How do you know why a male colleague is being paid much more than you?

I think that's a good point tour. Certainly when I went back to work pt, I was at a level where pt vacancies coming on to the market were rarer than hen's teeth. So I stayed with my company until I went freelance, rather than trying to change jobs.

BeeBaw - "men are clustered near the top, with the women clustered near the bottom".

Statistically that is impossible in a fair pay system and it was exactly that point that alerted DW to the fact that she might not be being paid fairly. To be fair, her boss (a man) and the organisatioon responded absolutely correctly and sorted the problem out immediately but it is ufortunate that not all organisations work that way.

Maybe the way to go about it is to at your next review ask if there are any courses or any secondments available to develop your career to reach the same pay scale as the men in the department.

I'm not sure what you can do once you're in a job but as others have said I think the key time is when you change jobs. You are worth it. If you have been invited for an interview for the job they think you can do it so you probably can. Being prepared to change jobs frequently helps too. I did this a lot bc and my salary was on a par with dp's even though he is slightly older and has a better degree. Unfortunately 6 years later although i've never stopped working my career is less good and the idea of changing jobs much harder and my salary has suffered too.

Really interesting thread.

Good luck OP. I also work in the public sector. I got offered to take over the role of a man who had just left, but several bands (not even points, whole bands!) lower on the pay scale for the same job! The excuses were that they weren't sure of the job description, it might change, they were doing me a favour by giving me experience of a higher level of work (erm thanks, but I'd like to be paid for it!), they also said it was because I had less qualifications, experience etc until I pointed out that I had the same level of experience and slightly higher qualifications. At one point they said the man had 'additional duties' but wouldn't tell me what they were, as this was irrelevant (even though this was the whle bloody point, whether or not we were doing the same job). It turned out these were duties I was doing too. I negotiated, challenged etc and couldn't get anywhere informally, I had to raise a grievance, which I lost, and only won on appeal.

I may not even have made the grievance had I not been still pissed off about being refused the job below that one the previous year because it was 'a man's job', so they gave it to a man with no relevant experience or qualifications instead of me with lots of both. I didn't challenge it at the time because I thought I would just work harder and show them how great I'd be at the job, so that they would give it to me when it next came up. Which they did, but without the pay.

It's all sorted now, but the moral of the story is there are definitely bastards in the public sector as well. It's not as transparent and pro-equality as everyone seems to think it is.

If the pay scale is long and the men are clustered near the top, with the women clustered near the bottom, there has been some success recently in tackling this through equal pay tribunals. In the public sector.

www.prospect.org.uk/news/id/2012/00232

If you are a Union member they may be interested in fighting your case.

In my old job, there was an interesting little process that would happen. A woman in a role would leave. The decision would be taken to hire someone new. At which point a discussion would ensue about the exact job description, pay etc. Inevitably, the pay would then be increased because it was decided that "the job needs someone more experienced/higher level". Then they would hire a man, usually one with exactly the same experience level as the woman who had just resigned, or even less.

Coincidence? I think not. The person doing my job, a man, earns 50% more than I did.

Check whether there may be an anomaly.

For example, I worked for the NHS. I moved up the 'points' quite quickly because:

Started as 'D' Grade Nurse, then

Moved to theatres, where they had 'theatre practitioners' not nurses. I had to move onto TP1, which was slightly higher than 'D' Grade starting point.

Then, I moved to Neonatal care. Back into 'D' Grade, but they couldn't take me on at a lower pay point than I'd already been paid, and as I had been on TP1, which was higher than the equivalent 'D' grade point, they had no choice but to put me on the next pay point, despite the fact that I had only been nursing 18 months and shouldn't have reached that pay point until my 3rd annual increment.

I'd check with the Union too.

Beware of educational differences, my DH once ended up in the situation in a Public Sector job where he had more experience and more responsibility than his collegues, but was the lowest paid because the others had degrees so were automatically placed higher on the scale, even though the degrees weren't really relevant to the job they were doing. He did try to get raised at reviews based on experience he had in the job but didn't get anywhere because pay seems to rise in a uniform fashion once you are in. So he was in the position of training up new folk who were paid more than him. He found a new better paid job.

Not saying that's definately a factor in your case. There ought to be a way of checking whether its just individual differences or sexism. I'm afraid I don't know how. All this secrecy about pay just seems designed to cover up anomolies like this rather than address them and have them fixed.

Salaries can be a bit random, especially in some professions. I was replaced in banking (several years ago) by someone with less experience and younger and he was paid 10x what I was (to do a far worse job and ultimately be "sacked", necessitating another huge payout. To be fair, I was ridiculously overpaid and his salary was equivalent to a mid level footballer in the premier league.

