Forum Topic

Is The Idea of a Gender Pay Gap a disaster for women?

At a wedding over the weekend I caught up with two of my college friends who were both working in the field of PR and we got talking about the Gender Pay Gap. They hadn't seen each other of years but they both had almost the same thing to say about the issue. Basically their job has become largely about ensuring the companies they work for are not seen as 'institutionally misogynist.'The challenge is that in both firms the highest paid people will be ones with particular professional qualifications and men make up the larger proportion who have the required skills. They have done everything they can to maximise the number of women recruited including short lists which are always split 50-50. However it is very difficult to recruit proportionally more women. Even though most interviews are carried out by women they tend to chose by qualifications and talent rather than by gender to the point that they select a lower proportion of women than male interviewers. The senior women are more concerned about the effectiveness of the people they work with than the gender balance at the firms. Even so at both firms a woman is likely to be paid more than a man with equivalent experience because of her scarcity value.This puts pressure on HR departments because it makes the gender pay ratio look really bad. You can't affect the numbers at the top end so the only solution is to look at the lower end of the pay scale. This has two impacts - firstly there is an unspoken rule to ensure that as many of the lowest paid jobs at the firms are taken by men. These are roles like cleaners and admin which would previously had been largely filled by women. Secondly they are reducing the proportion of women taken on at graduate recruitment level.The next result of a focus only on the gender pay gap is that women from lower income groups are losing out on much needed jobs and younger graduate women are not getting as many opportunities as they used to. In the longer term this is just going to make the gender pay issue worse.Both of my friends blamed the BBC for the problem saying that they see this issue purely through the prism of the gender pay gap and it has frightened many boards of directors into taking action. However, whether Clare Balding gets paid as well as John Humphries has little relevance for most companies.

Tricia Arbuthnot ● 2394d10 Comments

No argument/s there.    :-)

Rosco White ● 2368d

This is a big reason that they cannot keep their staff.  This is a teamwork profession with long and antisocial hours.  When you lose experienced staff you lose a lot of continuity.  We are about to come to a period when a lot of nurses who joined at the same time with bursaries and accommodation when they trained come up for retirement.  We have failed to train and keep new recruits.When staff are working under so much pressure with lack of support in an increasingly complex job finding the time to do more training is difficult.  This does not help in the retention of staff.  The fear of making mistakes under pressure and because of tiredness and so losing the ability to work in the profession is also a factor.  Privatising is also a problem as it doesn't necessarily provide the best and promised outcome and Govt ends up bailing out again and lives are lost unnecessarily and prematurely.  We are all going to die sometime but it could be a lot better managed.

Philippa Bond ● 2368d

Thank you Elizabeth.I've just spotted that the Women's Equality Party is standing in the European elections. As all they are likely to do is take away votes from the more progressive parties who would be more likely to bring about positive change for women, it is hard to see what their aims are.

Tricia Arbuthnot ● 2372d

Very well said to the OP.

Elizabeth Howard ● 2384d

I see no gap but equal pay for equal work. I found that always the case in community pharmacy where there is no such thing as a London weighting either. OTOH whenever I was interviewed for a public sector pharmacy job, hospital or prison , the pharmacists at the top interviewing me were always women. I worked for many pharmacy comanies and my best boss by far was a woman.

Graham Weeks ● 2385d

Matt Hancock the Health Minister was on the Today programme this morning talking about this. He did say that one of the main ways to improve the situation was improved maternity and paternity leave which he says the NHS hasn't implemented. He dodged questions about cost and how rising staff costs already absorb a substantial part of increased NHS spending on which Brexit is not helping.He quoted a gender pay gap of 19% and said that 75% of staff in the NHS are women. Anyone with a basic familiarity with the NHS would know that women are significantly over represented in nursing roles and the NHS has a huge number of relatively poorly paid care staff particularly those with lower levels of nursing qualifications so a gender pay gap is probably unavoidable.To me this looked like a Minister starting his bid for party leadership by using a poorly thought out use of data. The resulting attempts that will undoubtedly follow to sort out this 'problem' will end up costing the NHS money and delivering no net benefit to patients.

Mark Evans ● 2385d

The larger law firms are now have a graduate intake which is around 60% female. They do this not because they are progressive but because they have a relatively small number of senior management and partnership positions and expect to lose a significant number of junior staff. If they train a man and he leaves he is much more likely to stay in the profession and join a competitor whereas a larger proportion of women will stop being lawyers.

Gordon Southwell ● 2386d

It probably should be stress that there are industries and cultures in which a male dominated working environment does make it more difficult to progress. There are also a smaller number of industries in which women predominate and men tend to struggle. The Gender Pay gap is a poor way of identifying these and is leading to negative outcomes for women. We should stop referring to it.Incidentally in my first post I said my friends worked in PR. 'Freudian' slip - they of course work in HR.

Tricia Arbuthnot ● 2393d

The only way to narrow the gap is for men and women to take an equal amount of time off for maternity/paternity leave. Until that happens there will always be a gap.

Mark Evans ● 2394d

A common sense posting.Similar issue to "All Female" shortlists within political parties - utter nonsense.

Rosco White ● 2394d