The size of a man’s salary is dictated by the balls he plays with. At the lowest point in the hierarchy, you holiday with a beach ball. As a junior executive, you can afford to enjoy the sun and sand. Slightly up the scale is a football —  muddied oafs all. A little more sophisticated are the flannelled fools —  the gentleman’s game (with apologies to Jardine and Larwood). The next lot take their cue from billiards. Finally, the CEO plays golf —  the smallest balls of them all.

The balls analogy is a metaphor in reverse. The size of your balls determines the salary you take home. And, it must be noted that the CEO has the smallest balls of them all. This graphic illustration is an example of income disparity in the workplace. The prime metric to determine this is, of course, gender. The Indian Ambassador to China has an interesting story to narrate. When he set up office, there was some heavy furniture to be moved. He had help only in the form of his secretary Judith. “We must get in some men,” said he. 
“Why?” asked Judith.
“But who will move the sofas? They are very heavy.”
“I’ll do it.”

And she did. This was no superwoman, just an ordinary Chinese lady capable of working on a par with a man. But she got paid less. On Chinese farms, that’s understandable. Women are shorter. Their physical output is somewhat less. A lower salary can be rationalised away. 

But when it comes to the new, new jobs such logic doesn’t hold. This needs brain not brawn. And a woman has as many grey cells as a man. In fact, in some ways she enjoys an advantage; women are much better at multitasking, learnt after generations of tending to the children and appeasing the household gods. 

But inequality in pay lurks everywhere. It is evident in the US where shareholders pack a considerable clout. According to data available, CEO salaries have been rising at a faster pace than Mr Ordinary Joe. A report by think-tank, Economic Policy Institute, has found that the average CEO salaries of the top 350 companies in the US rose six times to an average of $20 million between 1990 and 2000. As against this, the salary of Mr Ordinary Joe rose by a humble 16%. Worse can follow. This is a temptation for firms to push for more outsourcing, aggravating a problem that already exists.