Dame Stevie And The Absence Of The Gender Pay Gap

Hey, real world proof is real world proof

As we know, the wimmins are hard done by - the patriarchy oppresses by insisting upon payin’ the little darlin’s less. At which point enter Dame Stevie:

Dame Stephanie Shirley, 91, is a tech pioneer and philanthropist who came to Britain on the Kindertransport in 1939. She built a £3 billion business, Freelance Programmers (later renamed F International), and 70 of her staff became millionaires due to its shared ownership structure. Since retiring in 1993 she has donated more than £70 million to charity. She was made a dame in 2000 and became one of the prestigious few members of the Order of Companions of Honour in 2017.

Back when she was building F1 the sexism in industry was such that she called herself Stevie, not Stephanie. You know, deniably pretending to be male sorta thing. Also, given that background, something of a tough nut and certainly nobody’s fool. F1, among other things, did the programming on the Black Box for Concorde. Proper, serious, company.

The sexism in industry was such that there really was a gender pay gap. A general assumption - to the point of rigid rule - was that wimmins didn’t work after marriage and certainly not when they had children. So, Stevie went out and hired all those birds who had been programmers before parturition, set ‘em up with a home terminal and paid ‘em peanuts. Then went around winning vast contracts with her price advantage.

This worked. To the extent that Stevie is on record as saying the Equal Pay Act was the worst thing ever for her business (note, not societally wrong, but bad for her business).

Which actually gives us a nice test of something that bastard neoliberals like me insist upon. Or as Gary Becker pointed out. If it is true that wimmins is underpaid in our capitalist bastardry patriarchal society then it must also be true that it’s possible to deliberately and specifically hire women and so gain a price advantage.

Dame Stevie did this and did so very successfully. Which is a nice proof that the first part of the contention works. If women are underpaid then hire them and make a fortune. Cool!

But then we come to the second part of the logic. If wimmins are currently underpaid in our capitalist bastardy patriarchalist society then it must be possible, today, to deliberately and specifically hire women and make a fortune.

So, is it? Anyone at all got any idea of where we might do that? Which sector etc? Anyone able to see anyone doing that?

Ah, then wimmins is not underpaid in our patriarchalist society of capitalist bastardry, are they? Because if they were the capitalist bastards would be doing a Dame Stevie.

Logic’s a lovely thing, no? So’s evidence….