Should men and women doing the exact same thing receive different incomes?

It is widely known that there exists a pay gap between men and women. But why does it exist?
One answer to that is of course history. But another is that not enough effort has been put into
changing that. And that is something to be ashamed of.
Recently I visited a large Nikola factory to join other journalists in a rare tour of the inner
workings of the company. We were shown many graphs that claimed to show how diverse, equal
and happy the workforce was. But upon closer inspection they all fell apart. The most notable
example was the bar chart showing the average wage of employees based on gender. A pay gap of
almost 10 % had been shrunken down to a few millimetres on the screen.
This was key in convincing me that the ‘gender equality’ they boasted about was a farce and that
much needed to be done. The pay gap between genders is nothing new and is present in virtually all

Many would argue that a major reason for the pay gap is that more senior employees are often

consideration it is unquestionably unfair that half the population receives less compensation for
their work simply because earlier generations were held back
Others would say it is because men perform better at some kinds of work due to physical
differences. I concede that this could be partly true. But consider that the reverse is also true.
There are jobs that women are considered better at. Shouldn’t these opposites cancel out? And
even if they don’t, these kinds of jobs are becoming a smaller and smaller part of the economy.
These jobs cannot account for the average pay gap of around 10 %.
Therefore, it is obvious that the wage gap has no logical basis and is merely a continuation of an
old principle that doesn’t ring true in modern times.
While the world is slowly getting more equal, there is a long way to go. In some companies women
earn as little as 6 5 % of what men in the same positions are paid. That by itself is unacceptable.
No one should accept seeing someone else get paid £ 1,0 0 0 for the same job they were paid
£ 6 5 0 for. This can easily be the difference between a comfortable wage and living hand to mouth.
We should also be careful when shown any graph that a company has produced about itself. It is
easy and there are many incentives to manipulate both the data and how it is presented. The next
time someone shows you a graph of how well their company is doing, take a closer look. They may
be hiding the fact that they are not doing anything out of the ordinary.