just naked envy of the 4,000% increase in some top bosses' salaries over the past three decades, as the High Pay Commission reported, but a feeling that there's no rhyme nor reason to it. It's not as if their companies are thousands of times more profitable. And this breaking of the link between effort and reward is a profoundly unsettling thing: why strive to do your best if you get nothing while the undeserving merrily trouser their bonuses? Which is precisely how too many women have long felt about their male colleagues.
It's easy to forget not just how stonkingly, grievously unfair things have been in the past, but also how tentative these female gains have been. Men who work full time still earn 9% more than women overall, hardly suggestive of being chucked on the scrapheap – any more than the existence of a measly five female cabinet ministers (outnumbered five to one by men) really spells matriarchy.
We don't even know yet whether this is merely a case of tortoise and hare, with young women shooting off to a confident start only to find themselves overtaken the minute they pause to have babies. After all, men's earnings start to outstrip women's from the age of 29 – precisely when Mrs Average now has her first child.
It's far from clear that this generation of golden girls can beat the so-called "motherhood penalty", either by managing hitherto unsuspected feats of juggling or by persuading some of their lower-paid husbands to take on more at home. But at a time when hopes of future wage growth for anyone seem few and far between, perhaps we could at least stop hounding them for trying.

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  • This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
  • 688 689
    Men paid more than women, "stonkingly, grievously unfair".
    Women paid more than men, "shaft of sunlight in the gloom".
    Someone explain this to me.
    Reply |
  • 456 457
    So, inequality is "unfair" when it is skewed in favour of men, but "fair" it is skewed against men.
    Not sure I see the fairness in that myself.
    Reply |
  • 320 321
    Satire, surely?
    Guardian/Observer, your fascination with these trolling pieces is ridiculous.
    Reply |
  • 51 52
    There are actually more women in employment than men, the unemployment figures released last week (that had the high youth unemployment) showed 1.5 million unemployed men to 1 million unemployed women. This graphic from the Telegraph's report (you have to sccroll to the second one to get the breakdown by gender) also shows that there has always been more male unemployed people.
    Reply |
  • 287 288
    Men paid more than women, "stonkingly, grievously unfair".
    Women paid more than men, "shaft of sunlight in the gloom".
    Someone explain this to me.
    Feminists are sexist, seems as good an explanation as any. Unless this is an admission that identity politcis is non-sense, and there will be no more articles about the pay gap etc.
    Reply |
  • 271 272
    We're always being told by the Fawcett Society and their fellow travellers that a pay gap, even one which can be explained by educational attainment or experience levels, is 'discrimination'.
    Why does this argument suddenly not apply when it is women who are being paid more? Instead it is a 'shaft of sunlight in the gloom'.
    Reply |
  • 260 261
    So when women earn more than men it's okay.
    If men earn more than women it's unfair.
    Do you understand what equality means?
    Reply |
  • 77 78
    Satire, surely?
    Guardian/Observer, your fascination with these trolling pieces is ridiculous.
    Agreed. There are enough good feminist articles on here (brilliant one on the anti choice movement in America recently) to convince me that substandard ones like this aren't necessary and are pretty much ATL trolling.
    Reply |
  • 32 33
    I am not a feminist.
    Reply |
  • This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
  • 198 199
    This article comes across as sneering , gloating oneupmanship.
    "The trouble with shattering the glass ceiling is that someone inevitably ends up ducking the flying fragments"
    That , people , is the language of somebody with a serious grudge :-)
    Reply |
  • 35 36
    We're all oppressors now. Equality at last!
    Reply |
  • 260 261
    I've decided to skip out on CiF for some time over the next few weeks and it is articles like this coupled with a growingly hostile atmosphere which means i intend to driop out of this space for some time in the future.
    This article is everything that is wrong with this place. As a young man soon to turn 23 with a good degree in politics I can tell you right now that the labour market is a hostile and unplesant place for both men and women. But, a cultural atmosphere established to meet the new economic reality as young men struggled to find employment which has decided young men from the UK are to face an ageist mantra that states they are either lazy, ill mannered or aggressive reinforces the issues many face. It is not a good thing young women have overtaken men in the labour market it shouldn't be lauded that a new wage gap has appeared young men have not benefitted from the previouse social conditions and the pay gap elsewhere in the economy has nothing to do with them. You are applauding the punishment of sons for the sins of their fathers.
    Yet, this article still heralds the age of competition in a time of austerity where the authors preffered group has come out on top. The equality of the modern feminist all too apparent as a means of aiding the employer promote new economic dynamics the bourgoisie their preffered victor as always. This is simply the result of a competitive labour market one that has scene pay and conditions slashed for all workers the article heralds young women coming out on top but they have achieved in the race to a peak of a pile of shit.
    The devisive politics of this article fails to adress the social devastation that the massive levels of unemployment amongst young men has caused. Yes young women are paid more because more of them are in full time work there are simply less of them on the market to be hired. Young men don't have that luctuary with the emergence of the service economy and traditionaly female attributed economic assets being of value women have acheived greater employment oppertunities but social conditions play a role in following economic trends and the rejection of young men derided by the media for over a decade as hoody wearing pariahs has played out a devastating toll in our communities.
    To put it simply social interpretations of what it is to be a young man have altered to the dynamics of employment leveling against them this has being driven by a new economic imperrative not by any achievement simply the emergence of a new market dynamic in the UK. So yes young women are achieving greater assets in schools and univeristies but in areas to facilitate this new labour situation the rules have simply changed through the revolutionairy dynamic productive forces of the bourgoisie, young women as workers haven't won. The winner as always is the employers as the labour market races itself to the bottom and a surplus labour army can be relied upon to keep wages and conditions low. The author of this article and apparently the Observer has decided this is a preferential position bearing their true colours in the contest.
    Reply |
  • 21 22
    Great,what's the big deal-women are brilliant and they deserve every penny they earn and I would hope most men would agree.
    Reply |
  • 101 102
    You know the 'motherhood penalty' comes with the fairly decent consolation prize of a baby to love and raise?
    Or you could shun that and stay in the office working your way up the ladder and make partner or whatever. Then you'll have won.
    Reply |
  • 91 92
    50 years ago...
    Great,what's the big deal-men are brilliant and they deserve every penny they earn and I would hope most women would agree.
    At least this article is promoting equality. Its showing that women are every bit as vile, callous mean spirited as men are.
    Reply |
  • 349 350
    After being bombarded for yoinks by articles by the Graun feminists subtly pushing their version of equality - men are wrong, basically (see the one yesterday about masculinity being inherently wrong/evil) - they finally got sloppy and outright state their real world view. And it's basically that they want to put women first and men a distant second.
    Anyone who believes feminists (at least the ones that write for the Graun) are any sort of believers in equality are fucking idiots.
    Reply |
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  • 114 115
    ...women are brilliant...

