1. Meta-Issues
Before dealing with the substantive issues, we will discuss the Structural
Inequality and Structural Discrimination which are manifest in this
Discussion Document (DD).
A document on islam-usa.com states,
“Refusal, rejection (of truth) and heedlessness are part of arrogance
and the opposite of submission and lead to rebellion…”
It is in this sense that the NZEEF refuses to make a Submission, and
instead makes this Rejection of this structurally anti-male Ministry’s
DD. I call it anti-male, because in June 2000 the Ombudsmen forced the
Minister of Women’s Affairs to admit to me that this Ministry
is just a pro-women organisation – and not actually concerned
with “Equity” and “No discrimination”, as claimed
in its Forecast Report 1999/2000. After all, it took a male Minister
of Justice (Phil Goff), rather than a female Minister of Women’s
Affairs, to make women equally (with men) liable to criminal charges
for indecent assault and other sexual crimes. And this Ministry has
made no move to abolish the sexist offense of “Assault on a Female”,
which carries a higher penalty than “Common Assault” .
We also want to make an explicit connection between Islamic theocracies
and the Feminist theocracy that is New Zealand. These two sorts of theocracies
have the same totalitarian approach to “truth". In both cases,
anyone who dares to reject what these theocracies declare to be “truth”
are regarded as “arrogant” – if not actually criminal
– but at least the Islamic ones are open and above-board about
it. There is nothing worse than a totalitarian theocracy that thinks
it is a liberal democracy, because, in a country of that sort (e.g.
New Zealand), opponents of the system find it hard even to get people
to understand what they are saying – let alone to persuade them
!
Before a Parliamentary Select Committee, I once stated in passing that
Feminism is the State Ideology of New Zealand, and this evoked a shocked
exclamation of “Bullshit !” from Mr. Gerry Brownlee. To
his credit, he later apologised – after I had explained that my
taxes paid for a Ministry of Women’s Affairs, several Women’s
Studies courses, and a plethora of Feminist propaganda activities of
various sorts – without these being in any way balanced by pro-male
equivalents. This state of affairs can only exist because of an underlying
assumption (taught as fact by numerous sources of education and information)
that women in New Zealand are disadvantaged – or even oppressed.
In other words, Feminism is the State Ideology of New Zealand.
The DD itself criticises alleged Structural Inequality and Structural
Discrimination in the economy, but what could be a more blatant example
of Structural Inequality and Structural Discrimination than for an anti-male
Ministry of Women’s Affairs to publish a DD such as this, and
then call for submissions on it ? It is a clear instance of Structural
Inequality and Structural Discrimination for there to be a Ministry
of Women’s Affairs, with no Ministry of Men’s Affairs to
counter-balance it, and then for the Ministry of Women’s Affairs
to sit in biased judgement over the points raised in the submissions.
This is obviously a complete farce !
Moreover, the DD itself excludes men from the list of people that it
wants policy input from (page 4). It lists only “women and their
organisations”, “employer and union organisations”,
and “government agencies and policy-makers”.
It would be absurd for men to “submit” to such a process,
and therefore the NZEEF is posting this Rejection.
2. Preliminary Issues
On the positive side, it is very pleasing to note that the DD cites
Dixon (2000) and admits that part of the difference between men’s
and women’s average income has to do with differences in experience
and educational qualifications. As I have been pointing out for years,
if women take time out to have children (and then get sole custody of
them on divorce), they must have shorter careers – which means
they have less experience and seniority and lower incomes. This fact
has been systematically ignored by state Feminist propaganda, such as
Boulton, Amohia and Fiona Sturrock (1996).
Dixon (2000) is reported as stating that only 10-50% of the “gender
pay gap” is unexplained. This is a huge range (i.e. 40%), and
casts strong doubt on the adequacy of the theoretical models and statistical
techniques being brought to bear on this issue. It is hard to take these
women seriously, in other words, if they don’t even know if they
are talking about 10% or 50% of the subject-matter under consideration
! Why do we have to be so chivalrous about female incompetence ? If
only 10% of the “gender pay gap” is unexplained, then it
is not worth spending taxpayer money investigating it.
Another instance of incompetence is the term “gender pay gap”.
It is not a “gender pay gap”, because no effort is made
to ascertain the Sociological gender (male / female / bisexual / transgendered
/ homosexual) of the people involved. All that they are asked about
is their biological sex (male / female) – even though the word
“gender” is stupidly used on such forms these days –
and so what is involved is actually a “sex pay gap”. If
the Ministry of Women’s Affairs can’t even get its basic
terms right, it is not likely to be able to think straight – but
then, I knew that already !
3. Value
The main issue addressed is summarised as follows:
This DD is concerned with the part of the gender pay gap that results
from the undervaluing and therefore under-remuneration of women (and
men) working in predominantly female jobs.
