The Chorus: ECJ ruling on female remuneration

'Pay ruling will undo 50 years of women's struggle," screamed the headline on the front page of the Irish Independent. "EU court rules women can be paid less," complained the headline on the front of the Irish Times. The sisterhood was exercised as only the sisterhood can be exercised, lacerating "discrimination" and demanding "equality" in the face of patriarchal nastiness and dirty dealing.

It was, as usual, nonsense. The Irish papers had misreported the outcome of a ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in an action taken by Bernadette Cadman, a UK principal Health and Safety Executive inspector who took her case to an employment tribunal five years ago after discovering that male colleagues on the same grade as her were earning between £5,000 and £9,000 more than she was. They had been longer in their grades and were therefore considered to have more experience. Cadman, 43, who was backed by the UK Equal Opportunities Commission, argued that a £9,000 difference for male colleagues based on length of service amounted to discrimination because women were more likely to have career breaks and shorter service.

In fact, Cadman won her case, successfully arguing that employers should not be allowed to pay some workers much higher salaries than others solely on the grounds of longer service. The court found that experience generally enabled workers to perform their duties better and therefore warranted more pay, but held that there were cases which raised serious doubts whether this was so and in those cases employers would have to justify in detail paying the longer-serving workers more. The ruling sets a precedent and means employers, if challenged, will have to give valid reasons for paying significantly higher salaries to those they argue have more experience, and will not be able to merely cite years of service.

The judgement was reasonable, containing much that is thoughtful, fair and important. The Irish responses, unsurprisingly, were less measured, betraying yet again the hysterical and monotonous character of Irish feminism.

There is a lesson here for Irish media. The misinterpretation of the story carried by Irish newspapers arose from an error in an early wire-service account of the judgement. This was understandable and not particularly serious. If the story had been dealt with in a measured manner, the error could have been corrected later without much fuss.

But because the kneejerk response of most newsdesks to "gender issues" is to ring up some superannuated feminist siren and get her to foam about the terrible things being done to women, the embarrassment was total. "Women's groups have slammed as 'blatantly sexist' a European court ruling which says employers can pay women less than their male colleagues if they have taken time off to look after their children," went the Irish Independent report. Joanna McMinn, director of the National Women's Council of Ireland, described the ruling as "legalising discrimination against women" and warned there was "a backlash against women's equality and this is being seen worldwide". Rubbish, rot and twaddle.

A thought: if it were possible to hire a woman for significantly less than a man for doing exactly the same work in the same way, any employer who continued to hire men would very soon be out of business. Indeed, the Cadman case is symptomatic of a form of phantom pay discrimination that manifests itself precisely because many employers operate a bias in favour of women by promoting them much earlier than men.

Is it not time we began to require of State-sponsored feminists that they at least have some clue concerning what they are talking about? And is it not time that editors and journalists reviewed their present default policy of turning to these demagogues for instant responses in the hope of stirring up entirely unhelpful controversy, thus fuelling the present rank public ignorance about the reality of relations between men and women?