Gender Pay Gap and Sex. Trying to find info

[FuriousFemale]

Can anyone help me out please with info on the gender pay gap. I'm sure I've seen on threads that actually when you read into it, it states it should be based on sex.

I've been looking on the gov website at the employers advice section and it keeps saying gender throughout.

I'm looking for something to back up that it should be sex not gender

Here is a really good triggernometry episode that explains it all

I've never looked at it - but I feel compelled to mention that Nigel Marriott has done a fair amount of work in this area and claims there is no sex gap. (I've never looked at his handling of his identified confounders etc.)

marriott-stats.com/nigels-blog/category/diversity/

The regulations use Male and Female as the differentiator, but unhelpfully use gender rather than sex www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2017/9780111152010.

In preparing my organisations pay gap submission we used sex. Anyone with a GRC would be recoded by their legal sex. Self ID would not impact as people were reported on by their biological sex.

These regulations were originally developed 2015 and at that time I don’t think the use of gender rather than sex in the title was given a second thought. Historically the Civil Service has published departments gender pay gap for decades (ONS www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/datasets/civilservicestatistics).

I can’t remember why it was called gender pay gap but when it was introduced, no one really gave the terminology a thought as the calculations were/are to be based as defined as female to male pay so definitely sex based unless legally transitioned.

[quote rabbitwoman]Here is a really good triggernometry episode that explains it all

[/quote] I'm a third of the way through and still none the wiser

Am I missing something here? The YouTube video and the nigel's blog keep talking about it's not a party gap because of course women earn less, they go on maternity leave, make job choices with childcare in mind, blah, blah blah. I thought that was the point of the pay gap? Not to look at like for like jobs but to look at the disparity caused because of the fact women may go on maternity, traditionally women are pushed to certain jobs etc? All due to the patriarchal society we live in?

I thought looking at a male and female in the same job or sector and comparing pay was called something else? Or have I got those the wrong way round?

ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality-by-gender

It uses female in places so it's quite clear it means by sex not gender identity

And this looks at motherhood penalty

www.ifs.org.uk/publications/8429

Equal pay gap is comparing female to male earnings in comparable jobs whereas the gender pay gap compares all the females earnings in an organisation to all of the male earnings.
The latter will show structural issues as typically males are in senior roles resulting in a higher average salary to females who typically are in junior roles resulting in a lower average salary.

Thank you @Selkiesarereal that's what I thought but couldn't remember the name.

Makes me really sad seeing people stare there's no gender pay gap because of this and that. The this and that is the whole bloody point of it

Sorry slightly off topic there. It does say male and female but when everyone is using gender instead of sex with options of male/ female it doesn't really help my argument.

With people claiming male/ female isn't related to biology it starts to make it all meaningless

Gender pay gaps are useful when comparing companies within the same sector but less so between sectors as some industries are dominated say males that they may have really large pay gap but they may be really good company for females to work in but there are so few females to employ say for example engineering, but don’t quote me on them specifically as I haven’t looked at this areas data in a while!

With the news today that the fee for a gender recognition certificate has been cut from £140 to £5, does anyone think that this could have an impact on the gender pay gap as a whole?

I don’t think so as the way to impact the pay gap, for women, is at senior level in order to increase the overall average salary.
Now I am hugely generalising here but in most organisations those at the top tend to be a bit older and less influenced by social media, or whatever so would be doing it for genuine reasons, ie well thought through, this is really them, etc. Those in this category would be too low in numbers unless it was in quite a small organisation.

I'm not well up on GRCs. Is it very much handing over a fiver and you're good to go or is there a robust process?

Employers are forced to submit gender (only male or female options) to the HMRC when somebody new joins an organisation. HMRC give no other gender identity options, so companies from a reporting perspective are often limited to this unless they are progressive in this space.