A question about the gender pay gap

[Pipbin]

The gender pay gap has been in the news recently and I have a question about it.

When it is quoted that women get paid 80% of what men get paid is that a direct comparison? Does it mean that Jane from accounts gets paid £80 to Jim from accounts £100?
Or is it that all the working women get paid 80% of all the working men, and therefore not taking into account that men tend to occupy the top jobs with women taking the lower paid or part time work.

No axe to grind, no comment to make, I just like to have accurate facts.

There's a mix of things - there are definitely specific cases where women are paid less than their direct coworkers, and you sometimes see cases of that in the news. One reason for this is because there is a lot of pay secrecy, and in organisations where you have to negotiate your pay, that tends to work against women - men are likely to be rewarded for asking for more pay by getting more pay - women are less likely to do so, and are less likely to negotiate in the first place. Is that cause or effect, though? I'll be interested to see what happens once organisations over 250 employees have to publish pay data. (I don't know what detail will be required to know how clear it will make things.)

There are also cases where roles which are mostly done by women are seen as worth less than roles which are mostly done by men - so there was a case not that far back where a council was found to be in the wrong for paying dustbin operatives (mostly men) more than cleaners (mostly women), because the jobs were shown to be equivalent. Even if they're not directly equivalent, it is generally true that female-dominated jobs tend to be paid less than male-dominated jobs. Compare IT (male) with nursing (female) - they probably have similar levels of training, with IT probably being a bit less. If things go wrong in nursing, then people might die. That's less likely to happen in most IT roles (though obviously there are a few IT roles which might affect healthcare in some way.) But IT is mostly better paid than nursing, mostly because men do it.

On top of that, when you look at the part time roles in the country, women do a far greater percentage of them compared with men, and that's going to show a difference - even if you're on the same hourly rate, if you work 20 hours rather than 40, you're going to be taking home half of what the full-time person does. But there are also a lot of poorly paid part time jobs, even when you take into account that the hours are fewer.

And yes, men do tend to take more of the top jobs as well - but why is that? It's not because women aren't competent (nor because men are, in some cases.)

So basically, it's a bit of everything. There's some more info on how differences are measured here -
www.equalpayportal.co.uk/statistics/
ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Gender_pay_gap_statistics

There's some more discussion in these threads -
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2502617-To-think-Justine-Roberts-should-not-have-written-this-in-the-FT?
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/guest_posts/2504676-Guest-post-Equal-Pay-Day-The-gender-pay-gap-isnt-a-myth

Great post ebear

Age also seems to be a factor - like EBear says it's probably not just one thing but a combination of factors causing this.

The gap seems to get bigger at the 30-40 bracket (and continues to get worse).
Having children probably has something to do with this. Also 30 tends to be where your career takes off and you earn more.
Maybe it takes off for men a lot easier than for women?

What an excellent summary EBearhug.

A very complete summery eBear, thank you.

While I don't deny that there is a gender pay gap I just wanted to make sure that it was in a direct comparison of people and the jobs they do, rather than just taking 100 random men and 100 random women and comparing their wages, for example, and not taking into account part time work etc.

It's rather like when it is said that the life expectance in the 1700 was just 45 or something but it doesn't take into account the fact that the high infant mortality rate would skew the average.

You do acknowledge that women being expected to do childcare and housekeeping for free as well as traditional "pink collar" jobs being paid badly is just as shitty as same job, lower pay, right?

Just as "If you don't die as a toddler then you could live to be 70" is not much better than "You are guaranteed to live to 45 and then die".

There are also vocations that recognise the vocational nature of the job by awarding long service payments. Guess who tend to miss out on them because of career gaps in their 30s?

This is what I'm asking. I want to check that the pay gap is when comparing people in like for like jobs.

I don't deny for a moment that women are paid less, as I said I don't want a debate.

Just as "If you don't die as a toddler then you could live to be 70" is not much better than "You are guaranteed to live to 45 and then die"

You are misunderstanding me there. What I mean is that the statistics can be skewed if certain factors aren't taken into account.

I think what Vestal means is, if the reason for the difference was that 'women's' jobs are being poorly paid (or not paid at all) that is just as bad, and in need of correction as if women are being paid less for the exact same job.

To put it another way, even if it was just adding up all hours 'worked' and dividing (so women, who are more likely to be part time, earned less overall) then that is still a terrible, skewed statistic, because those women who aren't working aren't sitting doing nothing - they're doing childcare, housework, other unpaid roles (caring, transporting people/things, shopping etc).

