This is a horrible thread title for this discussion...
Anyway, re: the ONS stats, now I'm not posting from my phone during a school governors' meeting
:
Between the ages of 22 and 29 women earn 1.1% more than men of the same age, and between 30 and 39 women earn 0.2% more than men in the same age group (per hour).
ONS figures (Fig 9, page 12):
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_385428.pdf"In fact, the gap is negative for the 22-29 and 30-39 age groups, meaning that women earn on average more than men.Thereafter, there is a relatively large positive gap. This is likely to be connected with the fact that many women have children and take time out of the labour market."
The Guardian link you posted (a) related to 2006 for the the man turning 30 point and (b) appeared to relate to overall earnings - I'm not sure if that factored in part time working (which will be more prevalent for women who've had children). I'm also not sure you can meaningfully compare average income across people when they're working different hours (some of which will be through choice, some won't), which is what that seemed to do (although I readily admit the Guardian summary is not exactly comprehensive).
I'm absolutely not trying to get into a "one side has it worse than the other" argument (and the ONS stats show that overall there is a 10% pay gap in favour of men, which is terrible, and it seems it can to a large extent be explained by women taking time out of the labour market which forces certain choices on women and this is an issue that
really needs to be fixed, which was my entire point), it's just that you started the stat waving and [citation needed] and I'm compelled to argue:)
However, if it shows one thing it shows that its easy to see how disagreements occur with stats like these - it's very hard to count everything and to factor everything in.
All that aside, why the chuffing hell are 16-17 year old boys getting paid so much more than girls? I really can't figure that one out.
Also - it's clear that the public sector is much better on the pay gap for some reason, which is fascinating.