KIWI RIDER 05 2018 VOL.1 | Page 64

Wage (in)equality Words: Roger Moroney Photo: www.motogp.com I read a news story the other week about how many of the senior male staff at a leading overseas broadcasting company have stepped into the gender-pay arena... in a very positive way. The blokes have decided to approach their even higher chiefs (who obviously pay them) and have requested that their salaries be slashed to greatly reduce the inequality between what they get and what a woman, doing the same job gets. The disparity in wages was surprising, to a degree. Because it goes on everywhere and that ain’t at all right. I am cut from the cast which declares that you simply, rightly, get paid for the job you do, and whether you are male or female, or have a finger missing, or red hair, or no hair, or speak with a lisp, or have one leg slightly shorter than the other, or drive a Holden... should not come into that equation. You do the job, and do it well, then you get paid accordingly. But, of course, that scenario is taken from some distant world we know nothing about. The same world where television personalities and cash-sucking billionaires do not gain presidencies. The world where there are no wars... because everyone is so happy, because a case of two dozen fine IPA ales is just $1.80. The gender wage inequality is however a thinly veiled staple of working life on this world, so to those broadcasting chaps I say, well done... except the end result is still slightly off the mark because while they have reduced the gap there is still a gap there. Oh well, it’s a start. And so, to motorcycling (yes, 273 words into this scribing exercise and I finally mention motorcycles... a new record I suspect). While the F1 teams all ponder their new engines and silly cockpit halos, and consider who they can get to hold the sun umbrellas up over their drivers on the grid, the MotoGP is also revving up. The Tech 3 crew has pulled the pin on its Yamaha team and there have been rumours Valentino Rossi (whose racing business has teams running Marquez, Dovizioso and Rossi’s salaries combined barely scrape together a living wage in F1 terms... 64 KIWI RIDER