Gender pay gap calculations don't make sense?

[sunshinecloudyday]

I'm really looking for opinions and for anyone to enlighten me to why I cannot understand why the gender pay gap is calculated this way (see image).

It doesn't take into account men and women doing different jobs or working different hours, which I think it should.

Why aren't men and women doing exactly the same jobs for the same hours compared?

It said on the news that the gender pay gap at Ryan Air was around 72% males higher than females. But if more males are pilots and more females are flight attendants I can reasonably expect there to be a difference. It isn't Ryan airs fault they chose different jobs, so the companies shouldn't be punished? Instead shouldn't we focus on why men and women choose different jobs and work patterns and aim to even this out at the root of the problem?

It doesn't take into account different working patterns, e.g. if one employee is full time and the other works 2 days a week I would expect the full timer to be more likely to get a bonus?

If more women choose to work part time due to childcare surely that is their choice and they will understand their career may take a temporary hit. Men also have the option to take paternity leave or work part time also but again I don't see why the company should be punished for this or why the calculations are not adjusted to show this?

I feel like maybe I'm missing something?! Please enlighten me - I want to fully understand the situation before I talk to others about this....

But if Phase Eight were to take on an extra 46 men in low paid jobs, while it would reduce their median gap, it would still be 46 extra salaries they've taken on to do so. More likely they would fire 46 women and replace them with 46 men. Same overall payroll, median gap closed. But that wouldn't be good for women at all. So trying to achieve closing of these gaps in companies that massively employ women is potentially worse for women. Which is why the stats don't mean anything on their own.

I think it also has a bearing on where the company is based, doesn't it? For example, Ryanair will have head offices outside of scope of this data collection and thus a good number of employees would not be counted and in turn skew the findings. How can you therefore compare Ryanair with easyJet (who's offices are presumably inside the geographical catchment area)?

The same goes for Ryanair. Does anyone really think they're going to take on a load of extra male cabin crew on top ofthe female cabin crew to try and even out the lower paid numbers? This is a company that charges a pound to use the toilets! They aren't going to add salaries to their costs just to close gaps. More likely they'll look at firing women cabin crew, hiring men cabin crew, closing the gap and keeping their overheads the same.

I looked at the public services near me and it was notable that one of the local authorities had a very small gap compared to all the others, so it would be interesting to know why as they are all providing similar services.

I think the argument about women "choosing" lower paid jobs or shorter hours is disingenuous, as you see many threads on mumsnet about women not being comfortable with their "choice" either because of partner's wishes or because of the cost of childcare. I personally would choose to split childcare and work equally with a partner but since DD's dad is a nob and does practically nothing (he's also an XP because of this!) that choice isn't available I choose what's best out of the remaining options, which was to give up a senior management job for self employment (and before that to work slightly less than full time). It's not what I'd choose in an ideal world.

Many companies may choose to further outsource the lower paid support jobs to reduce the %

but not all women are mothers, or want to be, and not all mothers are the primary caregiver for their children, and even if a woman is a mother and the primary carer she can still be brilliant

I would be interested to see, if we took all of this into account, if we just took that this was the case at face value, without going into the whys, whether that explains the pay gap - ie whether the ratios then match up. Because if we knew that, then we'd be able to know where to focus effort - if it matches up, then the effort needs to go on supporting women to be able to make free choices, but if, after doing this analysis, it turns out that there is still a gap, then the effort needs to be on making working places examine their biases and pay fairly.

That's happening irrespective of the pay gap unfortunately. A local employer to me is outsourcing all staff that earn under 30k (first 6 grades) to cut costs. These employees are mostly women but no mention has been made of that.

But the Gap will be easier to explain - in the same way that the Phase 8 Gap is easy to explain

By the way - I chose to stall my career for my family. It made sense for us. But it is also what I wanted to do. I had children late in life and I had burnt out from work. So I welcomed spending time with my kids - it’s been fun and I have never regretted it for a minute.

So you have to also account for the many individual decsions that are behind these figures.

And maybe, just maybe these figures reflect the preferences and life decision of women. And we should be allowed to make these decisions without it being seen to be a bad thing.

It should be over 250 employees but I'm not 100% sure. The gap will be reported separately though. Company A gap and company B gap (higher grades) so there is no requirement to monitor movement between then 2. As I said, I don't think the pay gap is the driving factor for it but I also don't think they've given any thought to the real impact it will have to the female employees being employed on worse conditions under an outsourced company.

I would say it's a good time for women applying for well paid jobs and also for men applying for lower paid jobs.

But if companies are named and shamed, there is a real danger of the law of unintended consequences.