    Some are, some aren't.
    ...and they deserve every penny they earn...

    Some do, some don't.
    ...and I would hope most men would agree.

    Some will, some won't.
    Reply |
  • 178 179
    the educational system is failing boys at an alarming rate. male behavioural norms are labelled dangerous, overactive, or restricting for girls even at ages where biological difference is scarcely if at all evident. the courses are entirely structured for girls as you vaguely mention and this has led to normalized delinquency amongst boys with a fierce gang culture rapidly expanding and no networks of support.
    you attempt to confuse the stilted employment statistics to show female progress in a world where a pay gap still exists conveniently unaware of the fact that this gap disappears when you include things like men working 5hours a week longer on average, doing almost all dangerous and manual jobs in areas which women are incapable or unwilling and working through the birth of children still to retire 5 years later than their female counterparts (despite dying 7years earlier = 12 years less life?)
    you mention the lack of female MPs failing to recognize women as 52% of the electorate. was the segway from the young women of today being worth it (without a mention of the boys who are falling behind, are they not?) into banker bonuses intended to make us think of the 'pale, stale and MALE' cliche in reference to a wretched class of bankers so utterly corrupt they could give our sleazy politicians a run for their money? the suggestion that some women 'feel this way' about their male counterparts seems to imply that it was, and in an article where you were required to justify your sexist headline you fail to explore the impact on men at all which contributes to your obvious lack of understanding and exploration of fair as a concept.
    overall i think this is a very awful piece and your should be ashamed of having produced it and no, none of it is fair actually, neither boys nor men are expendable or unimportant.
    Reply |
  • 35 36
    But it's worth remembering that, barely a century ago, the great male fear was not of alpha females with intimidatingly large salaries but their polar opposite: women were seen, rather like immigrant labour now, as dangerously liable to undercut men's wages by doing the same work for less
    That is and has always been the whole point. Women and immigrant labour are encouraged to joint the workforce in order to drive down wages. All that rhetoric about equality is just ideological widow dressing.
    But at a time when hopes of future wage growth for anyone seem few and far between
    So at a time when feminism and the other politically correct ideologies are triumphant wages have also become stagnant. Is this a coincidence? It is not.
    Reply |
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  • 69 70
    So at a time when feminism and the other politically correct ideologies are triumphant wages have also become stagnant. Is this a coincidence? It is not
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Wages are stagnant because we are in a crisis of capitalism, they come around every thirty years or so, this is a big one.
    It's got hee haw to do with women working..
    Incidentally - women have always worked. Working class ones anyway.
    Reply |
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