to think the Equalities Minister should care about pay equality as well as other equality issues - especially in her department -- and the response about this is dismissive

[chomalungma]

So it's being reported that:

According to the Daily Telegraph the women and equalities minister Liz Truss says the government needs to move away from what she describes as "fashionable" race, sexuality and gender issues - and instead concentrate on poverty and geographical disparities.

But the Times reports that Ms Truss - who is also the international trade secretary - runs the department which has the second-worst gender pay gap in Whitehall, with women earning nearly 16% less than men.

A spokesperson for the department says during the past year, it hired more women than men.

Well - both those things can be true. You can pay women less and you can hire more women than men. In fact, if you hire more lower paid women, you can make the pay gap even bigger.

Still, I bet this played well with the focus groups who dismiss the pay gaps that exist. Despite the Government introducing the reporting on them.

Agree with her to a degree. Class and poverty are the real challenges to equality. Odd to have that priority as a Tory govt though.

I wish that they would ban job adverts where they don't state the salary range for the post. So many people (mostly women) then get underpaid compared to an equal colleague who started at the same time because they didn't know how much to ask for.

@mollscroll

Agree with her to a degree. Class and poverty are the real challenges to equality. Odd to have that priority as a Tory govt though.

All are important. It's not like a binary cause.

And that response of the pay gap is bizarre.

I think the headlines on pay gaps has focused on whether tess Daly earns as much as Gary lineker. Or the types of % gaps across whole sectors which can indicative of choices made by women to sacrifice their career to raise Children. Yes these are also examples of unconscious or conscious bias as well. Something that has been addressed but ironically only really benefited middle class women in certain sectors. Often based in London and the SE.

The policy department will of course continue to address unconscious bias but the focus on poverty and disparities is long overdue. It’s what will put women into the workplace and into better jobs.

Liz Truss, a person prepared to be subservient to a misogynist, Boris Johnson. Prepared to stand by quietly whilst thousands unnecessarily have died and be part of a government that cuts overseas aid.

Racism, sexism and homophobia are not just confined to people on low incomes, even though more on low incomes may be affected by it.

Liz Truss is appalling. I wouldn't take anything she says seriously.

I think poverty and inequality should currently be the main focus, not that I'm hopeful seeing as how the last decade of tories has entrenched inequality in our society. It is odd however that the department looking at this doesn't have anything to say about intersectionality and instead dismiss race, gender and sexuality issues as 'trendy' when they go hand in hand with class inequality and poverty. I expect the usual lines about white working class boys to be trotted out next.

Gender pay gap and equal pay are different things and resolving them requires different approaches.

Equal pay is paying the same for work of equal value I.e. Same grade, level etc. The gender pay gap is the average pay of all the women in an organisation vs the average pay of all the men.

As a government department the issue will be lack of female representation at senior levels which can be addressed by recruiting more women at senior levels and internal promotions. Your point about recruiting women at lower levels is valid which is why the focus is on progressing women through the organisation.

Trust me when I say pay gaps for other protected characteristics e.g. race and disability will be worse in many sectors.

Focusing on removing barriers for all people is also a valid way to address the gender pay gap.

In the public sector, men and women get paid the same in the same roles. There is little or no scope for personal pay negotiation, which men are typically better at.

What is usually the main contributor to pay inequality in that average pay for men is more than average pay for women is that there are more men in higher paid roles, so any actions to address this need to look at the barriers preventing women progressing.

This is usually down to women being more likely to be the main carers for children and taking on a bigger responsibility for housework, so wanting to work part time or compressed hours etc to fit everything in, and also around difficulties travelling away for work causes with childcare, especially overnight.

So the biggest improvement for women's pay overall would be a combination of employers not expecting long or unsocial hours at work, societal expectation that men are equally likely to have parental or other domestic responsibilities so men don't get ahead because they have a female partner picking everything else up at home for them, so it isn't disproportionately men progressing into higher paid roles and which is a vicious circle because that makes it more likely that its the woman who 'has' to take a back seat because she earns less.

Making fathers take a significant proportion of parental leave would probably also help, eg 3 months of the current minimum maternity leave being transferred to fathers, so employers don't just see women being out of the workplace for an extended period when they have children.