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Rooney View member profile	Apr 8 2018, 08:36 PM Post #1
WINTER IS COMING Joined: 7 March 2006 Posts: 45,597 User: 88	The stats show throughout most jobs and sectors there is a large pay gap between men and women. A few companies even claim to have a 0% difference between men and women which is quite frankly extremely unlikely as it is near enough statistically impossible. What do you think to the data that has been published? How can we change the gap? I was considering putting this in the Lounge but decided it would probably be better suited here.


Brett-Butler View member profile	Apr 8 2018, 09:10 PM Post #2
Howdy, disco citizens Joined: 16 January 2010 Posts: 12,775 User: 10,455	I imagine that as a result of the mandatory reporting coming in for companies of 250+ employees to report their gender pay gap (which despite what some people believe, does NOT mean that companies are paying women less than men for the same work, it is instead the difference between the total salary paid to all male/female employees regardless of rank/hours worked divided by the amount of employees of each sex), there will be attempts by companies to "game" the system if there is the fear that it will show them to have a not very satisfactory ratio. Some of these tricks that I imagine we will see being pulled will include - - Outsourcing workers within the company where you may expect a lot of low-paying women (i.e cleaning) to be working out to other companies or to make them work freelance, therefore ensuring that they do not show up as employees, therefore making sure that they have a much more favourable M:F ratio. Of course, as they will no longer be employees, they will lose many of their employment rights they would have enjoyed. - Creating a new entity within the company for just the high-paying male employees, with their salaries being recharged through the main company. This will mean that it will make the ratio much more favourable, and it will have the knock on effect of ensuring that the newly created entity doesn't have a gender pay gap (as you can't have a pay gap if your entity consists of just 1 gender). - Hiring a gender pay-gap person, whose sole job is to be hired ensure the company has a 0% pay gap. For example, let's say that there's one company which has 10 men who receive £100,000 overall, but also has 10 women who earn £95,000 overall. In order to ensure that there is a 0% pay gap, 1 woman is arranged to be hired on 31st December as a Gender Pay Gap consultant. She will be paid £15,000 for the year, which will therefore ensure that the company has a 0% pay gap between men and women for the financial year. - Just refusing to hire women at an entry level, only hiring women who are at an intermediary level or above to ensure that a favourable ratio is maintained (although this is technically illegal, companies will find a way around it. They always do). As you can tell, I am not the biggest fan of the new regulations. It has been brought in with the best intentions in the world, but I predict that it is going to backfire and make things even worse for women in employment. Of course, I could be proven wrong, and will not be unhappy if it proves to be the case.


Suedehead2 View member profile	Apr 8 2018, 09:27 PM Post #3
BuzzJack Legend Joined: 13 April 2007 Posts: 36,655 User: 3,272	The regulations are, indeed, over-simplistic. The reason for the apparent pay gap in many companies is not that women are being paid less for the same job; it is often a matter of there being more men in senior positions being paid many times more than the average member of staff. That is still an issue, but not the one implied by the figures. Thew are clearly ways round this as well. I looked at the pay gap at a football club. The gap was close to zero with women actually being paid slightly more than men. That can mean one of two things. i) There are some women on fantastically high salaries ii) The players are not included. I think we can guess which one is the answer.


Rooney View member profile	Apr 8 2018, 10:23 PM Post #4
WINTER IS COMING Joined: 7 March 2006 Posts: 45,597 User: 88	QUOTE(Suedehead2 @ Apr 8 2018, 10:27 PM) The regulations are, indeed, over-simplistic. The reason for the apparent pay gap in many companies is not that women are being paid less for the same job; it is often a matter of there being more men in senior positions being paid many times more than the average member of staff. That is still an issue, but not the one implied by the figures. Thew are clearly ways round this as well. I looked at the pay gap at a football club. The gap was close to zero with women actually being paid slightly more than men. That can mean one of two things. i) There are some women on fantastically high salaries ii) The players are not included. I think we can guess which one is the answer. Yep that is exactly the problem and not a problem with the companies themselves, more a problem with society itself. It's seen that men have a career and women have family and this in theory leads to more men in senior leadership roles. I think the government tried to tackle this with the Shared Parental Leave policy, but it's too complicated a policy and it's not financially beneficial to families if the company has a private maternity policy. I suspect the next steps will be more companies scrap maternity policies and just have a parental policy that both men and women can have. Like Brett says if you look at the way the whole financials are getting reported, it's easy to infer that you get paid more if you are a man for any role, but this is definitely not the case.


vidcapper View member profile	Apr 9 2018, 05:42 AM Post #5
Paul Hyett Joined: 4 April 2006 Posts: 25,346 User: 364	QUOTE(Suedehead2 @ Apr 8 2018, 10:27 PM) The regulations are, indeed, over-simplistic. The reason for the apparent pay gap in many companies is not that women are being paid less for the same job; it is often a matter of there being more men in senior positions being paid many times more than the average member of staff. That is still an issue, but not the one implied by the figures. Thew are clearly ways round this as well. I looked at the pay gap at a football club. The gap was close to zero with women actually being paid slightly more than men. That can mean one of two things. i) There are some women on fantastically high salaries ii) The players are not included. I think we can guess which one is the answer. Indeed - that's a real no-brainer. The comparison must be done sensibly though, as there are two separate issues involved. 1. Men tend to be paid more than women at the same job grade. 2. There are more men in senior jobs than women. I assume this thread is mainly about the former?


Popchartfreak View member profile	Apr 9 2018, 08:58 AM Post #6
BuzzJack Legend Joined: 18 July 2012 Posts: 22,812 User: 17,376	Local government where I work is equal pay. To pay for this they kindly reduced the pay of some men in the middling grades to pay for the rises in the upper grades and lower grades. This was at the time they were telling us bankers pay was contracted and they could do f*** all about part-state-owned companies like Lloyds and RBS, but it was fine to change the contracts of local government employees. The Union agreed to these changes, the needs of the more-women-gaining-than-men-losing outweighing the needs of the not-quite-average-pay-salaried. Women in the middling grades also lost out, so that's all right then. I daresay other companies could adopt the same strategy and have no actual cost increase. Just trouble getting staff for all those annoying skilled middling jobs...


vidcapper View member profile	Apr 9 2018, 09:02 AM Post #7
Paul Hyett Joined: 4 April 2006 Posts: 25,346 User: 364	QUOTE(Popchartfreak @ Apr 9 2018, 09:58 AM) Local government where I work is equal pay. To pay for this they kindly reduced the pay of some men in the middling grades to pay for the rises in the upper grades and lower grades. This was at the time they were telling us bankers pay was contracted and they could do f*** all about part-state-owned companies like Lloyds and RBS, but it was fine to change the contracts of local government employees. That's always the problem - the gov't can do nothing about private sector pay.


kindagood View member profile	May 8 2018, 02:15 PM Post #8
BuzzJack Climber Joined: 28 September 2007 Posts: 198 User: 4,413	The gender pay gap also relates to female dominated professions being less well paid than male professions of equal qualification or other training standards. E.g. nursing home staff who are trained and female dominated being paid less than say road workers a male dominated profession.