A majority of 65 percent of the voters at a WageIndicator web poll rejects positive discrimination as a tool to improve the position of women at the labor market.
Close to 9,000 voters in almost 20 countries in three continents participated in the vote. In Latin America however, a majority of the voters in Chili (54 percent), Guatemala (53 percent) and Argentina (55 percent) approved of positive action for women.
The issue re-entered the public debate over the past few months, as a decade of talk on positive action for women did very little to actually diminish the gender gap on the labor market. Research for the ITUC, based on data from the WageIndicator, indicated clearly that the gender gap in pay was still very much in place.
Some companies, like here in the case of KPN, are so desperate in getting women on top positions in their company, they would not accept application from men for those vacancies for the time being.
For most of the visitors of our network of websites, that kind of drastic positive action is too much. Lowest support figures are reported from the US and the UK. got positive action for jobs from the US, where only 15 and 14 percent of the voters approved a preferential treatment of women. Also the UK scored low with 14 percent.
In most other countries support was over 30 percent, bringing the average of people who approved of positive action to 35 percent.
The next poll is about cutting salaries during the ongoing financial crisis, as is happening in the public sector in many countries in 2010. Do you approve of salary cuts, or do you disapprove? You find the poll at the left side of this website.
In a few countries, next to the general site, the WageIndicator has specialized sites for the wages of women. You can find them in Belgium, Brazil, Germany, India, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK.