Is Splitting Bills 50/50 Ruining Good Relationships?

I hooked up with Steph when I was 18. We were both in high school, and neither of us had any money. We married a few years later and our money has always been combined. So we never really had to face the question of who pays the bill, because we pay the bill.

But for many people dating is alive and well. Tinder, Bumble, Grindr, all the apps getting people together for meals (and other activities).

How do you figure out who should pay? Let’s look at an example and work it out together.

Matt and Cindy have met on Tinder. Swiping right meant that they were able to get in touch and after a while of messaging back and forth they decided to meet up for dinner at a local Italian restaurant.

Dinner was nice, and they were pleased to find out that they got along in real life just like they did on the web.

They were extra pleased that they both looked, pretty much, like their Tinder profiles (anyone who has been there knows this isn’t always the case).

As they are finishing off their dessert the wait staff approaches the table with the black leather folder containing the bill, it is $175. An awkwardness falls over the table as the wait staff hover, not knowing who to hand the folder to.

What should happen next? Let’s look at some scenarios.

1: Tradition: Man pays 100%

Traditionally, and I would say still commonly today, the wait staff would hand the bill to the man. The expectation here is that the man pays because he is taking out the woman. She, in this circumstance, has no agency to provide for herself and seemingly then is indebted to the man. The man, in this case, is exerting his masculinity, indicating that he is well off and able to take care of his woman. It is the modern day version of a man with a club fighting off a sabre-tooth tiger while his woman hides at the back of the cave.

This is so outdated, I am surprised how often wait staff assume this is the dynamic.

The assumption that this is how things will play out is very disempowering to the woman in this case. Cindy doesn’t want to be paid for. She is financially independent and doesn’t need a man to fight off the tiger, she will do that herself, just like she can decide on her own food order and pay her own way.

Split: Man pays $175

Score: 0/10

2: Modern: Man 50% Woman 50%

In the more modern world a 50/50 split might be more appropriate. The wait staff arrives at the table and hands the bill to the person they have interacted with most. Either member of the couple might have taken the lead in ordering first, indicating to the waiter that they need more drinks, etc.

The bill arrives and Matt or Cindy take a look and say “split it 50/50”? This way both members of the couple remain equal in how they have interacted. No one is indebted, and no one leaves feeling like they “didn’t get what they paid for,” which I’m afraid is still the attitude of a lot of men these days.

But is 50/50 fair? It sounds fair, both members of the couple paying the same amount. But fair? I’m not just talking about how one person may have ordered a more expensive meal or had another drink. I’m talking about the gender pay gap.

Split: Each pays $87.50

Score: =7/10

3: Proportional: Each pays according to the gender pay gap

The truth is that we have a large, a great chasm, of a problem that could be easy to fix: the gender pay gap.

There are many theories about why this is.

One theory is that women are more likely to take on jobs that are “caring” roles. In addition to the enormous amount of unpaid domestic duties they also do (women doing 61.5% of unpaid work and domestic duties, men doing 38.5% of the same), women are concentrated in:

•       Childcare

•       Aged care

•       Education

•       Administration

These jobs typically have lower wages than male-dominated industries such as:

•       Mining

•       Construction

•       Finance

Many of which have higher wages and the ability to work overtime to further increase earnings. But is that the full picture? Is it only because women end up caring at home and at work, and society doesn’t value that work enough to pay it highly?

I think not. The gender pay gap increases when we look at men and women in the same professional jobs. Professional services industry-wide sits at a 15.1% average gap (16.7% median). Financial and insurance services is one of the widest gaps of any industry at 21.4%. At the very top, the CEO pay gap is 26.2% (and widening, up 1.2 percentage points recently); once you add superannuation and discretionary payments, the average difference between male and female chief executives is $185,335 a year. That’s not the wage, that’s the difference.

The reason it shows up so strongly here comes down to two things.

First, discretionary pay, bonuses, allowances, overtime, negotiated salary loadings, is where the real gap lives. Award rates are fixed and transparent, so there’s little room for bias. Discretionary pay is the opposite: it’s judgment-based and privately negotiated, and the data shows men receive about 60% more in discretionary payments on average, which make up 12% of men’s total pay versus 6% of women’s. The gap on discretionary pay alone sits around 29.7%, roughly double the gap on base salary. This happens a lot in consulting, banking and finance, where bonuses and partner drawings are a big chunk of total compensation.

Around 9 out of 10 CEOs on ASX-listed companies are men. And, I can’t believe I have to write this, nearly half of the ASX 300 have no women at all in their leadership pipeline. Some argue the blame lies at the feet of women, that they take family leave at the exact time they would otherwise be getting promoted. That, in my opinion, shows a problem with the system, not with the women. And that is probably a whole other article I should write.

All of this ends up meaning that, on average across the board, the median gender pay gap sits at 16.4%. The private sector gap sits at 21.1% and the public sector gap at 6.4%.

So if a man earns $2,147.80 per week and a woman earns $1,900.60 per week, what should we do?

Well, there are a few things. Firstly, let’s make remuneration negotiations in private business transparent for all staff to see. Or better yet, have a wage that is paid for a particular job no matter who gets it. Transparency shines a light in the dark corner of pay negotiations. Auditing pay by gender and giving that data to the leadership team, and releasing it publicly, would make big business sit up and make a few changes.

The purposeful and targeted inclusion of women in senior roles. Dare I even say quotas! Quotas are great, they are not anti-men. They just make sure that women are considered on merit rather than the old boys’ club chugging along unchecked.

McKinsey found that companies in the top quartile for female board representation had 47% higher return on equity and 55% higher earnings before interest and tax than companies with no women on the board. But listen up, boards: just adding one woman doesn’t work. Research on board diversity has found the real shift happens once three women sit on a board, that’s when the group dynamic actually changes.

Poor Matt and Cindy have been sitting with that black folder long enough that the waiter is hovering again. Split it evenly? Feels fair. Isn’t. The honest numbers on this table tonight are $92.84 and $82.16, and they’ll stay that way until the other numbers, the ones on payslips, bonus letters and board tables, actually close.

Split: Matt $92.84 (53%). Cindy $82.16 (47%)

Score: 10/10

So, back to the original question: is splitting bills 50/50 ruining good relationships? Not really (maybe it should be). It’s not the relationship that’s broken, it’s the assumption underneath the 50/50, that two people sitting at the same table started from the same place. They didn’t. Until they do, split the bill properly, and take the real fight, the one about fairness, back to where it belongs: the office, not the restaurant.

PS: A final thought…

Research shows that LGBTQIA+ people experience unequal employment and earnings outcomes, although the size and direction of the gap vary substantially across different parts of the community. Gay, bisexual, transgender and gender-diverse people are particularly likely to experience earnings penalties or employment disadvantage.

There’s another problem, will be another article and should be fixed ASAP.

For more information on the gender pay gap, see the WGEA gender pay gap data.