In response to your letter of the week ‘Act like a man and do the honourable thing’ (Personnel Today, 22 November), thanks for allowing this sort of male-friendly correspondence to be published at all, let alone letter of the week. I am male and have been an HR manager for 12 years, and a great number of articles I am subjected to weekly seem unashamedly antagonistic to men in general.
Part-time working counts massively towards the aggregate difference in male to female salaries, but the fact that women tend to opt for that choice is often a double-edged sword. I certainly considered it and regret that, as a man, I felt unable to do so.
Not only is the pay gap not men’s fault, it will be largely eradicated as soon as the gender mix is equalised among the very top earners. You need only to look at the statistics on academic achievements over the last 10 years – and the current gender intake at, say, surgeon or barrister level – to realise that it is less than a generation away.
For the majority of men, their salaries are no higher and often much lower than their female counterparts. Yet weekly we have to read article after article of dissatisfaction at the gender status quo. And we have to swallow government so-called research that companies welcome innovations such as flexible working, when we all know they don’t and this is just part of the social re-engineering spin.
It was refreshing that you allowed an alternative voice.
H Highton
HR manager
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