Harriet Harman is wanting to force companies to analyse and disclose the difference between what they pay the women in their employ and what they pay the men. She is still under the illusion that legislation to favour women in employment is doing them a favour. The opposite is the case, as has been shown by the example of Sweden. There women have plenty of legal protection and the result. Women there are paid a lower proportion of what men earn than in countries with less protection for women.

Why? It is obvious if you are in business or have a little imagination. Why employ a woman at all if she is going to have extra privileges and bureaucracy attached to her. Her employability is reduced. Therefore the money she can attract has been reduced.

In Sweden, so I understand from Catherine Hakim who has studied this subject, the rights attached to women are so great that private companies decline to hire them. They therefore have to get lower-paid, more routine government jobs.

What is extraordinary to me is that so few people in government (or most of the media) seem to be aware of these facts.

My fuller posting on these issues is here: http://www.thewelfarestatewerein.com/archives/2005/03/some_commonly_b_1.php

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Off the subject

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