Salaries should be benchmarked against some sort of grid based on experience, qualifications and some sort of objective assessment of performance. On the other hand, especially if you are good and important to the organisation, it is important to ask for a raise. Don't wait to be handed one and moan if it is not forthcoming. It is a hard thing to do, especially for some people, but as long as you approach your boss in the right way and can justify it objectively, it can only work in your favour. A lot of boss's jobs consist of retaining loyal staff for the minimum cost and it is easy to assume someone is happy unless you know otherwise.

I don't think paying a woman less for the same job ever works in the long run and I think few bosses do it "deliberately". However, it is certainly possible that subliminal discrimination makes a male boss pay women less. This makes it doubly important to demand the "right" salary based on objective criteria (which he can then justify to his boss and HR). Not fair but I do think, in business, it is important to manage one's own career. Cannot comment on public sector employment.

A good part of it is people not challenging it. You should always know what you're worth. If you don't push, you'll never get.

Strike out fail. Arse.

I like the sound of MrsBeta. Ballsy woman :)

It's definitely much easier to negotiate hard when starting a job then when you're already appointed. Once you're in the incentive to give extra and the political appetite are often not there.

Op you could also have a chat with HR in a "I'm not sure you're aware of this and now you are so bloody well do something about it" way.

These thing can be back dated up to 6 years (or is it 7? I forget) by a tribunal and they can make an organisation do an organisation wide pay audit which can be ££££££ so they should be keen to put this right once raised to avoid the potential costs. But equally people like the status quo and doing nothing until they have to so you may need to be more direct.

Jacques - some of the objective criteria were publicly available and others were revealed to DW when she questioned management and other employees she was interviewed by.

A slightly more neutral and less in your face way of going about this is at your next annual/performance/pay review ask what objective criteria you are being judged on versus your peers and how that objectively translates into for pay and promotion. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask at your employer about. Be firm and put it in writing as part of that process. The organisation has to have some criteria it uses to judge performance and award pay rises and promotions otherwise it has no defence against a claim.

Yes the law was changed to put the onus on employers to prove they are paying people fairly because it is was belatedly recognised that it is nearly impossible for employees to gather all the necessary hard data on peer group pay to bring a case.

More beta -that is fascinating and shocking. Well done to your DW.

I think you need to be very careful when going to your employer and doing your own analysis of your peers. This can have problems because it might be inaccurate but mainly because it can detract from the real issue and make you look unprofessional and like a busy body. You need to be less personal and more circumspect. It is also likely to be unnecessary for a gender pay claim.

Let your employer do the investigation but if nothing comes of it you can raise a grievance using your colleagues as potential comparators. The burden is then on your employer to prove there is no discrimination. Usually in sex discrimination cases the petitioner has to prove sex discrimination but in gender pay cases it is the employer who has to prove they are not discriminating.

JacqueslePeacock - my advice is sit down and do a hard objective and evidence based analysis of your qualifications, skills, experience and performance of yourself and each of your peers on your grade.

Write it down and tabulate it and then send the evidence to your boss and ask for your current pay to be justified against the criteria you have set out and against your peers. The organisation should respond seriously to your request. If they dont they are opening themselves to a claim.

I base this advice on the experience of my DW in recently applying for a public sector job. She was offered the job but at the very bottom rung on the pay scale for her role and grade.

She wanted the job but set about negotiating all the way to the top of the pay grade from where she was initially assessed. She did this by doing a very detailed objective analysis of the output of each of her male colleagues on that grade above her on the pay scale.

She presented the analysis in writing and and asked her prospective boss to justify why her male colelagues were on a higher level in the pay scale. She set out the objective crieria that should be used to decide her pay scale level. She clearly outclassed or matched each of the men on objective criteria including the highest paid one.

It turned out that despite putting in a very detailed CV and is no shrinking violet in negotiation that all of her interviewers (all male) had simply assumed immediately and with no justification that she was very very junior in her previous job and coming back to work after having had children she would just accept what she was offered.

Her boss eventually admitted they had wildly but not deliberately under assessed her experience and qualifications and agreed to correct the error. He admitted that they had also assumed she had exagerated her seniority on her CV like everyone does.

This example is a real life one and shows how unconcious prejudice causes women to be paid less than men who have the same or lower performance and qualifications.

I just mean to think carefully about how you do it. We don't know much about your organisation, it's culture or processes.

Now you've posted a bit more and it's large public sector organisation and there's others that makes a big difference. If your are in a union ask their advice but I suspect they will suggest this:

Raise this with your line manager along the lines of some of the team have mentioned there's a possible gender pay discrepancy in the department and could they investigate because this is surely a mistake?

If you get fobbed off you could request they do a pay audit either within a formal grievance or less formally. You could do this individually or as a collective.

I always think starting informally and without accusation is best.

What do you think you should do?

Here's the article.

Official EU article about sex based pay gap

Women are paid on average 20% less than men in the uk.
For any job.
Here are the statistics on theofficial EU website.

Renegotiate your pay.

Unless you work for a large organisation with an official pay stricture it can be very hard t tell why anyone is paid what they are paid.