We have to ask if this assumption is actually true: are predominantly
female jobs really undervalued ? The aim of the DD is to achieve equal
pay for work of equal value – but how do these Ideologues hope
to determine value in any objective way ?
With the Ministry of Women’s Affairs being so anti-male, there
are bound to be problems with its definition of “value”.
For example, OSH (2002) shows that only 7 (SEVEN) females died from
workplace accidents in the 2001-2002 year – out of a total of
73 workplace deaths. That means that 66 out of the 73 deaths (90%) were
of males. This fact was about as carefully hidden as anyone could possibly
imagine: the deaths are not broken down by sex, males are not even mentioned,
as such, and it is only a footnote that gives a clue to this State-sponsored
gendercide of males. It is State-sponsored gendercide, because it conceals
the extent to which this is a male issue (as in the case of youth suicide,
etc.), and meanwhile the State Ministry of Women’s Affairs is
seeking to increase the pay of female-dominated occupations where the
main occupational risk is probably OOS/RSI (Occupational Over-use Syndrome/
Repetitive Strain Injury) !
Men and women both have a certain amount of choice as to what jobs
to apply for. If women choose to go into certain types of jobs, and
those jobs happen to be lower-paid than those typically chose by men,
by what right should women be rewarded by more pay, when they could
have chosen the same jobs that men chose ? This is just pandering to
women, saying (in effect), “You go ahead and choose the cushy
jobs, and because we’ve got the Structural Inequality of a Ministry
of Women’s Affairs, we can then make sure that you get just as
much money as men do for doing the tough jobs !”
Pay is not the only measure of the worth of a job, and different people
choose different jobs for different reasons. Some people do choose jobs
on the basis of the salary, but others pay more attention to factors
such as security, safety, how physical the job is, what the hours are,
how far they have to commute, and so on. The Structural Inequality embodied
in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs is now (in effect) telling
women: “You chose this female-dominated job because it is very
secure, but we’ve got the power to get you paid the same amount
of money as those male suckers in that insecure job !”
The DD defines equal pay for work of equal value on page 4. However,
the factors that contribute to “value” are limited to “skills,
years of training, responsibility, effort and working conditions”.
This excludes factors such as the amount of danger involved. In addition,
it is very “supply-side”. It ignores the “demand-side”,
i.e. what the job market actually wants and needs. If I have been learning
and practising computer games since early childhood, for example, so
that I have become very skillful, and I have responsibility for younger
relatives using my equipment and learning to play the games, and I put
a lot of effort into my playing, in order to achieve the highest scores
all the time, and my playing conditions are cramped and uncomfortable
– does that mean I have a moral right to the same income as a
professional computer programmer who is similar to me in all respects
– except that he/she does computer programming ? Obviously, the
market demand for computer programmers is greater than that for computer
gamers, though there are some highly-paid computer gamers. The market
should continue to determine the difference between what is a profession
and what is simply a hobby – and the market should also continue
to determine value of labour, as it does with respect to all other forms
of value.
4. Further Issues
1. In the DD’s Foreword, Laila Harre states, “Structural
inequality has no place in modern and innovative workplaces.”
What does that actually mean ? If it means anything at all (and that
is not at all certain), it means that Structural Inequality creates
inefficiencies in “modern and innovative” workplaces. In
fact (even if this DD succeeded in proving that Structural Inequality
existed in workplaces) there is no evidence – either in this DD
or elsewhere -- that inefficiencies actually result. The NZEEF is against
Structural Inequality of the sort created by the existence of the Ministry
of Women’s Affairs, but we would find it hard (though not necessarily
impossible) to prove that this results in actual inefficiencies. Politics
is politics and economics is economics, and Laila Harre’s facile
attempt to link the two, without providing any evidence – or even
stating the issue clearly -- demonstrates the low level of intelligence
that typifies Feminist propaganda. It is horrifying to note that this
sort of downmarket thinking, coupled with Feminist bullying, is often
quite sufficient to get Feminist proposals turned into policy in the
Western World !
2. There is a fashion among Feminist propagandists to refer to previous
Feminist studies along similar lines in other countries as justification
for their attempt to introduce the same sort of thinking to New Zealand.
In the case of the Law Commission’s biased “Women’s
Access to Justice” project, I went back to the first in the sequence
of Western copy-cat studies (the New Jersey one), and demonstrated that
it was biased and anti-male (Zohrab 1996). This DD also refers to previous
Feminist studies in Western countries, but it is obvious that they have
no status as objective evidence, since they are necessarily just as
biased as this DD is, because they are the product of the same one-eyed
State Ideology. Since the flaws in the present DD are so obvious, I
will not waste time examining its precursors.
3. The DD states (page 3) that “Progress on closing this gender
page gap has been slow.” There is no reason for the sex pay gap
to be closed – unless someone shows it to be based on discrimination,
which this DD does not do. It is outrageous for this DD simply to assume
the conclusion which this discussion process is supposed to be working
towards in an objective fashion. It shows what a waste of time it would
have been for the NZEEF to make a “Submission”, when in
fact the relevant decision had already been taken.
