A much-talked-about type of sex discrimination is the fact that women earn about 20% less than men. We’ve written about a different wage gap recently but today we saw that Bloomberg has reported that there’s a wage gap for bisexuals, too.
According to an American study bisexual women earn between 7% and 28% less than straight women, and the figures for bisexual men are 11% to 19% less than their straight colleagues.
The gender pay gap results from factors like working fewer hours and needing a more flexible schedule because of childcare. But these reasons don’t apply to bisexual workers any more than they do for the general population.
The author says that when you take into account the effects of motherhood, fatherhood and marriage the wage gap between lesbian and heterosexual women falls away.
But these factors are less prevalent among bisexuals, meaning that the findings are suggestive of discrimination.
The author says he found in other research that bisexuals are more likely to be perceived as immature, dishonest, and incompetent than straight and gay counterparts.
That means that bisexual stereotyping may be having an effect on bisexuals’ pay.
Bisexual stereotyping includes phrases like “greedy”, “indecisive”, “uncommitted”, “undeveloped”, which bisexuals find naturally irritating. Even many people who champion gay equality will express these views, meaning that bisexuals can fear coming out.
This is an interesting study and though we have been involved in several cases to do with sexuality discrimination we have never seen a case involving bisexuality. Bisexuals should remember that being taunted for being straight or for being gay is just as much sexuality discrimination as harassment on the basis of being bisexual.
We would love to be able to help a client with a sexual orientation discrimination client; they are interesting cases and bringing them can make a real difference to those involved.
By Jason Harbourne
Image licensed under CC, used courtesy of HTorbak Hopper