Citizens Advice blames high gender pay gap on non-binary staff being ignored

[SerendipityJane]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/01/charity-gender-pay-gap-blamed-on-non-binary-omission

The article is behind a paywall.

The article doesn't justify the headline. It appears Citizens Advice wrote a hand-wringing word salad preface to their gender pay gap report lamenting the fact that they were forced to categorize their emoloyees as either "men" or "women". It doesn't however say that they claim that their - disgraceful - gender pay gap is because of this.

This link for the article might work:

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2F2023%2F05%2F01%2Fcharity-gender-pay-gap-blamed-on-non-binary-omission

Charity flannels and flails in order to distract from their dismal pay gap between men and women?

I came here to see if there was a thread on this, as I saw it on Twitter. I used to work in the national voluntary sector, but I despair at the moment of all the privileged middle-class people with their “luxury beliefs” and CharitySoStraight wanging on about not forgetting the “queer” community, which completely forgets those of us older people who won their rights for them who can’t stand the word queer. I’m exactly the sort of person that charities and funders pay lip service that they need, bisexual, grew up poor, been homeless, experienced domestic violence etc. yet diversity means to them they all look different but have the same views and think everyone else should think the same as them, which is the opposite of diversity. On the other hand many of the charities on the ground, in my experience, are much more down-to-earth and think what’s going on at the national level is a load of virtue signalling bollocks. How much longer till this ends?

'Bosses also told staff in a memo that “as an organisation, we recognise that trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary people are non-binary”, which left gender-critical staff fearing reprisals for stating the fact that trans women were biologically male.'

Oh, dear.

Most of the senior (and well respected) women (sex) I met at Citizens Advice were totally gender-critical. I've been out of that environment for over 2 years now so perhaps the culture has worsened.

What a baffling load of words.

Who do you compare non binary with? Men or women?

There's only likely to be 20 of them! What's the point?

I would like to be amazed that people say this rubbish but I no longer am. What a pointless fad.

Unless Citizens Advice acquire a building firm they will never have a zero gap. Men don't work in office jobs in the same numbers as women. You can't force people to choose occupations. That's not a goal surely?

The Book : Men were real men. Women were real women. And small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.

Hmmm. Sexist charity wishes to muddle its large pay gap by pretending men are women eh? Colour me surprised

What the gender gap measures is the gap in earnings, not in percentages employed by the charity. It's a female-dominated field, clearly, but within that some further justification should be necessary to explain why men earn a higher average pay than women and are more likely to be found in managerial positions.

But I agree that the percentages of neo-genders would not affect the findings for the non-binary category as there will be too few individuals with that identity.

Still, theoretically that category could muddy the waters if it became more common as female people in it would probably earn less than male people in it, which would suggest that nonbinaries are treated somewhere between the way male and female workers are (or have inbetween talents and interests), when the likely truth would be that it's still being female which matters in the findings. However those female people identify.

Was it the ex Defra Permanent Secretary who was said to have promoted trans issues in her department because she had a trans child? Or was that the head of the Environment Agency? I seem to remember someone on here saying that (in the context of what felt like a hostile environment for non believers in gender identity in that department). I may be misremembering the details / the department though. The person in that article seems to be the ex Defra Perm Sec.

Men don't work in office jobs in the same numbers as women. You can't force people to choose occupations. That's not a goal surely?

That's not a goal, no.

The point is that the average woman is paid less per hour (in this case quite a lot less) than the average man in the organisation. This is because there are more women in low paid roles and more men in high paid ones, or because women are being paid less than men doing the same job, or both. Nothing to do with having equal numbers of men and women working there. You could have 1 man and 99 women, or vice versa - that's not relevant to calculating the pay gap.

(Incidentally, the gender pay gap in the construction industry is 23%. So the somewhat unlikely event of the CAB aquiring a building firm would probably make things worse.)

This BBC article explains it a bit better, though CAB need to be told it's a Sex Pay difference. Have large gametes you are likely to be paid less, however you identify.

Forgot the link

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65207049.amp

Annoyingly my company doesn't have to publish the statistics, it will be significant, all of EMT are male, all but one of SMT are male, and the vast majority on the lower pay bands are female.

It reads like there is a problem at Citizens Advice but they're attempting to make that clear cut sound much more complex, so as to excuse the problem.

Key parts:

"The national charity, where women make up nearly three-quarters of the workforce, has a median gender gap of 16.1 per cent between men and women’s hourly earnings - above the national level of 14.9 per cent. Under the law, all employers of 250 or more staff must reveal their figures annuallyy_."

