Why Are Women Paid Less?

A handbook for women that want more and better in a business world run by men

Gordana Frgačić, Ana Adum

• Publisher: Babelcube Inc.
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781667404158
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

Are you capable, smart, educated, yet promotions constantly elude you and go to men, even those that are significantly less capable than you? Are you at the same position as your male colleagues, but they have higher salaries and better benefits, for the same work? Are you in a managerial position, but yet not at management board level, not high enough to make strategic decisions?
Research confirms that women are, on average, paid less than men for the same work. Gordana Frga?i? calls this problem by its real name, unlike some that treat it "in kid gloves", and gives concrete examples. The book "Why are women paid less?" reveals, without censorship, prejudices and stereotypes women are subject to at the workplace and elsewhere. All examples are real and happened at real companies, although their identities remain hidden.
The author underlines that most women blame others for this problem (usually men), but the reality is that women make a lot of mistakes, sabotage themselves and generate a lot of their own obstacles, deny themselves success and repeat the same mistakes that turn them into bad statistics.
Gordana Frga?i? offers lots of useful advice and recommendations to all employed women that will help them stand up for themselves in the workplace, avoid and correct mistakes in their attitudes and behavior and thereby positively affect their careers.

What will joining the EU bring us?

When we buy new clothes, we can’t wait to get rid of the old. We sometimes lose some good pieces that way...

I don’t want to discuss whether entering the EU is a positive or negative step for Croatia, that isn’t the topic of this book.

However, it is good to know what we can expect: what the current situation is regarding female equality in terms of pay as well as opportunities for promotion beyond our borders, particularly in the Union we are soon to join.

My first serious encounter with Europe springs to mind. It happened a while ago, at the time when Croatia was emerging from a long period of socialism, and I was still a student.

I was given the opportunity to study the language and earn some money for my studies by working in a hotel in a small town in Germany that was flourishing and growing rapidly thanks to a new airport.

So, over a period of a few years, I would stay for two months during the summer and a month in the winter. With all the time I spent there, it was inevitable that I should meet many people, and even make some friends. What they all had in common was their curiosity about life in a formerly socialist country, so they constantly drew parallels between Croatia and Germany.

I was greatly surprised by some of their questions, but amidst all the general questions about entertainment, culture, and life in general in Croatia, I was most surprised by one of them: how much less are women paid than men?

As I don’t hide my age, it is easy to calculate that this question was posed in the so-called civilized world approximately twenty years ago.

My reaction was astonishment and disbelief but, as I was still very young and with twenty years’ less experience than now, the question didn’t upset me at the time.

I was more curious about what the basis for the question was, but my colleagues matter-of-factly explained that it’s not an unusual occurrence in Germany, or any of the other European countries.

The hotel I worked at was a multi-cultural environment and my colleagues, both workers and students, came from various countries, some even from across the ocean.

I noticed that the question mark lingered only above the head of a colleague from East Germany, that had only just recently been reunited with West Germany. In my disbelief, I responded that such a thing was impossible in Croatia and, equally naively, stated that it wouldn’t be possible in the future either. Not in my country.

At the time, no discussion ensued on the topic. I remember only that it was stranger to them that we didn’t have such differences than it was to me that they did. And that was that.

But I somehow couldn’t shake the conversation out of my head, and started to pay more careful attention to what was going on in my own setting in this regard.

And, sure enough, to my continual surprise, slowly but surely it started to happen in Croatia as well. It started with short news headlines from “some other countries”, and then we suddenly started to talk about salary differences between men and women in Croatia as well.

As for this particular chapter of the accession criteria, I think we closed it a lot sooner than any other country during the pre-accession negotiations: we became a European and world-class country practically overnight.

Unfortunately, it is no longer a rarity to talk about inequality in pay between women and men, or inequality in opportunities for promotion in Croatia today.

I don’t by any means want to say that we should revert to socialism, but I do believe that, before discarding everything with scorn, we should have analyzed whether there was anything good in that period, along with the bad.

Each society, each social system has its positive and negative sides, but when we transition from one to the other, we usually take both the good with the bad from the new system, rather than admit that there was anything good in the old system.

In conversations with my female colleagues of the same profession, i.e. those that manage human resources and who are usually from former socialist countries, I have confirmed this observation. They have all agreed that women were a good deal more emancipated and equal with their male colleagues under socialism than they are today.

Croatia had a major advantage in those days, even in terms of lifestyle, and I think that the generations of those times (by today’s classifications those would be: veterans, baby boomers and generation X) aren’t even aware of what the fact that Tito said “No” to Stalin in 1948 meant to them.

The reason why inequalities in salaries weren’t an issue in those days probably lies in the fact that these issues don’t originate in the business world and then spill over into society, but exactly the opposite. It is society that creates the images and customs that spill over into the business world. Therefore, we shouldn’t blame our colleagues, but rather the society we live in. A society that we women are a part of.

The image that has remained etched in my memory of women from the socialist social system, of which I was part, is completely different from the image of women that is presented today through all the available media.

