Employers seem to think that the problem of pay disparities is everyone else’s to solve, and not something they must tackle themselves, writes Duncan Brown
The government may have stated its commitment to closing the gender pay gap in the next 20 years, but most of us think that the European Commission’s estimate of 70 years is closer to the mark. While there is widespread ambition to make it happen, progress is painfully slow, estimated last week, by Deloitte, to be at a rate of 2.5p per year.
Earlier this month I presented at an excellent forum organised by the GW4 Pay and Equality Research Consortium (PERC). Leading academics, policy makers and employers gathered together to discuss perspectives and progress on gender pay and the forthcoming reporting regulations, with everyone at the London event agreeing that more needs to be done to address the continuing situation in the UK.
As the prime minister Theresa May bluntly put it in her first major policy speech: “If you’re a woman you earn less than a man” (some 10 to 20 per cent less, depending on the measure you use). And the latest research, shared at the event, illustrated the persistent, intractable nature of that gap, with female professors at the University of Essex only recently gaining equal pay after a lengthy battle, for example.
Professors Geraldine Healy and Almudena Sevilla, from Queen Mary University, have been examining pay data in business schools and in each academic discipline they found women had lower wages than men, (except, interestingly, when it came to accounting). For professors the gap averages six per cent, but is much wider in leading Russell Group universities.
Taking a longer-term perspective, Dr Abigail McKnight, from the London School of Economics, tracked the progress of children up to the age of 42 and showed how parental background and education, as well as gender, influences our pay levels as adults – with women much less likely to be employed in a top ranked, high earning job by that age.
Meanwhile the Halifax’s annual pocket-money survey reveals, rather depressingly, that a 12 per cent gender gap exists for those under 12 years old. As the Financial Times wryly noted, ‘boys force a better deal, just like their dads in the workplace’.
On a more positive note, Sara Abbonizio of the Government Equality Office confirmed at the forum that, despite parliamentary disruptions resulting from the Brexit vote, they are still on course to implement the reporting regulations commencing next April and are continuing the process of consultation, with the application in the public sector now under consideration.
The final version of the regulations for the private and voluntary sectors will be published shortly. They will make it mandatory for employers with 250 or more employees to publish various statistics relating to the gender pay gap within their organisation. Yet the difference in levels of optimism and views on required actions between academics and employers was palpable from the meeting. It was also highlighted in PERC’s latest research, which takes in the views of more than 120 UK employers, and was presented on the day by professors Sue Milner, Carol Woodhams and colleagues. You could sense why the government has felt compelled to legislate.
The prevailing employer attitude was perhaps best summed up by a private sector company which told the researchers, with no sense of irony whatsoever, that “gender is an invisible thing for us… we go where the talent is and pay everyone their market worth”.
The general reaction to the regulations may have moved on from opposition to a cautious but sceptical welcome, but, as Woodhams described it, employers seem to think that gender pay gaps are everyone else’s problem.
The publication of a few statistics seems unlikely to challenge their own gendered, subjective assumptions that processes of supposedly merit and market-based pay are bias free. Yet male market traders don’t earn twice the bonuses of female counterparts because they are twice as good: they earn them because they are men.
We should be pleased that in a female-dominated HR profession at least we will, from next year, see greater transparency of the gaps as a result of the reporting regulations, and the publicity and debate occasioned by the proposals should also prove beneficial to improved understanding of causation. But whether it will result in more employers following the University of Essex and putting their proverbial hands in their pockets to close the gaps found remains to be seen.
Vice-chancellor of the university Anthony Forster said that the move was motivated by “impatience” at the industry-wide problem, with external policies “failing to close the pay gap quickly enough”. He said: “Treating our staff with equal respect and dignity is at the very core of our values as a diverse and inclusive community”. Plenty of UK employers and their HR functions parrot these same values; very few as yet practice what they preach in terms of removing their gender pay gaps.
Dr Duncan Brown is head of HR consulting at the Institute for Employment Studies