Bullshit excuses and explanations for the gender pay gap!

[MsFogi]

So we are being told that the gender pay gap has increased (!!) this year because.....there have been lots of new hires at a senior level and that all those hires were men. But they are sure their recruitment process is fair and they really, really want to keep working on helping women to rise into management positions. However given that the Head of Diversity has stated over the last few months that they think the job has pretty much been achieved for women and they will be focused on racial equality (and possibly the application to become a Stonewall champion) I suspect HR will need to cobble together more excuses next year.

Anyone else hearing absolute rubbish being dressed up as excuses/explanations for the sex pay gap?

It is those feminine names on gas bills wot done it.

Anyone else hearing absolute rubbish being dressed up as excuses/explanations for the sex pay gap?

Yep.

Same old, same old.

And it looks even worse for females in the future, although ‘gender’ figures may start looking better being artificially improved.

I get annoyed that we now have "inclusion" and inclusion is for everyone. So we have to discuss how e.g. introverts are disadvantaged in the workplace. Meanwhile structural disadvantage is put on the back burner for "inclusivity".
Why can't organisations openly challenge sexism and racism? Why does it all get bundled into inclusion?
My workplace had a panel discussion on IWT aboit a gender neutral topic, featuring the male head of the LGBT alliance, the mqle head of the dyslexia and dyspraxia network, and the male head of the BAME network and 2 women who were location reps for the women's network. I queried it and was told they wanted to broaden the conversation beyond women to be more inclusive. On International Women's Day.

I can't even think of a situation where people would decide to have an inclusive panel to discuss a non-LGBT issue in pride month, but think that was fine as long as there were some gay people there

In my workplace, the diversity lead is a White British male with blue eyes. He co-opted the role. There are 3 ethnic minority women , 2 of whom are also mothers and taken maternity leave.
I'm told we needed to more inclusive and the women may not have time due to childcare and homeschooling responsibilities. This happened in Jan/Feb when schools were closed to the majority of pupils.
I could have wept.
The users of my services are roughly 15% ethnic minorities and 50% female. We don't have a single women in the leadership team.

I'm so fed up with the direction of travel in terms of "inclusion" at work. It seems to mean, saying lovely things on corporate websites while letting anything to do with diversity belong to those who suffer the drawbacks of difference, while those who reap the rewards continue in the same old ways. I'm starting to think all "inclusion" initiatives mean nothing more than "we include photos of a range of attractive black people on our website".

The gender pay gap is a disgrace. A fucking disgrace. I wish men had the balls to say "we pay ourselves more because we think we are worth more than you". Because that's what it represents. Despite what they say.

My old sector has a pay gap more than 30%.

Unlike many other sectors they can't use the 'women more likely to be in less skilled lower paid roles' thing as it's a sector that has very few of those type of jobs.

My company gave the usual flannel about more senior roles being men and due to their pay levels it skews it massively.

They had broken it down by grade but refused to release that data... Hmmmm.

The pay gap is a blunt instrument but it certainly starts conversations.

And I'm sure talented women will gravitate to firms with better results.

I think there are plans to shelve the reporting though?

Awesome YY.

It's all about giving forums for xyz to chat about stuff. Saying aren't we great we've got this group. Etc etc. We're listening.

But will that translate into different hiring practices, tackling issues, and equitable pay? I am very sceptical.

Also IME many of the straight white men feel quite hostile towards this sort of thing so not sure that helps

And here's a random story. Old job (massive global 1000s of employees) had a bring your whole self to work thing, and set up a site for people to say things people maybe didn't know about them

They had obviously got a few people on board for the first few posts... From memory there was a black lesbian woman, a disabled man, a gay man, someone who grew up in poverty. The idea was to add your own stuff. Within another couple of posts it was almost all middle aged white blokes saying what you might not know about me is... I do mountain biking as a hobby! I enjoy train spotting! I have an engineering degree! Etc etc

It was pretty eye rolly.

Also IME many of the straight white men feel quite hostile towards this sort of thing so not sure that helps
It definitely doesn't help and in my experience it's now being pandered too. "We have to get the white men on board to move forward, how can we help them get it?" Which fails to appreciate there is no incentive for them to "get it" in the status quo.
Personally I think that leadership levels should be measured on improving diversity in their teams but I still hear too much "oh, we interviewed women but this white man was the best for the job" to explain why there are all white male leadership teams etc

I have totally given up on IWD events, they annoy me so much how women have got to be 'nice' and include everyone else so that women who are on panels because they are women (rather than because the individual is chosen because of their sexuality/sexual identity/ethnicity/etc or because we need to include men) end up being....the token woman or are not there at all because one of the other panel members ticked both the "woman" and another box.

