Gender pay and gender anomaly

Subject: Gender pay and gender anomaly

This morning the BBC is releasing the pay of employees who earn more than £150.000 per year. This list of employees will include, apart from senior management, the small screen stars we see regularly on our television screens. Presenters such as Gary Lineker Chris's Evens and Graham Norton, all household names in the UK. News readers and news analysts John Humphrys, Kirsty Wark, Fiona Bruce, Laura Kuenssberg, all earning much more than £150.000, will contest the rating for who earns the most, which has come about by a call to make transparent the earnings and therefore the expenditure of this taxpayer funded organisation.
Listening and being sickened by the glee in the voices of the 'ITV' presenters as they reported this story this morning, protected themselves by the anonymity that working for a private company brings. It highlights the chasm between the rules brokered between public and private companies.
The BBC has to walk a much finer line when reflecting impartiality for fear of upsetting  their political masters the Government who's own impartiality is unbounded by parliamentary protection.
Sky and ITV have a Management Board and, lurking in the background their ownership by powerful people who have their own agenda when it comes to political persuasion.
One of the immediate criticisms to be aired is the ratio of the gender imbalance with two thirds of men earning above the £150.000 against only one third women. The call to balance the book on gender lines is now becoming quite shrill without a fair and rational assessment of why this can be.
Maybe it's the one thing that is uniquely gender specific, having babies.In the world of employment women are disadvantaged when they become pregnant and begin to involve themselves in a whole range of priorities which men are never faced with. This biological distinction ensures that from a purely rational standpoint, women are more likely to be 'less' committed to the working day. To want time off. To require of the boss special treatment than he/she gives to a man doing the same work. If this can be artificially accounted for in striving to find some sort of equality, all well and good but it has consequences particularly if as a result men are required to cover longer more socially inappropriate hours and woman excused because of a need to place her role as mother above all else.
The struggle to find this nirvana of 'gender equality' starts with a recognition that the needs of a woman with children are very different to a man
Mothering and fathering concern themselves with two distinctly different things obvious to all but the most driven feminist. The roles in parenthood whist interchangeable in certain things are largely exclusive in other aspects. The innate maternal patience a women brings to the needs of a child, apparently instinctive in a woman is often missing in men. Men can learn to be attentive but it's not innate.  Unfortunately the deep female psychological involvement with the child can lead to a sort of schizophrenia, a feeling of inadequacy unable to commit to both roles when they become embedded in the workplace. Wrecked with motherhood guilt, a guilt which a man rarely feels, means that women have a difficult time committing fully to their job, especially if the job requires that their 'default position' has to be in the workplace.
Is it any wonder that there is a gender differential in the workplace when a woman's mind is conflicted with what is going on at home. Women are greatly valued because they have the empathy and a child centred commitment a man sometimes lacks.
Even if the woman decides to return to work and the man becomes a 'stay at home dad' often her maternal instincts feel cheated and she resents not being close to the child as it grows up. I know this is stereotypical and does not fit a description of all women but it is sufficiently common for it to be statistically evident in the make up of the workplace.
The phrase "women want it all" is not completely off the mark when measured in their surety of family rights when divorce is enacted. The home, parental rights,  a claim on the man's estate and future earnings highlight the attitude in the court to the protection a woman with children gets. It seems that, come hell or high water they want equality in all but the one area in which a man is seriously disadvantaged and often is placed in great emotional pain regarding his having access to his children, pain and enormous frustration by the demands of an angry women.
So we should see the gender gap in the workplace more in the round and not be swayed by the powerful media lobby who represent a segment of show business that is not representative of the working environment as a whole.