It's hard to think of any jobs that can only be done by one gender. Photo / 123RF
A group of young leaders asked me to give a speech to their organisation this week.
Topic? Anything I liked.
A blank slate is a licence to taunt. So I did. I tortured them with Thoughts on the Gender Pay Gap.
It made me uncomfortable because, as a woman, part of me is trained to defend the masculinity of all men within a 100m range.
It made some of the lads in the audience uncomfortable, especially the guy in my peripheral vision who stared at his shoes for 10 minutes straight.
Look, I don't want to have to talk about the gender pay gap any more than you do. The discussion offends the Modern Manners of New Zealand, as defined by Te Ara, the New Zealand Encyclopedia: "it is considered impolite to ... talk about what you or others earn".
It also offends our Kiwi tradition of Harden Up. Plus, we've been gabbing about it for ages and yet it has plateaued in the last decade.
In fact, we've been talking about the gender pay gap for so long it's becoming a bit embarrassing. Like when you nagged the kids to tidy their rooms until you eventually just give up and shut the door. It feels like we're at that point.
Do we grab the gender pay gap by the ear, drag it into the room and watch it tidy under threat of Wi-Fi disconnection? Or do we shut the door and accept the world as it is?
The discussion has been reignited after the BBC released salary details, revealing female presenters were paid much less than their male counterparts.
Mike Hosking tried damned hard to force the door shut this week.
Before we go on, I don't begrudge Hosking his position. He's simply voicing the views of a portion of society.
But you know what? That portion of society needs a bit of schooling.
Hosking's position is the average 12 per cent pay gap between men and women is not due to gender, it's just due to the industries we choose to work in.
Female-dominated industries pay less, male-dominated industries pay more.
Now, ladies, if you want to earn more you need to infiltrate male industries.
The bad news is if too many of you infiltrate said industries, you will turn them into female-dominated industries and pay rates will drop just like it did when women swamped the once masculine and well-paid teaching profession.
So not too many of you, now.
The other thing Hosking did was to call out Women's Minister Paula Bennett for a recent speech in which she complained about the pay gap, but failed to give any solutions.
That's because a problem caused by more than one thing cannot be fixed with just one thing.
A Ministry of Women study from March found only 20 per cent of the gender pay gap is down to measurable differences like industry, education and hours worked.
Eight per cent is "unexplained".
Some of it is down to unconscious bias, like when employers regard stress in a man as a sign of how hard he works, but stress in a woman as a sign she has her period.
Some of it is down to the time women take out of work to have and raise kids.
And some of it is the fact working women still work two jobs - the day job and the job of running the household. And before you argue this fact, just do a mental checklist of who in the house writes the grocery list, pays the bills, and either cleans the house or delegates the duties of cleaning the house.
There is no single solution. We all have to do our bit. The Government has to encourage pay equity, employers have to check themselves for unconscious bias and individuals need to become aware.
And the good news is young men and women are aware of the pay gap.
Even though a few chaps shuffled their feet awkwardly during my rant, a lot of them didn't.
And a few of the women found me afterwards to tell me how they are actively chasing and achieving pay equity.
There is a generation of young leaders - especially women - who know the pay gap exists and won't settle for it.
Volumes were lighter as investors are thinking more about the summer holidays.