In my department (95% female unlike the rest of the company which is 75% male) the gender pay gap is working against women because we are constantly being pushed to up the salaries of the men because they are lower paid than the women - they are only lower paid because the women are all highly qualified professionals whereas the men are junior/unqualified but the men see their pay increased every year to close the (justifiable) pay gap!!!! Drives me mad - this is certainly not happening for women anywhere else in the company.

This thread prompted me to have a look at what is happening with the company my DH works for. It is a large, high tech, engineering company that sells its products around the world and has a turnover of more than a billion pounds.

I had a look on the gov.uk website which gives all the details for employers:-

gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk/

At first, I noticed that the pay gap had increased considerably since 2017/18 and thought - what is going on?

But then I looked at it in some more detail (and remembered what DH had told me previously).

Back in 2017/18 only 13% of the workforce were women and actually, women were getting paid more than men - there was a -6% gender pay gap and more women got bonuses than men (and this is in an engineering company).

Women were much more present in management positions than they were on the shopfloor - only 10% of people in the lower two quartiles compared to 15% in the upper two quartiles.

The company then over the next few years made a determined attempt to recruit more young women onto their apprenticeship and other training schemes and succeeded quite well at doing this to the point that 18% of people in the lower two quartiles are now women.

Of course, this rapid increase in the number of women that they are taking on as apprentices and other trainees mean that the overall gender pay gap has reversed and is now 6%.

However, as all these women apprentices make their way up the ladder the gender pay gap will be reduced.

So, there could very well be legitimate reasons for why a gender pay gap increases.

@nickymanchester

great post.

I work as a pay consultant and I have been calculating and analysing pay gaps for many years now. Its not actually D&I that do it, its the Reward team, but D&I seem to handle the comms.

When its a loaded question like this "Anyone else hearing absolute rubbish being dressed up as excuses/explanations for the sex pay gap?" and I am being described like this "HR will need to cobble together more excuses" on a feminist board I question if people are so fixed in their opinion that women working in HR are deceitful and motivated to work against their own interests that I despair for there ever being a useful dialogue on this on FWR.

What questions would you like to discuss instead? I for one would like to hear from someone involved in analysing pay gaps and reporting them.

So my first question to Mrs Fogi is why don't you believe those points set out in your OP?

They are similar conclusions many orgs have reached after three years of drilling into the male and female distribution in types of jobs and grades.

The first point is age cohort related, there are less older women (40 plus) in senior positions because of the discrimination at the start of their careers, but his is changing as women who had access to equal opportunities in their early career move up.

The Office of National Statistics explain this really well.

The clearest insight to the gender pay gap is provided by analysis across age groups. As noted since 2018, for age groups under 40 years the gender pay gap for full-time employees (which is a more homogenous basis than all employees for measuring differences in hourly pay) is now close to zero.

However, from age group 40 to 49 years and older, the gender pay gap for full-time employees is over 10%. Our 2019 analysis explored the types of occupation in which men and women work, by age group. It flagged, in particular, a lower incidence of women moving into higher-paid managerial occupations after the age of 39 years, at which point pay in these occupations increases.

The largest fall is among managers, directors and senior officials, from 16.3% to 9.9%, reflecting some signs of more women holding higher-paid managerial roles this year. This occupation group has the highest median pay of any occupation (£21.90 per hour, excluding overtime, compared with £15.07 among all employee jobs) and therefore has a strong impact on the gender pay gap

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/genderpaygapintheuk/2020

This is a trend going back years now, there's time series graph on ONS. There are still more men in senior positions because of the historical age detriment, therefore when you go out to market to hire at a senior level you are fishing in a male dominated pool. Companies are genuine looking for women but we are not there in the numbers needed to achieve 50 50 representation. Not yet anyway.

So the two points Mrs Fogi treated as bullshit have massive statistical research backing.

The problem is this doesn't get talked about much, the main message from feminist groups is that ALL women work for x days a year for free, and we have bought into that view and become distrustful and contemptuous when anyone explains the reality.

I got sick of WEP for doing this, they should really be looking at the facts but don't.

The ONS reporting is fascinating and really useful, I'm happy to answer questions on it but they do a great job.

