My Company's equal pay review

[thatstoast]

On average, men get paid 14% more than women at my company. They hold reviews every few years and the conclusion for 2016 is:

The gender pay gap is not due to women being paid less for work of equal value, but because women occupy higher proportions of the lower grades, with men occupying more of the higher grades.

However they've decided that factors such as promotion and the impact of family and caring roles are outside of the scope of the review.

It feels like a big waste of time writing a 50 page report when the outcome is "yeah men get promoted more than women but shrug"

Feeling very despondent about it all.

Good news about the end of sexism though, ebearhug. I bet you were happy when your manager announced that one.

Absolutely, and it was progress from just a week previously when I was just being over-sensitive.

I too am in IT. This all arose when I said there's an underlying culture of casual sexism, and it needs changing by tackling the culture from the bottom up, not just focusing on managers and execs. Except we don't need to do anything, because I was wrong about there being any sexism.

I think firms can change the culture in their organisation, eg by senior male staff showing family is a priority, working from home is fine and being very visible about it.

It's actually really hard to change culture particularly in relation to gender bias as it's so deep rooted that many don't actually notice it exists.

I am heavily involved in this area, specifically trying to address gender imbalances and have been for a number of years and even I was shocked that I have gender bias.

So despite all of my proactive efforts subconsciously I have some particular gender bias.

From that it is pretty safe to assume that this is very common and given that this is most likely as a result of social conditioning this makes addressing it through cultural change in an organisation very difficult.

Of course organisations can make themselves more family friendly but that's not cultural change.

But 'family friendly' normally means 'women friendly' . We had an international women's day event at my work. Someone asked about the take-up of shared parental leave by men -zero.

It's a shame you seem so pessimistic about removing the effects of bias, shenanigans.

As luck would have it, I'm going to be involved in the recruitment process for the first time so that will be interesting. My organization is definitely 'family friendly' in terms of flexible working but the outcome seems to be a lot of women get moved onto the mummy track.

Oh no not pessimistic at all. I'm realistic about how hard this really is and the challenges faced, I'm in for the long haul so will keep chipping away. I will still be chipping away at it when the glory hunters have finally understood how big a fucking challenge this is and fucked off to the new exciting thing.

I do want to sound encouraging (as opposed to patronising) so recruitment panel is a good start. Keep questioning things and maybe just maybe we will get there.

And also question why it is assumed family friendly automatically means women friendly - are dads not equally responsible for parenting and if not, why not?

Aagh the fucking mummy track
Companies could do culture change by things like:

• giving male employees a stint of paternity pay mirroring their contractual mat pay
• asking men who don't take that leave after the birth of a child why not
• making a point of penalising working long hours
• thanking working parents and talking positively about staff who balance work/home
• actively looking for opportunities to reward/thank women publicly for their contribution

Yes, we have quite a good occupational maternity pay package but shared parental pay is statutory only so that makes a big difference. That's definitely something i'm going to suggest. I've also realised that the gap between men and women starts to really widen at the grade where flexitime is removed.

This article about recruitment popped up on my twitter feed today:

www.ft.com/content/9974b0ce-e7bb-11e6-967b-c88452263daf

Interesting, although a bit american. Has anyone ever seen Ninja in a job advert?

thatstoast interesting article, it sounds familiar to me. I'm a web developer so I work in a very male industry.

Yes, I've seen "Ninja" & "Rockstar" in job ad's.

I also noticed that when I was looking for a job and I checked out "Our Team" pages of companies website how few women there were in the photos of the dev teams. AND I've been the token (black - well brown) girl for photos i.e. I volunteered a (male) friend when someone came round asking to take photos for an apprenticeship website/brochure and the response was "actually we were hoping for a girl..."

Someone came in on friday for an interview for a Games Developer job, naturally, he was male. I when speaking later about the new position to the CEO (v. small company), along with some of the other developers, I mentioned how it was going to be another guy, he said that we don't get many women's CVs. I don't remember what the ad for my job said but I don't think the word "ninja" was in it.

just had a search and found a lot of techy jobs with ninja in the advert. One of which is actually similar to my job but I work in a really traditional sector. My company definitely doesn't need to worry about those words in particular.

Definitely sucky to be the token girl/bme/random tickbox person. I tried to be inclusive when designing our website and I was worried about that. On the other hand, one criticism of a particular image I chose was that it didn't have any men in it.

There are things that companies can do to provide equity of opportunity.

Having mentors who encourage younger staff to take training courses, apply for promotions, help with CV writing, interview technique, introduce them to others high up etc.

Greater flexibility for employees with young children/caring commitments (it's almost impossible for a mother with a disabled child to have a high-level career, for example).

Support for childcare, e.g. creche, childcare vouchers etc.

Better parental leave for both parents.

There are all sorts of 'soft' benefits as well, like a nice place to sit and express breastmilk, positive reinforcement of family flexibility etc.

Why should companies do this? Because it can make them more profitable. As they recruit they get a better selection of applicants, instead of running the risk of mediocre men filling key positions, because better women have dropped out along the way.

there are many, many papers, talks and research doc.s which back this up as best economic policy for a company. If people can let go of their blind bias, companies can actually thrive through greater diversity.

We have sales ninjas. I don't know if we officially do, actually, but a young colleague has it in her LinkedIn profile as her job title.

Is ninja the new gravitas? I remember reading how gravitas means senior white male so shouldn't be used in job ads. I've argued for jobs not to be over-specified before, as if you put engineering degree preferable when actually its perfectly fine without one, you'll get mostly men applying.

Language bias is one way organisations may be unconsciously biaised and for me personally it was only finding out that I have gender bias that really woke me up to this.

As for the tech and other similar male dominated industries, they do have a challenge on their hands. For those of you in these industries reflect on how many females were on your course, I bet there wasn't that many. This leaves a problem for organisations as there simply isn't the same volume of female talent to choose from and that's before you factor in any bias.

I confess that I avoid anything with 'rockstar' or 'ninja' or any of these cool descriptions - it generally indicates the company isn't actually going to be great to work for because they'll expect all hours, hacking, and generally bro-style behaviour.

I'm older and grumpy, and I know that if you give developers an inch (I'm a developer) they'll take a mile, and I'd prefer devs that do their job and go home to devs that go off-piste in the office at 2am.

I mentioned how it was going to be another guy, he said that we don't get many women's CVs. I don't remember what the ad for my job said but I don't think the word "ninja" was in it

When I interview, I agree there are often not many women's CVs. But I interview every single one, because I also know that the research shows that women don't boast as much as men, and for 30mins of time, I'm going to talk to them and check for myself (phone interviews first - I'm not wasting their time/travel/money either).