I remember women as strong, important for the social system, as exemplary workers, as workers, comrades: whatever that means to someone today, even if someone finds it funny!

My children today picture a woman as an anorexic or bulimic model, as a gold digger chasing a rich husband, sadly experimenting with various diets and fashion craziness.

And how did the West picture us? One of my acquaintances from a western country said the image of a socialist woman was “a mother, or a pregnant woman, surrounded by a host of healthy children”.

I, on the other hand, think that that’s the image and role they’d prefer to see us in today, and that the majority of women who are mothers and business women at the same time often get scornful and judgmental looks from the people around them, from both sexes alike, indirectly sending the message that they are bad mothers. Remember the one who said, “Her poor husband!”?

No, I am not so naïve to think that everything was ideal in socialism, but what is key is the main feeling, the image that we take away, because that is what tells us how a society breathes.

And I believe, concerning women and equal opportunities, it breathed a lot more healthily than it does today.

Why do I think that?

Because we have institutions today, but not the prerequisites to use them.

Maybe we didn’t have the institutions then, but we certainly had the prerequisites.

Today, problems are solved by passing laws and thereby soothing everyone’s conscience, regardless of which social problem is involved. The fact that often the basic prerequisites haven’t been met for the law to make sense, doesn’t bother anyone.

Therefore, we think we are emancipated and have equal opportunities, because dozens of laws and legislation say so, but when we want to return to work after maternity leave, we can’t find a kindergarten to enroll our child in.

Kindergartens were free of charge under “rotten” socialism. Now they are not, and even if they really aren’t expensive in some cities, they still are for parents with low incomes. If we look closely and track the changes, some of these prices are almost at commercial levels.

In some European countries, kindergartens are so rare that women really have no choice but to stay at home with their child, unless they are one of the lucky ones that has retired parents who are willing to step in.

Luckily, we have a better inheritance from our past. Even though our kindergartens are often overcrowded, we have many of them. My neighborhood (in fact, I’m talking about just a few streets!) has five. And those are just the ones I know about, I’m sure there are more!

Countries even magnanimously talk about working part-time as a great benefit for women with children, or women in general (so they get some time for fun and away from the oven where they belong). Working half-time is, unofficially, primarily meant for women. You tell me: where can you work seriously and climb the ladder if you’re working half the normal working hours?

And how many men do you know who are working part-time, or would even want to work for half the pay?

Yes, of course, this suits some women just fine, there are women that don’t even want to work, that want to stay at home, raise their children and tend to the household. Why not?

However, not only is it considered that these women do nothing and their work isn’t valued at all, but, in order for all of this to function and to be completely safe and without risk for the woman and her standard of living, it is necessary to rely on the fact that she will “live happily and care-free in love with her partner until death them do part”.

With the high percentage of divorces in Croatia and Europe alike, this is difficult to imagine in many cases, and a woman outside the workforce will usually find herself in a very difficult situation without work experience, dependent exclusively on regular alimony payments, the mercy of the state, or a generous settlement if she was lucky enough to have married rich.

In a great many countries, even if there are enough kindergartens, the price is usually in proportion to the earnings of the household, so “family discussions” usually end with the conclusion that it is much more cost-effective for the woman to stay at home.

Nannies are so expensive that it makes them an even less cost-effective investment.

And if you are at executive level, you are indirectly infected with remorse and guilt, because the company will literally fall apart without you, and, in the end, you will justify the prejudice that you are not promotion material, because you might even stay at home for a whole year with your baby, “doing nothing”!

And that is why you return to work after only a month, while you can still barely sit, because the law protects you only formally, not practically, and you could lose your job, or at the very least lose the position you worked so hard for, and this, in the eyes of others, classifies you as a bad mother.

Yes, in the meantime the law has changed to enable you to come to an agreement with your husband so he takes parental leave for at least part of the time. But, even if you were lucky enough to marry someone who isn’t a macho snob, society will consider you weird, and mostly condemn the man and say he is hen-pecked. His return to work might even be a problem, perhaps even a larger one than for the woman.

Therefore, I can’t help myself, but to see us as hamsters that keep running around in our wheels, while never getting further along in our small cages.

If these situations seem a bit exaggerated, I assure you they are not.

But as far as this is concerned, the situation in Croatia is still better and the laws are a lot more favorable for women than in some significantly more developed countries.

The fact is that on face value, it doesn’t seem so, but you should be very careful if you plan to emigrate from Croatia, and inform yourselves carefully abo...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Why I decided to write this book
• Do you have an attitude?
• Do the clothes make the (wo)man?
• Are we charmers or charmed?
• Do we suffer from the secretarial syndrome?
• Too young?  Too old?  Or too good?
• How are we perceived?
• Are men afraid of us?
• Is motherhood an obstacle for us?
• Where did our courage go?
• What can we learn from men?
• How good is your  self-promotion?
• How much do we contribute to the consolidation of prejudices and stereotypes?
• Have you heard of Betty Dukes?
• Do our emotions get in our way?
• Are men better bosses for women?
• What will joining the EU bring us?
• P. S.