Whenever I read that meritocracy demands the appointment of yet another white man to a position of authority or seniority and is a striking indication of a level playing field, I think of Arrianna Planey.

Arrianna Planey:

"When someone manages to rise up through our hobbled alleged meritocracy and is crowned the first to hold a position, I know that does not mean that they were the only one who possibly could."

I’d assumed everyone understood this, but it has become clear to me in the last few years, as these news of firsts in media and publishing and film and sports came rolling in, as people wrote and agonized over what felt like a shift in culture, that that was naive. People in power, the ones doing the crowning, generally believe that there is no one else qualified until they happen to decide to bestow the crown. It’s easier that way, isn’t it? To think that the first happened just because the right person finally managed to emerge and break through, and not because there was a whole system put in place to make sure no one who looks a certain way or comes from a particular background ever has a chance to do so in the first place.

I am reminded of a Chris Rock quote, one he gave during Barack Obama’s second term as president. “To say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first Black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not Black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been Black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years.”

Anyone else hearing absolute rubbish being dressed up as excuses/explanations for the sex pay gap

I've heard nothing about this recently, is there a link?
My company normally sends this info out company wide, but I've not seen the report this year yet, it may be delayed because I know lots are still wfh.

Normally theres a detailed description of why the women are paid less, but still the women are paid less so nothing changes.

So, is there anything that can be done to address pay disparity for women over 40, or is that something that isn't possible?

Assissintedbeauty

If you think about it as age cohorts moving forward through time women who are 30 to 40 with a zero gap now will appear in the 40 to 50 range with no gap.
Similarly the 50 to 60 gap will go down as the 40 to 50 cohort become older and more successful - this IS the trend.

The only unmoveable cohort is the current over 60s sadly, who really were at the foothills of equality when they started work and can't recover in great numbers. How can you find 30 years experience you missed out on? I see this amongst my friends and in age analysis work I've done.

Also there's a graph somewhere that actually shows a hit when the pension age increases, forcing more low paid women to stay in work.

There's a tendency to see this as a cliff women fall off at 40, which isn't what the data is telling us, if that was true the 40 to 50 gap would be static whereas its falling and has been for some time now.

So time is really the solution, and older women who have experienced more direct discrimination in the past will move through each cohort taking their historical discrimination with them until they retire or die.

Do you think that the impact of having children (or being expected to have children) is now a thing of the past, and that women in their 20s won't experience any suppression of their earnings as they progress through their careers?

Here's the clearest time chart. Scroll down to section 3 figure 3. I can't load it for some reason.
www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/genderpaygapintheuk/2019

It's so revealing. ONS did it last year but don't seem to have updated it with 2020 data this year.

You can see the kick up for women over 60 which must coincide with the pension age changes kicking in. And a slight kick up for women 50 to 60 who have also had changes and are staying in work in greater numbers.

Women under 40 whose entire careers have been in a much more equal environment don't have a pay gap when looked at country wide

The green line 40plus is trending down.

The name of the chart is:

Figure 3: The gender pay gap has fallen to almost zero among full-time employees aged under 40 years
Gender pay gap for full-time median gross hourly earnings (excluding overtime), UK, April 1997 to 2019

Its a thing of beauty, I like this graph. To answer you question that's potentially the reason why its taking time for 40s line to merge with the 20s and 30s line but you can see clearly they are merging.

So time is really the solution, and older women who have experienced more direct discrimination in the past will move through each cohort taking their historical discrimination with them until they retire or die

It is awful isn't it, our mothers and grandmothers.

But yes.

Not just mothers and grandmothers, any woman aged 40 plus.

Yes, its about the occupation type.

Figure 5: Women aged over 40 years are more likely to work in lower paid occupations
The nine occupation groups can broadly be split into three categories of the highest-paid jobs, low-paid jobs and medium-paid jobs.

Among 30- to 39-year-olds, the proportion of women working in high-paid occupations full-time (41%) is very similar to the proportion in low-paid occupations (45%). In older age groups the proportion working in low-paid occupations is higher (for example 52% for 40- to 49-year-olds, compared with 39% in high-paid occupations).

Individual companies can't change their occupation types which is why there's an underlying variance at a company level.

Companies have realised this and have now moved onto ALSO examining ethnicity too for the causes.

Uh feeling like a grumpy statistic. Being mid 50s and as I was in a big Co it was easy to see the disparity from which I've never recovered.

I am 60, I've lived it. My first job I was put on a WOMANS PAY SCALE. Fuck me.