You might feel inclined to say that they're giving a false picture of work done, because they're only including paid work, which, I would argue, isn't correct - after all, if you'd pay a nanny or a cleaner to do it, doesn't that make it work? In many cases it's directly taking work away from someone who would otherwise be paid (eg. Childcare) - shouldn't this also be captured in the stats rather than completely ignored?

In my old job they did a pay benchmarking exercising, which involved a lot of work looking at job descriptions, length of service, experience, qualifications etc and normalising for all those variables (and others I've probably forgotten) before calculating the pay gap.

They were trying very hard to look at like for like positions and pay.

The statistics are only skewed if you believe the comparison is invalid for the purpose you intend to use it for. The mean of a dataset might be very different from the median. But it depends what you want, doesn't it? What do you want?

Here's an example of how you could interpret some data: a while back, I read the conclusions of a study done for the union representing management and professional levels in the company I worked for. They looked at pay, qualifications, performance evaluations, etc.

Women scored higher on evaluations at every grade.

There are a number of ways you can interpret that. You could decide that the women employed by the company were simply better than the men. You could decide that incompetent men never got fired, thus pulling down the men's scores. And so on.

The study however noted that the time in grade was higher for higher performing women, so what was actually happening was that the company took much longer to promote women, so there would be a big tranche of overachieving women rammed up against the top of each grade. (The way the company worked meant they were likely to have the same responsibilities as the grade above - plenty of cases of people in "acting up" roles for years, including myself).

Oh yes, and pay. Even when they got promoted - a level 2 "outstanding" woman would only just outearn a level 1 "good" man.

But it depends what you want, doesn't it? What do you want?

All I want to know is whether the statistics compare directly two identical jobs.
So let's say staff at Sainsburys, for example, does everyone on the till get paid the same hourly rate, does every manager get paid the same, everyone working in HR?
Does a male manager of one branch get paid more than the female manager of a branch the same size?

I think there are a lot of very subtle factors too. For example I used to work in a huge well known company. Everyone, regardless of qualifications or experience started at the bottom of the lowest pay grade and payrises were based on your annual appraisal. I did an identical job to two colleagues, one male and one female. The females were set a more demanding set of objectives than the male, and this was always explained away with things like, 'well, the women find typing easier , so they work faster' and 'objectives are based on the individual, not the role'. As a result female staff often struggled to meet their objectives whilst male staff exceeded them. So on paper it looked like the men performed better but in reality less was asked of them. Payrises were a percentage of your previous salary so as soon as you got one better payrise than a colleague, the colleague could never catch up.

There are also cases where roles which are mostly done by women are seen as worth less than roles which are mostly done by men - so there was a case not that far back where a council was found to be in the wrong for paying dustbin operatives (mostly men) more than cleaners (mostly women), because the jobs were shown to be equivalent.

It is true that a job based mostly indoors emptying bins weighing no more than about 2kg (and containing mostly paper, or at worst a banana skin or a half-full yogurt pot) is exactly equivalent to a job that is conducted almost entirely outside come rain, sleet or snow, emptying bins weighing regularly weighing over 20kg (and possibly over a tonne for trade waste) containing all manner of decomposing items.

Oh, wait ...

That's less likely to happen in most IT roles (though obviously there are a few IT roles which might affect healthcare in some way.)

Very true. I do find it amazing that, in 2015, all aircraft systems are still manually operated by the pilot and co-pilot, automated vehicle and traffic safety systems non-existent, power stations have all of those windy wheels that have to be manually wound to release pressure and prevent catastrophes, and all manner of electronic safety equipment is just completely fictional.

Oh, wait ...

I want to check that the pay gap is when comparing people in like for like jobs.

Me too.

From examples I have seen, when adjusted for similar job roles the pay gap reduces to about 6-8% - so it is there and there's progress to be made, but it's not the 20% claimed (or 23% claimed in the US).

Oddly enough, if you take the "throw it in the air and see what falls down" method of calculation, in the US white men (the patriarchal poster boys) are paid about 20% less than Asian men.

in organisations where you have to negotiate your pay, that tends to work against women - men are likely to be rewarded for asking for more pay by getting more pay - women are less likely to do so, and are less likely to negotiate in the first place. Is that cause or effect, though?

Good question - why don't women negotiate as much as men, in general?

Even in roles that don't specifically state it, negotiation is used pretty much everywhere. In direct negotiation roles such as legal roles, sales, account management, etc. a lack of negotiation for one's own benefit potentially highlights an inadequacy (or at least, a disadvantage to other applicants) for the role.