"Citizens Advice’s median gender pay gap remained the same as in 2021.

However, the proportion of women on the lowest salaries rose by three per cent to almost nine in 10, while the number in the upper mid-pay quartile decreased."

Look where all the women work, and what they're worth. They work in possibly the most crucial part, and get paid at the lowest end:

"About 90 per cent of the charity’s vital Witness Service staff for court evidence appearances - consisting of a quarter of its 8,500 employees - are female, and most of them earn the lowest salaries."

The excuses:

"A lengthy section at the top of the organisation’s latest pay-gap report for the year to April 2022 states: “Gender identity is often assumed from the sex assigned at birth. However, gender is more complex than ‘men’ and ‘women’.

“There are many people who don’t fit into these binary categories; for example, people who are non-binary or intersex. We also recognise that a person’s sex or gender does not always align with the sex and/or gender they were assigned at birth.”
It continues: “we have to follow the current statutory requirements for gender pay-gap reporting, so gender must be reported in a binary way”, meaning that “as a result, our report doesn’t differentiate pay data for colleagues with other gender identities”.
It “acknowledges” that the passport and birth certificate evidence it took from Citizens Advice to ascertain their gender “might not provide an accurate record” for these staffers and that “we use the words men and women in this report, while acknowledging this isn’t a satisfactory description” for them."

Accessible version here:

twitter.com/okbiology/status/1599184494421893122?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

What the gender gap measures is the gap in earnings, not in percentages employed by the charity. It's a female-dominated field, clearly, but within that some further justification should be necessary to explain why men earn a higher average pay than women and are more likely to be found in managerial positions.

If there are far less men in the lower and lower middle quartiles because the jobs are occupations men don't choose, the median woman's salary is going to be far lower than the median man's salary.

The article actually says 90 percent of the case worker staff are women. This is not an indicator of pay discrimination.

Even with 50 50 managers it's still going to be a big difference in median grade.

I know how it works, I get paid to do it!

Heres an example based on the 90 percent case worker quote.

If there are 100 staff in 10 pay grades with 50 50 representation in the top 4, and 90 10 female to male in the next 6 grades, it looks like this.
The formatting will probably go wrong!

                   Men.  Women 

Grade 10 5. 5.
Grade 9 5. 5.
Grade 8. 5. 5.
Grade 7 5. 5.
Grade 6. 1. 9
Grade 5. 1. 9
Grade 4. 1. 9
Grade 3. 1. 9
Grade 2. 1. 9
Grade 1. 1. 9

Median grade men is grade 8 (26 men, 13th man is in grade 8
Median grade women is grade 8 (74 women, 37th woman is in grade 5)

Men and women do sort themselves into different occupations and it's not possible to make every company 50 50 in all grades and occupations.

You cannot make it up.

Oops that should say 5 not 8 for women.

Median grade women is grade 5 (74 women, 37th woman is in grade 5)

My point is that organisations have the jobs they have. People pick their jobs. Women do these jobs, men don't! You can't make men do it and you can't make women leave their jobs and go and work in construction 50 50.

This is because women don't choose STEM jobs in the same numbers men do and will be in the lower paid administration jobs.

There's no gender pay gap in aggregate for women under 40 in the UK.

Over 40 it's closing because women who had equal access to education in the latter part of the last century are now moving into management in increasing numbers.

Time will close the gap, in the next decade the 30 to 40 age group with no gap now will be 40 to 50 with no gap and so on.

Measuring the same organisation structure over and over is doing nothing. It's been done to death and getting silly now as this article proves.

Men and women do sort themselves into different occupations and it's not possible to make every company 50 50 in all grades and occupations.

This article suggests, otherwise, that men not taking on childcare and employees making assumptions about men and women is more important than women’s choices, although it is talking particular about high earners, this is the pattern that the ONS reports with women over 40 less likely to move into higher paid managerial jobs https://hbr.org/2014/12/rethink-what-you-know-about-high-achieving-women

There are many of us that have had to de-prioritise our careers because of child or other care, not through our own free choice but because of the inflexibility of jobs and lack of availability of affordable childcare or older people’s care. Claudia Goldin talks about these as “greedy jobs” - those that if you have caring responsibilities, it’s practically impossible to do. Employers could structure work differently, with more part time, job share, and flexible working, but they don’t, it’s easier just to say well women don’t want these jobs anyway.

It's the other way round. If men do a job, it is assumed to be valuable and do paid better,

'Diversity to them means they all look different but have the same views and think everyone else should think the same as them , which is the opposite of Diversity.'

Excellent insight @MurielThrockmorton !