Equal Pay is Sexist. Fair Pay is Sexy

When I worked as a casual employee at the mammoth hospitality firm - MECC in Melbourne, we all got paid a set hourly rate regardless of our ability, gender, intellect, age, or passport. It’d have taken a rather complex algorithm to formulate to pay fairly to all the employees - paying equally made life easier. It avoided discrimination lawsuits by the turds [that’s most of us] who wouldn’t know the difference between a caramel donut & medu vada even when they were eating one.

At MECC in 2003, I was getting paid a ridiculous $35 [Australia has the highest minimum worldwide] per hour [on Sundays] to fold & move furniture on trolleys. In case you’re thinking it must have been a difficult, specialised task - it wasn’t. It was an outright unskilled job; even a tipsy, semi-retired, slacker-for-life monkey would’ve done a better job of it than me. Yet, I pocketed a solid $280 after an 8-hour shift - exactly the same amount as Benjamin, who moved 155 pieces of furniture. I moved 87 [MECC should’ve totally employed a monkey]. Even Yosephine [a tiny Indonesian girl who weighed 41 kilos] moved 101 pieces.

Since the explosive launch of eFeminism [e: equal], the clamour for equal pay has been getting louder than the 5am azaan near Sonu Nigam’s home.

In tennis grand slams, Men play best of 5 sets, Women play best of 3 sets. Will you pay someone who works 3 hours the same as someone who works 5 hours? Longer matches mean more advertising slots - which means more revenue. But, succumbing to Selena Williams-led relentless pressure, all four grand slams are now paying equal price money to both male & female winners. Why. It makes life easier for the organisers, not because it’s fair.

Would you pay the same amount for a 50 over ODI to Virat Kohli & Mithali Raj [women’s team captain]. Would you pay the same amount to Clare Polkinghorne [Australian women’s soccer captain] as Cristiano Ronaldo for playing 90 minutes of football. Why not. Because nobody cares about women's cricket/football. The revenue for men's football/cricket is 100 times the women's.

Would you pay the same amount to two salespeople - one girl - one boy - who worked equal hours, if the girl sold watches worth $4.5 million in a month & the boy sold watches worth $1.5 million. Would the girl feel awesome about getting paid equally to her male counterpart.

And if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking then let me answer that nagging question too. Did I, the bludger [Aussie slang for lazy bums], continue to make $280 while moving half the furniture as Benjamin. No! Soon, I was dropped in favor of stronger lads like Benjamin. I started getting shifts that involved standard work [no furniture involved], which led to a massive decline in my wages. New Sunday wages: $27.5 per hour. Ha!

Now, it is time to deal with the elephant in the room. Would you pay equally to a boy with zero marriage prospects over the next decade and a girl who’s scheduled to be married at the end of the year & looking to start a family in about two years. Would you pay equally to a boy who’s ready to stay late at work and a girl whose parents/boyfriend/husband/any patriarch doesn’t allow her to stay late. Would you pay equally to a girl who takes zero sick leaves through the year and a boy who falls sick more than government employees.

Floyd Mayweather pocketed $180 million for a boxing match against Manny Pacquiao who got $120 million. Mayweather got more because he is a superstar, whose presence was the primary reason the total fight revenues were in excess of $600 million. Eventual distribution ratio was 60:40 {in Mayweather’s favor} of the total $300 million allotted to the fighters. It wasn’t equal - it was fair. 

What one gets paid for his/her efforts can’t be determined by gender, hours, efforts. The only determining factor is the bottom line - That person’s impact on the final revenue.

Paying equally to both genders, without considering the multitude of revenue-related factors, is not only unfair, it’s also blatantly sexist. eFeminists are confusing equal with fair. Misunderstandings happen all the time. I, for 7 years, ate a particular dark chocolate paying premium prices, thinking it was imported from the UK, only to eventually figure out UK stood for UttaraKhand. 

Let me pitch an example to clear this haze. When a parent sends his daughter to a crappy school & his son to a classy school, that’s as unfair as it is unequal. But, if the same father spends $55k per year to send his daughter to Juilliard Music School, New York, but refuses point blank to pay similar amount to send his son to New York Film Academy, it is unequal, but it will only be fair or unfair if we knew the reasons for the parent’s decision & genuineness of those reasons. For all we know, the son only wants to go to a film school in New York so he can get laid every weekend. As a parent, it will be wise to send the horny son to JNU [if he can get through the entrance exam] or Amity [expensive, but surely a bargain compared to New York Film Academy]

Equal Pay is like Communism - looks magical in silhouette, but the moment it becomes flesh & blood, it resembles Donald Trump. 

P.S. A lot of feminist film stars have been harping on about equal pay in the film industry. They shouldn’t selfishly fight to make their already fat-as-fuck paychecks to obscenely-obese; instead, they can channel their energies towards making a case for paying fairly to thousands of people who work without medical insurance, employment guarantee, provident fund & on bare minimum pay. They’re the ones who deserve fair pay because in a Salman Khan film, it hardly matters if the heroine is Kareena Kapoor, Vani Kapoor or Shahid Kapoor - the audience comes to see Salman. So, when all you Kapoors earn 1/10 of what Salman earns, it ain’t equal, it’s fair.