Good question - why don't women negotiate as much as men, in general?

That's covered quite a bit in the thread about "should Justine have written this?" Women are good at negotiating on behalf of other people, but not so much for themselves (as a rule; obviously there are exceptions.) This has a lot to do with socialisation, and good girls shouldn't be pushy or demanding. But also, when women do negotiate, it can work against them; they're not seen as asking for their due (as men will be), but they are viewed negatively for it, and are less likely to get a payrise or bonus as a result.

I think there's also lack of education - no one ever told me I would have to push for payrises and bonuses, and early on in my career, I assumed I didn't have to, because I was told it's all performance-related, so I assumed as long as I was performing well, then I should get payrises and bonuses based on that. And I did get them, but I wasn't getting them at the same levels as my male colleagues - when a pay audit was run on the department I was working in then, I got a 26% rise to level me up. Mind you, when I had questioned my pay a year or so earlier, as a colleague had let slip what he was earning, and I was asking, "if my performance isn't as good as his, why has no one told me?" The response I had was, "It's a sackable offence to discuss pay." Had I had a mentor to explain these things along the way, then I would have dealt with it differently, but it's really only been in the last 5 years or so (in my 30s) that it's been made clear to me. I suspect there are lots and lots more women in that position. (It's got bog all to do with performance in any case, else I'd be on masses more than some of my colleagues. It has a lot to do with who you know, who knows about the work you do, and telling people about it - no point producing the most fantastic work ever if no one's aware of it, when it comes to pay. And satisfaction in a job well done isn't enough to pay the bills.)

Men don't always bother negotiating much either, but if you've got a woman and a man working in the same role, and neither negotiates, there's a chance the man will still do better financially - there's a whole load of unconscious biases around things like men showing managerial talent and assertiveness, but women being bossy, men being promoted for their potential, whereas women are promoted for what they've achieved. That's part of the thing mentioned above, women being given harder goals than men.

I know someone who spent a couple of years fighting for their pay to be made equal - they got it in the end, but said it was such hard work, they wouldn't bother in future. (I'm more stubborn than that.)

The guardian recently published a piece based on a study where women in their 20s are out earning men, however once you get over 30 that changes. Which could be down to a couple of reasons I guess. First by 30 most of us who want children would have stopped work or started to work part time. Alternatively we are seeing the changes that the pay acts are enforcing are actually working and in 10 years we will see a greater reflection of that change.

Guardian report here

Cleaners don't just empty bins weighing less than 2kg. Cop onto yourself.

But do they ever haul around bins weighing up to a tonne in wind, rain, sleet and snow? Cop onto the rest of my post.

Hi all. I started the 'Justine Roberts' thread that has been linked,

On that thread there wasn't much discussion of the statistics and it would be good to tease this out. 'What is the real pay gap on a like-for-like basis?'.

One statistic that was quoted on that thread is that the pay gap gets much wider higher up the pay scale. Not just in terms of money but in percentage.

If I recall correctly the like-for-like pay gap among the top decile of earners is 20%.

So typically very senior women executive level employees get paid 20% less than similar level men on average.

At the bottom of the pay scale I believe men may be getting paid slightly less than women. Men trapped in the so called glass basement.

The thing that one has to be careful of though is that the absolute numbers of women in high paying jobs is much lower than men. The numbers of women on the boards of FTSE 100 companies is very small indeed. Likewise very highly paid jobs in the City are dominated by men. I worked in the City and barely ever saw a woman in any senior trading or management role.

So even if women were getting paid the same as men at all levels, the numbers who reach the highest levels of the pay scale is pitifully small. The discrimination occurs not just in pay at any given level but also in the chances of promotion to a higher grade.

This is borne out in the post by slightlyglitter about women trapped in a grade unable to progress compared to men. Also the post by treaclesoda where women are set harder performance targets than men.

Wmittens - the reason white men on average get paid less than Asian men is because the category 'White Men'' includes all categories of employee from top to bottom of the income scale.

Asian men tend to be clustered in relatively high paying jobs because of immigration policy that requires immigrants to have a certain minimum qualification, salary to gain immigration status.

White men are unlikely to be being discriminated against once educational qualifications are taken into account.

WMittens - is it likely to be always a man that hauls that bin out front to be collected? Dustbin collecting, like cleaning, is dull and repetitive work. Like many other jobs which are low in "skill". I really don't get why one job is worthy of more money than another.