4. The DD (page 3) refers to the low incomes of women raising children
alone. This problem is one of the Ministry’s own making. Generations
of Feminists and Feminist organisations, such as this Ministry, have
undermined the nuclear family by disseminating viciously anti-male propaganda
and by making it easier and financially more attractive for women to
end heterosexual relationships, while retaining custody of the children
for their sole enjoyment. If the Ministry pushed for shared parenting/joint
custody to be the norm in divorces and separations, women and men would
be on a more equal footing – both as regards parenting/custody
and as regards availability for work and a decent income. As it is,
the Structural Inequality that the Ministry embodies has resulted in
a perceived need for women to “have it all” – with
men having nothing: no (or little) contact with their children, and
their income reduced by child-support payments (which just support the
mother’s lifestyle, as far as anyone knows or monitors).
5. The missing factor that might explain any unexplained parts of the
sex pay gap is brain size. Needless to say, the Ministry of Women’s
Affairs won’t agree that this is a factor – but stupid people
never agree that they are stupid, so that is not surprising ! It is
well-known that women have smaller brains than men, on average, and
that this does not correlate with body-size, so the greater body-size
of men is not the reason: big men don’t have bigger brains than
small men, and big women don’t have bigger brains than small women.
Adults have bigger brains than children (obviously), and Humans have
bigger brains than other Primates. Einstein has been shown to have had
a bigger brain in the section of his brain that relates to his abnormal
conceptual abilities. Unless some other explanation is proposed, it
is obvious that the most likely reason for women’s smaller brains
is that they have reduced mental abilities compared to men over all
(though this probably varies across the range of mental abilities that
we have). All over the Western World, however, organisations like the
Ministry of Women’s Affairs are intimidating researchers from
investigating this issue objectively, in case they come up with the
“wrong” answer.
6. Another possible reason for the sex pay gap that the DD does not
mention is the way that women treat men as Support Objects. Men are
generally expected to support women, while the opposite is not (generally)
true. This means that having a well-paid job is more important for men
than it is for women, and this also means that welfare benefits for
solo mothers tend to undermine fathers and families by providing an
alternative Support Object (paid for by men’s taxes). It might
be argued that Society is changing, as far as these expectations are
concerned, but I can see little evidence of that. So to enforce “pay
parity’ might have the effect of undermining fathers and families
still further, and increasing the truancy, suspensions, crime, suicide,
drug abuse, and general unhappiness that result from family break-ups
and fatherless families.
7. Chapter Four of the DD refers to CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination
of all forms of Discrimination Against Women), but CEDAW is a vicious
example of Structural Discrimination against men. Its very title embodies
the (female) stupid and (male) cowardly assumption that no discrimination
against men occurs. This refusal even to look for discrimination against
men (in case it is found !) is part and parcel of the Feminist ideology
that drives most Western countries and the United Nations. The fact
that New Zealand is a signatory to CEDAW is an indictment – if
yet another were needed – of this country’s multi-faceted
discrimination against men.
5. Conclusion
The Ministry of Women’s Affairs is an instance of Structural
Inequality and Structural Discrimination against men, and the processes
involved in this Discussion Document are an intensification of this
Structural Inequality and Structural Discrimination. It follows inevitably
from this compounded Structural Inequality and Structural Discrimination
that the points that the DD raises are biased against men, and are a
totally inadequate basis upon which to carry out a discussion of the
respective incomes of men and women.
6. References
Boulton, Amohia and Fiona Sturrock (1996):
Women in the Teaching Service. Education Trends Report Vol. 8 No. 1
July 1996, Data Management and Analysis Section, Ministry of Education,
Wellington, New Zealand. ISSN 0113- 681X.
Dixon, Sylvia (2000):
Pay Inequality between men and women in New Zealand. Occasional Paper
2001/1. Department of Labour, Labour Market Policy Group.
Ministry of Women’s Affairs (2002):
Next Steps Towards Pay Equity: a discussion document. Wellington, New
Zealand, July 2002.
Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) (2002):
Fatal Accidents Investigated by OSH as at 1 July 2001 to 30 June 2002.
http://www.osh.dol.govt.nz/hazards/stats/fatals/fatals01-02.pdf
“Shawn” (steditrak@hotmail.com)
Work-Day Dream
workdrem.html
Zohrab, Peter:
Chapter 7: “Employment Issues & the Women Can Do Anything
Lie” of Sex, Lies & Feminism (early, HTML version) 7emplies.html
Zohrab, Peter (1996):
Submission to the Law Commission on Women’s Access to Justice,
on behalf of the New Zealand Men's Rights Association
Peter D. Zohrab
Acting President
NZ Equality Education Foundation
