Equality before the law but not equality as a rule.

Unequal pay.

Here is a situation:

I have a job for a (enter ANY job that you believe can be performed by a one-armed person as well as an able bodied person would).

Two people apply for a job.

Person A is a regular person (with two arms)

Person B is different (has one arm) – all other things being equal.

Now if the law (or social pressure, or any pressure from society says “equal treatment (“equal pay”) for equal work, most employers will hire person A, not so? If I am expected to pay $x for the job to be done I (based on my preconceptions and biases) will employ the person who apparently will do the job best, and here it seems that the able bodied person meets criteria best. Why will I settle for the one- armed person if I have to pay the same salary; rather get more for the same price - it is only natural to argue in that way. I also haven’t got the time and resources to embark on an in-depth costly process to take a decision where my previous experiences, biases, or whatever I use to make the decision, have proven to reduce the risk of making a mistake. If I did invest this extra I may find that some one-rmed person exceed able bodied person by miles in performing the expected task. So I make the safest decision using a cost-effective approach to arrive at a “best value for money” decision or what economist will call where “the expected marginal return is the highest relative to marginal cost. All human decisions follow this rule.

Having to pay different people equally leads to eliminating the “disadvantaged” from being considered for employment.

The only way to give the one armed person the chance to being employed is to allow the disadvantaged to be able to offer his/her services at a lower rate and not to force the employer to pay the same rate for everybody – especially not at the point of the initial decision (where detailed information of actual job performance and results are difficult to ascertain).

If in the above example the one-armed person could negotiate a lower rate the employer will consider employing him/her because the value proposition to the employer will become more attractive as the rate is lowered.

Now replace (one armed person) with any group that may be discriminated against such as “being fat”, “from a disadvantaged group”, “an old person” or “a women” or “inexperienced” or whatever grouping that may be discriminated against) – if you HAVE to pay the same rate, persons from these groupings will be less likely to be employed.

At this point the reader may want to shift the argument to – Yes, but if a woman has been doing the same job as say a man for some time, wouldn’t it just be fair to pay her equally to her male counterpart? The answer is “yes” and that is why larger organisations institute job grading systems and attempt to link pay to performance and so on. However, the notion that one should resolve the situation by forcing the employer to have to pay the woman the same, will only strengthen the reasons not to hire women in the first place.

Now this situation may reflect a sad state of affairs but any attempt to solve the problem by force will lead to an even more hurtful and a more dysfunctional society.

However - all said and done: Here is an absolutely brilliant presentation on some of the underlying issues and concerns that underlie some the decisions taken in relation to gender equality and what to do about them - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fudKu8Pxak&t=2829sCH.

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