How women are still getting a raw deal

Forty-six years on since the Equal Pay Act of 1970 and employ­ees could be for­giv­en for think­ing lit­tle has changed when it comes to gen­der pay gaps.

Last November’s Annu­al Sur­vey of Hours and Earn­ings report from the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics (ONS) revealed women in full-time employ­ment earn 9.4 per cent less than men (85.5p for every £1 men earn). If part-time work is includ­ed, the gap is clos­er to 20 per cent.

It may well be the low­est dif­fer­en­tial since the sur­vey began in 1997, but it has bare­ly changed in the last four years and despite prime min­is­ter David Cameron’s 2015 pledge to end pay gaps with­in a gen­er­a­tion, at cur­rent rates of improve­ment the World Eco­nom­ic Forum esti­mates it will take 118 years before glob­al gen­der par­i­ty is reached.

Mind the gap

“It’s depress­ing to think it’s tak­en this long to arrive at what is still such a large gap,” says Tom Hel­li­er, direc­tor of rewards at human resources con­sul­tan­cy Willis Tow­ers Wat­son. But he and oth­ers believe future HR direc­tors have a chal­lenge on their hands when it comes to try­ing to reduce it for, con­trary to what many peo­ple think, the gen­der gap is not actu­al­ly about pay at all.

“These fig­ures are not wrong, but they’re pri­mar­i­ly cre­at­ed by occu­pa­tion­al seg­re­ga­tion where women are sim­ply not rep­re­sent­ed equal­ly across all roles,” says Cardiff University’s Ali­son Parken, direc­tor of its Women Adding Val­ue to the Econ­o­my (WAVE) pro­gramme.

Her analy­sis of the Welsh econ­o­my reveals only 86 of 353 pro­fes­sions show gen­der bal­ance, and near­ly one quar­ter of all women work in just one, sin­gle (low­er-paid) sec­tor – health and social care.

Because the ONS mea­sures medi­an hourly earn­ings, the sim­ple fact more women work in low-paid sec­tors and more also work part time – six mil­lion women work part time com­pared with two mil­lion men, accord­ing to Busi­ness in the Com­mu­ni­ty – means there is auto­mat­i­cal­ly a pay gap.

For HR chiefs, though, solv­ing it means tack­ling much more com­pli­cat­ed areas – deep-root­ed social stereo­typ­ing, includ­ing tack­ling how women decide to enter sec­tors in the first place, what hin­ders pro­gres­sion, job design and, because women are still pre­dom­i­nant­ly car­ers, how to accom­mo­date fam­i­ly life.

“Soci­ety con­di­tions women from a very ear­ly age to enter cer­tain occu­pa­tions,” says Angela Wright, senior lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster and for­mer remu­ner­a­tion advis­er to sev­er­al pub­lic sec­tor pay bod­ies. “This con­tributes to occu­pa­tion­al seg­re­ga­tion that employ­ers didn’t cre­ate.”

Jemi­ma Olchaws­ki, head of pol­i­cy and insight at equal­i­ty group the Faw­cett Soci­ety, adds: “We still think women are being paid less for the same work, but it’s a fact that in 2013 only 400 women start­ed an engi­neer­ing appren­tice­ship, while 13,000 men did. Soci­ety still dic­tates women dis­play cer­tain behav­iour­al traits, so to be seen as go-get­ting or careerist is regard­ed as being out­side these norms.”

Flexible working

So do HR pro­fes­sion­als have any real pow­er to impact trends that appear to be out of their con­trol? The good news is that com­men­ta­tors believe they do.

“Evi­dence sug­gests pay gaps widen with each depen­dent child women have and with part-time work­ing,” says Dr Wright. “When peo­ple sug­gest women ‘choose’ to work flex­i­bly after hav­ing chil­dren, HR has to chal­lenge this by hav­ing bet­ter job design that asks whether they are con­demn­ing women to low­er-fly­ing careers once they return.”

Flex­i­ble work­ing is often her­ald­ed as the answer to this, but she believes HR needs to tread care­ful­ly here too. “Flexi-work­ing can actu­al­ly entrench the notion that women’s work is part time,” she says.

“Mak­ing pater­ni­ty leave pay the same is anoth­er solu­tion,” says Ms Olchaws­ki. “This removes the ten­den­cy for women to auto­mat­i­cal­ly take time out and miss pay ris­es or pro­mo­tions.”

Oth­er experts argue HR can be instru­men­tal in tack­ling Britain’s long-hours cul­ture, which they claim exac­er­bates dif­fer­ences between full-time and part-time work. “The very phrase ‘part time’ indi­cates these work­ers aren’t inter­est­ed in pro­gres­sion and career devel­op­ment,” says Dr Parken. “Job ads should remove this ref­er­ence, so that work is couched more as tasks required rather than num­ber of hours put in.”

One thing HR direc­tors can’t do overnight is raise pay in poor­ly val­ued occu­pa­tions and busi­ness­es right­ly wor­ry there can be the impres­sion of a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry gen­der pay gap when one doesn’t actu­al­ly exist. For instance, women tak­ing two years out to have chil­dren will miss two rounds of typ­i­cal­ly 2 to 3 per cent pay ris­es.

This is why many firms are scep­ti­cal of new gen­der pay report­ing require­ments, expect­ed this Octo­ber. Report­ing is the government’s big idea to tack­le pay gaps, and all firms with 250 staff will have to report mean and medi­an pay dif­fer­ences, the num­bers of men and women in each quar­tile of over­all pay dis­tri­b­u­tion, and dif­fer­ences between mean bonus pay­ments.

Until organ­i­sa­tions have gen­der data, they can’t begin to see where they might need change

“Gen­der report­ing is con­tro­ver­sial because it will expose gaps – some legit­i­mate – that need fur­ther expla­na­tion,” says Dr Wright. “But this has to be pos­i­tive because it will force firms to have con­ver­sa­tions and it will reveal behav­iour they might not have been aware of. For instance, a high street bank recent­ly did its pay audit and found line man­agers tend­ed to give high­er pay ris­es to men.”

Some firms are already ahead of the curve. Maxus, the UK’s fastest-grow­ing media agency, has Lind­say Pat­ti­son as its high-pro­file chief exec­u­tive, and in the last year she’s per­son­al­ly devel­oped ini­tia­tives encour­ag­ing women to rise up through the busi­ness and be paid the same as men.

She already pub­lish­es the agency’s pay gap, which is 4 per cent glob­al­ly but is actu­al­ly 1 per cent in favour of women in the UK. A quar­ter of its board are female, dou­ble the UK aver­age. “These fig­ures prove our approach is work­ing,” she says. “We now insist that for any senior hire, a female is at least on the short­list. My view is this, until organ­i­sa­tions have gen­der data, they can’t begin to see where they might need change.”

With pay influ­enced by so many fac­tors, the task fac­ing HR is cer­tain­ly a big one, but by forg­ing rela­tion­ships with tal­ent ear­li­er on, such as pro­mot­ing his­tor­i­cal­ly male roles to school-aged girls, and sup­port­ing women at all stages of their career, they can cer­tain­ly play a sig­nif­i­cant role.