To think the way the press is reporting gender pay gap figures is completely misleading

[hmmm345]

The headline is that companies such as EasyJet and Phase Eight are paying women "on average" at least 15 percent less than men. But the way it is reported suggest that is for the same roles. No they are paying people according to the different roles they do, it's just that, on average, across most organisations women occupy lower paid roles than men.

In easyJet's case that is because many of their highest paid pilots are males.. there are female pilots but there are less for a number of reasons.. women perhaps haven't been encouraged into the insight historically, women feel the role is incomparable with having children etc.. all areas that need addressing and that's the purpose of the regulations .. to make employers think about this and look at what they can do to address it

In Phase Eight's case it's because their shops are staffed predominately by females.. unsurprising really as it's a female fashion chain, and the males are employed in head office where salaries are higher.

There needs to be much more understanding of this legislation by journalists and even MPs commenting on it! One MP has said it's immoral!

Im many cases women are not encouraged into highly paid roles from a young age such as engineering, that needs addressing by schools. In other cases women are initially very ambitious but after having children come back part time and stay on the "mummy track" and either choose not to or cannot because of their employers close mindedness, advance their careers and earn as much as their male colleagues.

The shift in thinking in the last 20 or so Years has been great for women.. many employers now embrace flexible working, shared parental leave and are committed to helping their women executives advance in their careers and seeing more female representation at board level. But it will take time to see results!

I should add that I'm an employment lawyer so I understand the legislation but I think that it needs to have been better explained by the government or called something different to stop this effect which doesn't really help businesses who genuinely want to make a change for the better ..

@stillHereAgain - of course you have to trade working hours for parenting hours - that's common sense. My point is that that shouldn't signal the death knell on any chance of promotion.

It’s not just about women taking career breaks though.

I work in a digital/tech company and we’ve looked at our gender pay gap by lots of different facets - by age, by department, by location etc. Interestingly there is a gap even at entry level, and that’s because the highest paid roles in our business (other than senior management) are in the tech Team and they are predominantly male (I think we have 5 women out of 200 developers).

We are trying to do a lot to increase this, both within our company (by skewing intake towards women employees) and in society, we have a number of ambassadors who go out to local schools, colleges and try to encourage girls to take STEM options, we also run coding clubs for local schools and in our offices. It’s a long term issue though which we can’t fix on our own

Gosh, please don’t ever tell your daughters to not aim for the top!

I’m only explaining the reasons for the gap and why it’s not a quick or simple fix and we need to understand this rather than just shout at companies and blaming them.

For starters we need greater equality in societal expectations in bringing up our children. So for example we now have shared parental leave which is great but it’s only at statutory pay. Therefore if the woman is eligible for enhanced pay it doesn’t make financial sense for the leave to be shared.

It will take time but we need to be realistic that there are no quick fixes.

Phase 8 actually has an informal policy against promoting shop workers to HQ. Not sure if it’s anti-woman or just elitist, but either way I think this will finally put pressure on them to move more women to HQ. In banking it has long been understood that some HQ roles (risk, marketing, product management) can often be better complete by people who have shop floor experience.

If the shop staff at Phase Eight are predominantly female and it's a female-oriented clothing store, then why are the jobs at HQ held by men? Surely a clothes shop aimed at women should have mostly women in their senior management roles?

That is the kind of insidious sexism that underlies the gender pay gap. If women do lower-skilled jobs than men then, yes, they will be earning less than men - but why are they doing lower-skilled jobs in the first place?

Because that is more to running a retail company than having a interest in fashion. That's like saying a sports wear company should be ran by athletes.

Someone who can run a Phase 8 branch (the marketing, the business, the staff) can slot into a HQ job with a bit of internal training. Actually in some ways they can be better than an external hire as they understand the organisation’s culture.

Hmm, the best sportswear companies are run by athletes and coaches

I suspect Phase 8 will be reviewing their management track PDQ

tips run by was maybe bad phrasing, employed by would have been a better was of saying it, but would you realistic expect every member of HQ to be an athlete? No you wouldn't.

I have done both by the way. Shop floor to sports retail head office.

