Gender pay gap

[FlyTipper]

The world divides into two: those who believe a gender pay gap exists, and those who don't.

Those who don't say women are doing different jobs. They are working part-time, prioritising home/family, do not want the high level responsibility and work load associated with high profile jobs. Thus women choose lower paid jobs because they prefer the conditions.

Those who believe it exists say two people presenting the same show or headlining the same film should be paid the same but clearly are not.

My position: women do different work and this largely explains the observed pay gap. But where the world is set up for men to succeed, women have to pick up the 'crumbs' they can. SO the pay gap doesn't truly exist, but that isn't because of women's choice.

As befits my character, I like to have my views tested. DO you agree?

@fermatstheorem "- do you think it would help you to read an elementary logic text book? You have asserted that it is never the case that men are paid more than women for the same job"

Saying I need a logic textbook when you've misrepresented/strawmanned my opinion is HILARIOUS

Here's a reminder of what I said and my stance on equal pay for equal jobs (Literally posted this multiple times)

""When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

"According to data for 8.7m employees worldwide gathered by Korn Ferry, a consultancy, women in Britain make just 1% less than men who have the same function and level at the same employer."

Me saying that the pay gap almost disappears, and women make 1% less than men for the same jobs at the same companies DOES NOT = "asserting that it is never the case that men are paid more than women for the same job"

LOL

I have experience of pay gap for equal work.

One job, large FTSE FS firm. Team of about 20. Several women were top performers, highest volume of cases, highest satisfaction scores from the clients, lowest error rate, and two of the women were also doing some additional complex cases which the general team did not do.

Turned out they were being paid less than nearly all of the (lower performing in every way, except Friday pub-going) men by between 10-15%. One it was nearly 25%.

It was, of course, forbidden to discuss pay in that company.

It was, of course, forbidden to discuss pay in that company.

Which is one of the main reasons so many employers have got away with ignoring equal pay legislation, because it can be so difficult to know what you are being paid compared with your comparators.

"forbidden to discuss pay"

Well, exactly. I believe this sort of clause in contracts is now illegal. But what goes on in practice...

I also wonder how widespread gagging clauses like the one I signed are? Because I'd like to be able to discuss the details (beyond "this happened sometime in the last five years to an unspecified but fairly large group of women") but I can't. And it makes me wonder whether there's a very widespread but massively underreported problem - underreported due to precisely this sort of gagging clause.

Gagging clauses preventing discussion on pay are fairly common sonic - I’ve been subject to them at all the places I’ve worked in the private sector. I wasn’t aware that kind of pay discussion gag was illegal - it’s still alive and well at our place.

Public sector (academia) obviously has more pay transparency. When the NHS and uni pay spines were aligned I was working for a large UK uni.

eBear and fermat well exactly - there does need to be more transparency over pay. One country I’ve worked in everyone’s tax returns and income is publically available. You need to pay a small fee and your details are visible to the person whose pay you’ve been snooping on - the highest paid however many in the town were also published in the local newspaper
A very different culture - but the company I worked for there still forbade pay discussions. Apparently so this is so that they can ‘remain competitive.’

And it makes me wonder whether there's a very widespread but massively underreported problem - underreported due to precisely this sort of gagging clause.

I think so - but who knows?

Even if you can't be forbidden from talking about salary now, we don't have a culture of doing it. Colleagues get very uncomfortable with it. I know we got the same percentage rise last payrise round, but of course, if you're already on different salaries, the one on more money gets more of a raise, so the gap widens.

I wasn’t aware that kind of pay discussion gag was illegal - it’s still alive and well at our place.

There's something in the 2010 Equality Act abour they can't enforce such gags if you're asking for the sake of establishing equality, but I can't remember the details without looking it up.

Yeah that’s a good point. I know that while the public sector places I’ve worked in have had very strict ‘letter of the law’ type cultures, the reality in large internationals is that they do what they want, and if that clashes with employment law then they still do what they want. The union remains toothless these days.

Blackballing exists, and it’s often better to leave quietly with a payoff than to rock the boat. And I have witnessed some pretty unpleasant stuff in this vein, both financially and sexually (NDA s again...)

That doesn’t benefit workers at large but I fully see why someone would take that route out - it’s a big thing to throw your career away to make a point.

That's an interesting point, EBearhug. When my equal pay case was going through, AFAIK, we were reliant on male colleagues volunteering their pay information to act as comparators. Whether this was just at the early stages, and the organisation could then be forced to disclose detailed breakdowns having established there was a case to be investigated, I don't know.

(I do know that management shafted us on the PR front. In between the claimants being shown what we thought was the final deal and the version that went to the union they slipped in some extra stuff that made it look like we'd agreed to "Rob Peter to pay Paul", creating a lot of bad feeling.)

I'd also like to mention the very real impact equal pay makes. My take-home is below the median wage for the UK. I am a single parent and mine is the only income coming into the house. Prior to my ten percent plus pay rise, I quite frequently found myself dipping into ever dwindling savings for those end of the month emergencies like new school shoes. Now I can actually live on my income and actually put a bit back into my savings.

Anyone who doesn't believe in the gender pay gap care to explain this?

Piece in today's Times 'Women fund managers better than men - but are paid less'

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/women-fund-managers-outperform-men-but-are-still-paid-less-j8w5kwdwm?shareToken=f1350b7220561947548d814ee6479ee1