The Mother Pay Gap, Not The “Gender” Pay Gap

Dismissing the life choices of others has always been a surefire way to validate one’s own.

“If the gender pay gap is caused by women choosing to spend time at home with their children, then it will be solved by women choosing to spend less time at home with their children.”

SCOUR the BBC news archives for ‘gender pay gap’ and you will find hundreds of articles, TV and radio mentions from the last few years. Last year was the pinnacle of the media’s obsession, due to the introduction of mandatory pay reporting for companies with more than 250 staff. The surge is highlighted by Google Trends data — a website by Google which analyses the popularity of top Google searches (see below for the popularity of ‘gender pay gap’).

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=GB&q=gender%20pay%20gap

Yet with all this reporting, why is it that the majority of Brits do not really understand what the gender pay gap is? And why are the media so obsessed? Why do they persist in calling it a ‘gender’ pay gap, when it is well known to be a ‘mother’ pay gap?

First, it’s very rare to see an article which defines the gender pay gap in the opening paragraphs, if at all. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that according to a late-2018 YouGov poll, only 30 per cent of Britons could accurately define the gender pay…