Male-female wages: the myth of inequality as unfair

The militant view that women in Switzerland are working «for free» until mid-February because of wage discrimination has once again been echoed in the press. However, studies show a derisory difference for two equal jobs.

On February 17, we were treated to the famous refrain. «In Switzerland, women worked for free until this Saturday.» At issue was the wage gap between men and women for equivalent tasks, estimated at 14% in this country, according to the American foundation Business & Professional Women. The many Swiss media outlets that picked up on this report sent out by the Swiss Telegraphic Agency (ATS), including the public service, did not see fit to verify the facts.

But they could have, and should have. Especially when you're usually so attached to the ethics of the profession, to investigation, to the difference between journalism and advertising! This obviously doesn't apply to this kind of communication operation, such as the similar one by the French collective Les Glorieuses, which claims every November that women «work for free» until the end of the year.

The figures tell a different story

Various authoritative players - in contrast to these militant groups - have long been reporting a very different reality. Such is the case of the very serious British magazine The Economist, who took an interest in the issue in 2017:

Although the average salary of a woman in Great Britain is 29% lower than that of a man, most of this gap results from differences in rank within companies, overall company pay rates and the nature of the tasks a job requires. According to data collected from 8.7 million employees worldwide by Korn Ferry, a consultancy firm, British women earn just 1% less than men in the same job and at the same level with the same employer. In most European countries, the gap is just as small.

The Federal Statistical Office (FSO) declared on March 19 that the median wage gap between men and women in Switzerland was 9.5% in 2022 (compared to 10.8% two years earlier), a good five points less than the percentage brandished by Business & Professional Women in February. However, this 9.5% indicates a difference, not yet discrimination. According to the Confederation's latest in-depth analysis, dating from 2016, 55.9% of the average pay gap between men and women can be explained by objective criteria such as age, years of service, training, professional position or qualification.

Is the remainder necessarily explained by sexism? No one can fathom the hearts and minds of employers. It's hardly possible to define all a candidate's skills. No two people have exactly the same profile. And if bosses really could pay their female employees less, they'd hire more women...

Injustice exists; it must be fought. But one inequality is not necessarily unjust. If two words exist in a language, it's often because they designate two distinct things. The amalgam between inequality and injustice, visible in the expression «fight against inequality», encourages us to mix everything up. Read the essay Woke fiction from columnist to Figaro Samuel Fitoussi, published in September:

Statistical disparity can only be understood as injustice when comparing two populations that are identical in every respect, endowed with the same aspirations, subject to the same social and cultural determinisms and the same internal dynamics. When this is not the case, statistical disparities often reflect dissimilarities between these groups, rather than inequalities in treatment by the outside world. (...) Women in France account for only 3.8% of prisoners. Only 0.8% of them have been checked by the police more than 5 times in five years, compared with 4.4% of men. No one would think of attributing these discrepancies to misandry on the part of the police or the justice system: we understand them as reflecting average differences in behavior between men and women.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

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