Then again Evans Cycles are probably feeling pretty chuffed

but the best result of all has to be the British Museum

No, but I'm not saying every member of Phase 8 HQ should be a woman from the shop floor either. Their expertise has to be useful in some roles though.

You’re confusing equal pay witht the gender pay gap. I get paid the same as my colleagues who are at the same level. We have equal pay.

But there is a gender pay gap within the organisation because the majority of managers and partners are male.

It is precisely this trend for women to be in lower paid, lower ranking, part time, menial, or zero hours jobs that analysis of the gender pay gap seeks to challenge. We need to challenge the expectation that women will have children, and that when they do, they will be the ones who take on the primary childcare burden. We need to campaign for a wider rollout of the policies that allow parental leave to be shared at the couples discretion, rather than the majority going to the mother. We need to challenge the old boys network that still prevails in a lot of large companies and which disproportionately advantages men. And we need to challenge the (still astonishingly prevalent) attitude that women just aren’t up to standard when it comes to business and that somehow men are naturally better.

It is not so much a criticism of individual companies, as it is a criticism of our society that still allows this to continue. The pay gaps in companies are symptoms, but they still need fixing.

Sportswear companies hire athletes all the time - as spokespeople or at a lower level in sportswear design or marketing.

Why assume though that hiring female managers means hiring people with an interest in fashion and that male managers won't have an interest in fashion? The interest is fashion is not the defining characteristic. It's knowledge of the target demographic they market to and what their customer base wants. If most of their customers are female, their management should reflect that demographic.

lockheart
But as was highlighted at the BBC, men often get paid more for exactly the same jobs
its the same in the City and in much of the media

So not only do women do the lower paid jobs, when they get a better job they still get paid less

And the fact that DCLG - which is all public sector pay scales has a 5.9% pay gap shows there is a problem

Ffs I'm not saying a sportswear company doesn't hire athletes at all. But I would hope the head account had more professional skills than distance running etc!

But the chief accountant could be put through training from the shop floor
as I say, Phase 8 need to review their management track systems

@talkin - that is exactly what happens in a lot of banks.

I have never said people shouldn't be promoted from the shop floor. I was.

raving
I know. Its also the system at lots of companies who realise that motivated internal trainees make better managers.

A 5.9% pay gap doesn’t show an equal pay issue at all. It’s entirely possible to have no equal pay issues but have a gender pay gap and vice versa.

But if you achieve gender equality it still comes down to career or parenting. What sort of society makes that a choice?

The thing is about women being (stereotypically) more focused on their children after having them than men is that someone bloody well has to be! It should be perfectly possible to have children, work, and still be promoted etc. Many mothers are very committed to their careers. But it is right that parents are also committed to their children. That is not a failing of women - if anything it is a failing of fathers who cheerfully encourage a culture of presenteeism in the workplace, whilst safely assuming that someone else is picking up the slack at home so they don't have to even think about it.

Anecdote:

At my old job (v.v. male dominated), it was announced that the company was for sale and that there would be redundancies. There was a consultation period, during which a group of employees got together to discuss putting forward a proposal for job shares/reduced hours for reduced pay that would reduce the number of redundancies whilst still saving the company money*.
Everyone was surprisingly enthusiastic about this, except that every man thought that the very best solution would be a "two weeks off, two weeks on" arrangement, rather than a more regular 2 or 3 days a week system as this would be "really handy for holidays" and golf. Most of them were parents, and most of them had wives who worked. I was the only person who even considered the practicalities of arranging childcare. It just didn't seem to be on their radar in the way it was for me (and, I suspect, the way it would have been for their wives).
This is just one example, but it really struck home for me the differences between me and them whilst we should have been the same - parents working in similar roles at the same company, with spouses/partners who also worked full time. That sort of blissful ignorance is a sort of freedom, I suppose, that so many (not all) fathers enjoy.

*wishful thinking.

The problem is a social one as much as it’s an industry one. How many men choose to go part time or stay at home while their partners climb the greasy pole? In my experience, the only ones who have done that have been the ones whose wives are on significantly more before DCs.
When salaries are the same, it’s the woman’s career that takes the hit, and it takes YEARS to recover from that.