All good questions! I have been responsible for calculating my employers equal pay gap and they are all questions we have asked. Most of your questions are answered in that this is about the difference in pay between men and women and not equal pay for equal work between men and women.

For the organisation I work for (education) there is a massive gap because our lowest paid jobs all tend to be part time (cleaners, lunch time staff, catering staff) and on the whole they predominantly females in these roles. In my experience most men don't work part time (this is changing) and those that do tend to be older and cling some sort of former works pension or maybe are caters for a partner. I know this isn't the case for all men, you do get exceptions.

In our organisation we are predominantly female (about 3/4) but those men we do have with the exception of caretakers and the odd cover supervisor are all qualified teachers and head teachers so when comparing them to the large range of women's jobs there is a large gender pay gap!

We are about to start calculating this years and hoping that the additional men we have taken on I'm lower paid roles might affect the figures.... personally I don't think they will but we can hope.

The things is there isn't much we can do about this. If more men don't apply for the lower paid jobs what can we do? We already employ a lot of women in the higher paid jobs and to be honest, we try to get more men in texting anyway so that won't help our gender pay gap 🤔

It's unlikely that Ryanair or Phase 8 will be firing female staff to even things up - but if it makes them consider prioritising men who apply for predominately female staffed roles and prioritising woman for currently predominately male staffed roles, this will help overall. (It's not just about getting woman in high paid roles, but making it more acceptable to hire men in lower paid roles to stop "low paid/low status" jobs being seen as woman's work).

Companies like Ryanair and chain clothes shops do have relatively high turn over of staff so this should be achievable without putting anyone out of work. If they can't find woman who'll do the male dominated jobs, perhaps it'll make them look at why their job structure stops woman applying or from gaining promotion.

But the point about Phase Eight is they shouldn't have to change. Their board of directors is an even split. They are a major employer of women. They would have to promote over 1000 women to head office to even out the mean, and evening out the median is just token. Yes they could encourage more men to work in retail. But when a company that has half of its board as women, employs huge numbers of women, gives good bonuses to women, has to change its structure to meet a goal someone has set, something isn't right.

I must add I have no invested interest in them. I'd never even heard of them prior to them being mentioned in all this reporting.

and even if a woman is a mother and the primary carer she can still be brilliant

From my anecdata of women/mothers I know, I think there’s a bit of an acknowledgement from some women that something has to give, so they either don’t pursue or actively avoid promotion that either ups their working hours away from PT, or the responsibility/stress if their partner is already the higher earner.

But they also need men to apply for the lower paid jobs

I can’t see many men wanting to sell mother of the bride type outfits that phase 8 sell.

And frankly, when I am buying a smart frock, I am more likely to be influenced by the opinion of a female sales assistant.

But the point about Phase Eight is they shouldn't have to change

They got pilloried in the media and some prominent politicians were talking about how bad it was and people were tweeting about boycotting it.

It really saddens me that girls don't consider STEM and senior roles, getting stuck at the bottom.

I want a more senior role on my STEM job. My management seem totally clueless about how to support me in preparing for that, and apparently "we can’t change the way things are done." I can easily see how people get stuck, or at least delayed, even if they don't want to.

Yes eurochick I understand why technically they could justify not including them, but in this context it’s clearly disingenuous. Partners aren’t ‘just’ the owners of the business, they are a key plant of the workforce. It would be the equivalent of another business excluding the top few toers of management.

mother it was all them. Article here refers to it although the numbers don’t match the final numbers reported, so maybe they made other subsequent changes: www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2018/mar/14/gender-pay-gap-what-we-learned-in-week-three

Key part!

And unlike outsourced workers they wouldn’t be picked up as employees of any other company.

Re Phase eight - if we think the only issue is woman not getting high paid jobs that are traditionally seen as for men, then we are missing the need for what is currently seen as "jobs for woman" needs to be seen as equally suitable for men.

Equality won't happen without breaking down the barriers at the other end to men being the lower earners. To men more likely to have the part time, low pay and responsibilty jobs that fit round childcare.

Yes, the stats are made up of lots of woman making the choice to put their career on the back burner to take on caring responsibility for children, but if we want men to be as likely to be the one to take the career 'hit', then they have to be as equally likely to be the lower paid partner in a couple.

Equality won't happen without breaking down the barriers at the other end to men being the lower earners. To men more likely to have the part time, low pay and responsibilty jobs that fit round childcare

And all the media talk and politicians talk has been about women and the glass ceiling - but this is also a really really important conversation that hasn't been talked about much.

if we want men to be as likely to be the one to take the career 'hit'

That's pretty reliant on women - as a class - seeing reducing their hours/packing in work to raise their family as a career hit though - many don't, and just view it as a new phase of their life. Will men, even if they are lower paid, have that motivation off their own back?