GRA and GPG: how will this work?

[Backyard99]

Apologies if this has been covered in any detail, please delete if I’m duplicating.

I asked an HR colleague recently whether Gender Pay Gap reporting would be skewed by people like P Bunce and any other highly paid man identifying as both a man and a woman.

I was told that it was far too unlikely to make any difference. I thought that one case might be too many.

Not a constructive discussion; I think it was closed with ‘problematic’ and ‘trouble making.’

Anyone else had these discussions? Or planning them?

Any steer on how to phrase questions or continue the debate professionally would be welcome.

Thanks, and to all of you whose constructive, fair and (sorry!) brave posts have helped open my eyes.

I think the approach to this is largely summed up by:

If we look closely at this, it's a huge and unjustifiable problem in terms of balancing rights equally.

So we won't look closely. It's problematic.

And taking notice of obvious problems for women as opposed to shouting yay and clapping like a sealion and waving rainbows is transphobic and leads to being targeted by really scary behaviours.

The constructive approach is calmly and persistently pointing out as you say, that something being problematic is not an excuse for adults to run away from engaging with it

That this doesn't in any way benefit women but exclusively benefits male born people

That the numbers are potentially way larger than the original GRC was designed for based on the argument of barely enough people to make a difference

That this certainly does make a difference to fairness and equality and progress for women being recognised and met

That the whole point of collating information is to put it to practical use to improve society: once that information becomes fictional for PR reasons it is useless to that society, and then disproportionately negatively affects women. Bit of an Equality Act issue there. Impact Assessment needed.

You'd likely find the transcripts of the Scottish parliament census discussions useful as they went into the need for accurate data.

Thank you Michelle

clapping like a sea lion

Yes, it was at the end of one such display that I asked.

I would really like to make an official request to understand how my organisation plans to tackle this, but I’ve seen stronger women be shouted down or iced out.

I don’t want to be disingenuous but I genuinely cannot see how the two are not just a huge contradiction in terms.

Unlikely to make a difference where enough women are employed. Likely to make a difference where fewer women are present and even one male could skew the figures.

Look at crime rates for instance. Sexual offences committed by women are rising sharply in the UK. We've gone from zero women convicted of rape to six, with the numbers rising further every year. We know why - because male sexual offenders are self-identifying as women and their crimes recorded as female crime.

Or, to take a different example, the last two diversity surveys by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The 2017 one allowed self-id for the first time. SRA reported proudly, that according to their survey, the percentage of women employed in the legal profession (48%) was above the UK average (47%), therefore hurrah the legal profession must be doing something right. Later analysis by a legal blogger showed that 2% of that 48% were actually males who identify as trans and the actual percentage of women employed in the industry was below average.

So if HR identified a worsening pay gap and lower female representation at mid management level for instance and was trying to address this, even just one or two males counted as women could skew the figures, especially given that improvements to the pay gap are often measured in fractions of a percent.

Just remind your colleague that between 2 and 6% of males in the general population have a transvestic paraphilia. At 4%, that's over a million men in the UK. And we've gone from next to no one having a male colleague who identified as trans to every day more women talking about having a self-id colleague. If this continues, and we do indeed have - as trans rights orgs now claim - more than 2% of people identifying as trans, most of them male, there will be enough to skew the figures.

I'm not sure they will care though. This would improve their figures after all, so maybe it's a positive development for them?

Sorry, replied before your incredible second post.

Many thanks, all noted and I’ll think about how to raise this. I’m thinking email might be a neutral and less seemingly confrontational approach but I’m worried it’s easy to circulate and become weaponised.

Grateful for your reply.

I think it's true that the tiny number of trans people in the population is unlikely to skew the results in a company that has to report (250+ employees).
But I think it could skew the result in a smaller organisation (there's nothing to stop smaller businesses reporting and lots have).
It could potentially skew the result even in a big organisation if say the majority of women were in lower pay bands (say, a bank) and the differential between megabucks senior management and the lowest paid clerk was enormous, and everyone in highest paid roles was male, and then one of those men declared that he was trans. That could make a difference I reckon. But my maths isn't up to giving examples!

I was told that it was far too unlikely to make any difference.

Same excuse as AWAs and those-who-haven’t-taken-the-time-to-examine-the-figures use to argue that including crimes by male people in women’s crime statistics.

If most of the women in a company are in poorly paid jobs, and the Male CEO is paid 150 times what they are, then the figures will be significantly skewed if said CEO declares himself female.

I suppose too the obvious questions are

a) have the need around GPG gone away?

b) why has it been regarded as an issue? Is it still an issue?

c) how is it helped by making it less visible/hiding the evidence for women?

The argument of course will be that TWAW, so magically the GPG has improved because some women are paid as men. However this is the reality gap: that it's the women born with female biology who always, always lose in this game, almost like they're an identifiable group. Not talking about the nasty facts doesn't make them go away.

The UK Govt Equalities Office is already advising employers to report on the GPG based on their employees' self-ID gender.

Of course it has the potential to skew data in industries where there are stark gender imbalances, e.g. tech sector. And also when it comes to city bonuses, where women are often paid much less than men

WPUK wrote to Penny Mordaunt about the guidance in April: womansplaceuk.org/gender-pay-gap-letter-to-penny-mordaunt/

Fantastic, thank you!

I'm reading a report atm on the digital divide between men and women and how women urgently need to be better represented in the tech industry. It may not be a GPG issue but I think since (anecdotally at least) so many men seem to be identifying as women in the tech sector, it could have a huge impact on the ability to measure the success of interventions in this area.