Suspect survey says women earn more money than men

This is why we should always view commercial survey results with suspicion.

According to a survey commissioned by C-date, almost half of women nationally and 52% of women in NSW, earn more money than their male partner. Great stuff for a media release, except it contradicts everything we know about the gender pay gap, the under-employment of women and the fact that women retire with significantly less superannuation than men.

The survey results were released to the media today by PR firm Red Agency, with no information about who conducted the survey and what method was used to collect the data. Knowing the ‘true’ financial situation of women, this survey of 1015 people aged between 20 and 59, couldn’t possibly be representative of the Australian population.

Although I have no doubt there has been an increase in the number of women earning more money than their male partner, women are NOT on an equal footing with men when it comes to our earning capacity over a lifetime.

I suspect the responses come from among the site’s own membership. But you’d think a casual dating site that claims to have morn than 50,000 members in Australia, could get more respondents for a survey than 1,015 people.

If it proves anything (and that’s a big ‘if’), this survey suggests that women looking for casual sex on the internet are more likely to be professional women with more disposable income, than your average suburban mum or divorcée living in one of our major cities or towns.

The only reason I even bothered to mention it, is that commercial surveys are often used by PR companies to peddle a story to the media, and with news organisations cutting the number of journalists employed in new rooms, there is a very real danger that more of this type of crap is going to end up in the news cycle.