MNHQ here: Gender Pay Gap reporting - petition to reinstate it in April 2021

[JuliaMumsnet]

Hello

Gender pay gap reporting - the requirement for employers of more than 250 people to release their gender pay gap figures - was suspended by the government in spring 2020 due to the pandemic.

Many organisations have been calling for it not to be suspended again this year and instead to be reinstated fully. Earlier this week the Equality and Human Rights Commission announced that it would start enforcement action this year - but not until October, six months after the usual deadline of 4 April.

The mountain of evidence that women’s careers and work have been more affected by pandemic measures than men’s grows every day - lots of you at will know we've been campaigning on this recently.

WALC (Women in Advertising & Communications Leadership), which is organising a petition about this, had this to say:

"GPG data has repeatedly shown that there are still far too few women progressing into senior management and leadership positions.

It's crucial for organisations to better support, retain and promote women; this begins with analysing their pay data and developing quality action plans with employees.

Decades of work to close the gender pay gap is at stake if this flagship report is shelved. No measurement means no management and vitally needed focus will reduce on essential workplace initiatives needed to close both pay and role gaps, further entrenching existing gender inequality in our economy."

What are thoughts?

Thanks

MNHQ

Signed. Thanks for publicising this.

Given they tell employers to report their employees pay based on 'self identified gender' it isn't worth the paper it is written on.

One highly paid man identifying as a woman completely corrupts the statistics,

Now, if they were to produce a SEX pay gap report.......we might be interested in that.

www.gov.uk/guidance/who-needs-to-report-their-gender-pay-gap#gender-identity

[quote ConservativesForWomen]Given they tell employers to report their employees pay based on 'self identified gender' it isn't worth the paper it is written on.

One highly paid man identifying as a woman completely corrupts the statistics,

Now, if they were to produce a SEX pay gap report.......we might be interested in that.

www.gov.uk/guidance/who-needs-to-report-their-gender-pay-gap#gender-identity[/quote]
that's disappointing - I would sign a petition that wanted the Sex pay gap to be measured.

I can think of several people who waited until they got to the top of their careers before transitioning to identify as women - that can have a huge impact on the numbers.

thanks for highlighting it @JuliaMumsnet but I'm afraid the data integrity is undermined by allowing people to self-identify their 'gender' (meaning sex).

While that's true I'm not sure the numbers would be statistically significant amid the widening gap between the sexes. In this instance better imperfect data than none.

No Brainer. Signed and shared. Thank you for starting this thread.

I recently heard that there was a report saying a kit how many females were on the boards of (was it FTSE100?) companies and that it was at an all time high. I did wonder if it was on the basis of sex or gender (I do know of some city firms who would be ok on this on the basis of gender but not legal sex definition).

Surely this absolutely should be about the sex pay gap not gender. Afterall discrimination in the workplace is based on likelihood of getting pregnant rather than whether you wear lipstick.

Signed. Couldn't believe it when I heard this had been stopped just before submissions were due- so most companies would have had the data ready anyway. Getting the pay gap reporting in place was a huge victory, we cannot lose this vital reporting tool at this critical juncture, when other data indicates the pandemic has set women's equality at work back by decades.

Thanks for this.

[quote ConservativesForWomen]Given they tell employers to report their employees pay based on 'self identified gender' it isn't worth the paper it is written on.

One highly paid man identifying as a woman completely corrupts the statistics,

Now, if they were to produce a SEX pay gap report.......we might be interested in that.

www.gov.uk/guidance/who-needs-to-report-their-gender-pay-gap#gender-identity[/quote]
Exactly. Zero point to this exercise if the data can be corrupted.

There is no point in it unless its by sex and they drop the average over life time, or any average + similar jobs.

@gardenbird48

thanks for highlighting it *@JuliaMumsnet* but I'm afraid the data integrity is undermined by allowing people to self-identify their 'gender' (meaning sex).

My thoughts also.

If gender changes can yet again obfuscate the true data, then I'm out. I want to see this data based on sex, not gender. Anything else is unreliable data. Let's get angry about not having a system to track the true data instead of feeding into an unreliable system.

We aren’t Victorians any more - we don’t need a(n ?) euphemism for ‘sex’ these days.

@Liquorishtoffee you can find the latest version of the report at www.cranfield.ac.uk/som/research-centres/gender-leadership-and-inclusion-centre/female-ftse-board-report

Hopefully there is information on the data they collect.

As a PP says, zero point to it unless it is is a sex not gender pay gap.

@Liquorishtoffee

I recently heard that there was a report saying a kit how many females were on the boards of (was it FTSE100?) companies and that it was at an all time high. I did wonder if it was on the basis of sex or gender (I do know of some city firms who would be ok on this on the basis of gender but not legal sex definition).

It is at an all time high, but still far below 50%. And then if you look at the data underlying that, the vast majority if female "directors" are non-executive directors while the vast majority of executive directors (the people actually running the companies) are still male. They have used the requirement for NEDs to meet the optics of needing women on Boards, rather than actually promoting women to senior management positions in the companies, thus maintaining effectively the status quo. The focus needs to be on women in executive director positions, and all senior operational management roles beneath that.

As someone who is normally responsible for gender pay gap reporting at my company, I have found the delay enormously helpful. Trying to juggle my day job with childcare while WFH has been a nightmare for the best part of a year now. No one is going to stop talking about the gender pay gap just because reporting is pushed back a few months.

Can we please at the same time petition for the reporting to be on the basis of SEX - which is, after all, a protected characteristic?? I would be totally on board for that!

Women are still, in 2021, suffering from disparity in treatment on account of our biology, our sex, and our ability to bear children. How can inequality such as equal pay be measured and addressed, if we don't know what we are measuring? If we cannot measure sex, how can we measure discrimination?

SEX, not gender, is why women of childbearing age or with caring responsibilities miss promotions, are paid less. And, in the post-Covid fall out, are being chosen for redundancy: see Pregnant Then Screwed's latest research!!!

Gender reporting is essential.

I'm in a senior role. When it first came in I suddenly got a unprompted increase in my bonus % target. I realised a month or two later it was because others in my team (4 men, 2 women) had negotiated better bonus %. Despite me having high performance ratings, it took public reporting for them to align pay.

I try hard now to encourage my own team to talk openly about pay among themselves. Secrecy encourages disparities that tend to disadvantage women.

Oh and before anyone says...

I had asked for my bonus % to be increased a year earlier and been told no. A lot of employers will not do anything until their hand is forced.