Alasdair Thompson evidently forgot for a moment he was not in the boys' locker room, nor in the beer-swilling back room of a venue where social intercourse is oiled by a cosy, men-only clubbishness.
It slipped his mind that the tenor of the often jokey habitual small-talk of such occasions was indeed predicated upon the absence of women; and that their casual denigration and occasional objectification was par for such discourse.
It is difficult to imagine, in 2011, quite who he imagined his audience to be - as he opined over NewstalkZB's airwaves last Thursday on the nature and extent of women's productivity and the gender pay gap.
"If you really want to keep some statistics, look at who takes the most sick leave? Women do in general. Why? Because, ah, you know, once a month they have sick problems.
"Not all women, but some do ..."
The chief executive of the northern branch of the Employers and Manufacturers' Association soon discovered a great many of that audience did not frequent the same club as him; nor did they subscribe to the same values.
And many wondered what statistics he was talking about and why he did not at least produce some to underpin his position.
The general consensus - from Prime Minister John Key to some of Mr Thompson's colleagues to former prime minister Jenny Shipley and almost anyone of stature who has cared to comment - is that, to borrow an Americanism for the occasion, the employers and manufacturers' chief executive "mis-spoke"; he was using the dialect of the dinosaurs. Out of line and out of time.
All of which may be true, but it sheds little light on the matter that occasioned the faux pas: the gender pay gap and the private member's Bill of Green Party MP Catherine Delahunty, which seeks to amend the 1972 Equal Pay Act to enable the law to be more adequately monitored and enforced.
And thus to make progress in diminishing further the pay gap between men and women. It is, after all, against the law to discriminate in terms of remuneration on the basis of gender.
Unfortunately, when the subject arises all we often get is the roar of those dinosaurs and the reasons why it is impossible, impractical, or undesirable to do anything about it.
In fact, New Zealand does a good deal better than most countries on pay differentials. An OECD report of 2010, citing statistics from 2008 showed that on the basis of full-time median pay rates the gap in New Zealand was the third lowest at about 8% (where the difference in pay rates is expressed as a percentage of the male earnings).
Some might argue, as Mr Thompson partly attempted to do, that differences in earnings and productivity between the sexes can be attributed to the absence of women from the work place due to child-birth and rearing and caring for children or adults.
And where they are indeed the primary carers, this may be the case. Figures for sick and domestic leave compiled by the Public Service Association show women in the public service take 1.6 days a year more than their male counterparts 8.4 days as opposed to 6.8 - a discrepancy easily explained by those extra caring duties.
But there are also pertinent international studies showing even when these and other factors - career choices, educational attainment, and work experience, for example - are taken into account there remains a mysterious deficit.
Two such studies in the United States found the difference to range from 12% to as much as 25% or 30%.
It is unlikely to be this high in New Zealand, but when all the other factors are taken into account, should it exist at all?
Should not women be paid the same for the same quality and amount of work?
And what, exactly is the problem with amending the law to make it more likely that this happens?
Before Mr Thompson opened his trap and began chewing on his big toe, this was essentially what Ms Delahunty was proposing. The mooted legislation would require employers to record the gender of their employees, along with current reporting requirements.
Workers, or their representatives, would then be able to request information on pay levels by gender in their workplaces to assess whether the Equal Pay Act is being applied.
Those adhering to the law would have nothing to fear; and employers' representatives would not have to invent fatuous and insulting reasons to maintain an information vacuum favouring those who might choose to exploit it.
• Simon Cunliffe is deputy editor (news) at the Otago Daily Times.
