Female staff at Bristol City Council earn £1.27 less per hour than men

[IwantToRetire]

... The statistics relate to the median pay gaps, which is the most commonly used and more reliable method because, unlike mean average pay gaps, they are not skewed by a small number of people on huge salaries and instead relate to the employee whose wages are in the middle when everyone is listed from lowest to highest in the two groups being compared. ...

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/female-staff-bristol-city-council-10928178

shocking

Women are a lot more likely statistically to not seek career progression because of responsibility at home. This isn’t the fault of the council

Does that invalidate tge information about the pay gap? Were like for like jobs not compared?
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Median pay gap

Honestly, I think they invent this stuff to keep statisticians in work.

Things are so insane in this country at the moment, when I saw the title of the thread, I got really worried that this was actually happening!

So you disagree with the analysis in the quote as to why they used the median pay gap?

Of course - its all women's fault!

Not seeking career progression, as though their only aim in live was to take on all the domestic responsibilities.

Why did women in the 70s bother with the idiotic idea of Women's Liberation.

It can be for other reasons-for example more men are bin men and it’s paid well to compensate for the unpleasant conditions.
You would really need to look into the data more closely.

I once worked for a company which had more female managers than male.

There was still a sex pay gap. There was a fairly even split of men and women professionals working in the office, who were presumably medium to high earners (accountants, data, analysts etc).

But the high street branches were staffed almost entirely by women who worked part time. These roles pay less than the back office and so the data was skewed to reflect this.

As others have said, there are plenty of genuine explanations for this. Personally I think it’s a poor metric but useful in starting the conversation.

They really need to stop doing gender pay gap analysis this way. It should be a like for like comparison. Two people in the same role, doing the same number of hours with the same level of experience etc.
Comparing a part-time female receptionist with a full-time male banking manager and claiming the difference is due to sexism is just stupid.

No need to be arsey. I’m just saying that it isn’t as cut and dried as it being the councils fault.

there are massive interwoven society deep rooted problems. And studies show that women will prioritise work life balance (and that means less pay) whereas men will prioritise chasing the money.

IN GENERAL. Before you come for me

there are massive interwoven society deep rooted problems. And studies show that women will prioritise work life balance (and that means less pay) whereas men will prioritise chasing the money

This. Unless the rate of pay is lower for jobs that have been objectively valued at the same level and/or women have been prevented from working in the higher paid jobs, as was the case in Birmingham city council (female cleaners vs male bin workers) or Asda (female shelf stackers vs male warehouse workers) then it's not necessarily Bristol city council paying women less due to their sex more a case of correlation not causation.

In my work department, however you measure it, women's salaries are higher than men's. Because our department head is a woman, most of the middle managers are women, as are the senior technical specialists and we have quite a few inexperienced technical, admin and facilities support staff who are men. So you could use this information to claim that we pay women more. But we don't - the jobs pay what they pay, according to a set pay scale that is almost never deviated from, just that we happen to have an atypical split between the sexes.

The problem is society and if you want to use it as an illustration of women being disadvantaged, the problem is that women disproportionately take on more domestic work, so have to factor this in when deciding what type of paid work they are able to commit to.

I have a major problem with a male and a female worker doing exactly the same job, with the same responsibilities and output being paid differently. I would be interested in that sort of examination.

So I guess the council do know what a woman is then? They’re the ones they don’t allow to speak and who get paid less

For those querying, looking at medians in studies of pay has been the standard for decades. Anything else distorts the data.

This is further complicated by the fact that women often do different kinds of jobs to men and that those jobs are less well paid (and when more women enter an occupation the pay of that occupation declines).

This is why the law asks for equal pay for work of equal value and why court cases on this spend time ‘valuing’ and grading every aspect of a job.

I agree for certain employers. I used to work for a company that has a gender pay gap in favour of women - it was only very slight in the average earnings, but women received 20% more in the their bonuses than men.

Great, a wonderfully progressive company with plenty of women at the top maybe? Not really, the highest paid quarter of staff was still 75% men. But the company was Biffa, and the men’s average salary was dragged down by the fact that women aren’t refuse collectors - average bin man salary in the UK is under £30k and that is obviously a large % of the workforce at Biffa. I earned more working in the head office, & I imagine a lot of office based staff did so average women’s salary wasn’t pulled down in the same way.

(I’ve just gone and looked up these stats to make sure I got them right)

With a council, where you have hugely different types of jobs, a single average salary for both men and women seems meaningless. For some employers, where the bulk of staff are all doing the same sort of work (eg an accountancy firm where most staff are accountants, albeit at different levels) it makes more sense.

It will be because they're doing different work, rather than beng paid differently, but there is an issue over why that is. Often it is down to personal choice, but employers can help with the reasons women make those choices.

Is this the same council who are refusing to have conversations about biological women and passing men off as women?

Hmm. How.... Odd....

Well that truly would be an issue but I’m fairly sure it doesn’t happen in any systemic way.

this study is not like for like jobs - so it’s not of any real valie

I know this is old but..

You need to look at the timeline for the Equal Pay claim that women workers at BCC won at the High Court. The council failed to evaluate equal pay for equal work properly and the cost was £3/4 billion. The idea they are now deliberately still not evaluating work properly is beyond stupid. The gender pay differences are probably down to work undertaken, senior positions skewing the stats and the circumstances of women who want part time work and not getting better paid work as a result. Few part time teachers are going on to be part time head teachers for example.

I hadn’t heard this about pay going down when more women enter an occupation.

Is there an explanation for why the pay declines when more women enter an occupation? Does the same happen when more men enter an occupation?

I calculate the gender pay gap for my organisation. One common reason for the pay difference is men being more likely to work unsocial hours, such as night shifts, which attract pay enhancements.

I work in this area and this is sensationalist reporting. Yes there is still a gender pay gap but no it doesn't mean that within local authorities (which have rigid pay structures), women receive lower pay than men for doing identical work.

But isn't that exactly what studies like this are about? We take an employer that should have set pay bands for staff and use that to evidence the massive interwoven cultural sex disparity re work and responsibilities?

I think most people would realise this isn't just about one employer choosing to pay women less but a way of starting (or continuing) the conversation re why.

I assume much of it is a self- fulfilling prophecy to some extent. If one parent is earning more at the point of having kids then it makes sense for the other one to drop work hours if needed, regardless of who wants to, is most suitable etc.

I think things are changing slowly and that's becoming less "automatically" the woman.

But there will be myriad factors at play.

From the article: "White staff earn £1.94 more an hour than those from ethnic minorities – equal to 9.55 per cent – and exactly the same result was found between straight employees and workers who are lesbian, gay or bisexual."

This is worse than the sex pay gap. I find this harder to explain than the difference between the sexes. Weird that the headline doesn't focus on this instead.