There is, of course, no crime more dreadful in modern society than discrimination. And how dreadful that new forms of it are being uncovered every day. The latest foul piece of bigotry, it turns out, is employers favouring male employees with kids. According to the study by the IPPR, and commissioned by the TUC, today, fathers in full-time employment earn a ’21 per cent wage bonus’ compared with male employees who don’t have children. With women, apparently, it is the other way round, with mothers earning 11 per cent less than female employees without children. The research is based on a sample of 17,000 people born in a single week in 1970.
There is a pretty obvious reason behind these findings: fathers work harder than non-fathers because they have to. They need to buy bigger houses with bigger mortgages, they have the cost of feeding, clothing and educating their children, and therefore they work more hours and seek better-paid jobs than childless men who are supporting only themselves. By contrast, mothers will tend to bear the brunt of childcare and therefore won’t have the time to work as many hours as women without children to look after.
Obvious explanations, however, won’t do for the Left in its crusade to reveal Britain as a hotbed of bigotry. If there is some statistical anomaly on any social issue it simply must be because there is some form of underhand discrimination going on. The TUC acknowledges in passing that fathers work more hours and mothers fewer hours than their childless brethren. But then comes up with a speculative explanation which better fits its political agenda. A press release states:
‘The TUC says another factor for the fatherhood premium may be positive discrimination.’
The report highlights international studies which found that CVs from fathers were more highly scored than identical ones from non-fathers, suggesting that employers view dads as more reliable and responsible employees, whereas CVs from mothers were marked down against those from women without children. General secretary Frances O’Grady adds her own ha’porth of wisdom:
‘It says much about current attitudes that men with children are seen as more committed by employers, while mothers are still often treated as liabilities.’
So, within a couple of paragraphs of hints and nods, and without any attributed evidence whatsoever, the TUC has cooked up a whole new
form of discrimination: Britain’s bosses are disgracefully favouring men who fit the 1950s ideal of nuclear family and discriminating against those who lead an alternative lifestyle not involving bringing up 2.2 children in semi-detached suburbia. Give it time and we will have discrimination cases from men claiming that the guy next to him in the office got promotion just because he’s got a cute picture of little Barnaby and Annabel on his desk. We’ll end up having to have paternity leave even for men who don’t have children and having to rename it something neutral like ‘lifestyle leave’ – just to make sure that it doesn’t feed the evil prejudices of bosses.
There is only one way that this insidious march of leftwing propaganda is ever going to be stopped: that is for all of us to stop supplying the data which feeds this kind of guff. Always tick the ‘prefer not to say’ box whenever we are faced with an official form and we will starve the likes of the TUC of data which to manipulate.
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