This month, many countries held their ‘Equal Pay Day’. This is the day in which figuratively women stop earning compared to men due to the gender pay gap. In the UK, this was announced to be 18 November – based upon the fact that the gender pay gap is 11.9% in the UK. Other European countries such as France, Germany, Spain and Belgium also mark this day, all of which tend to fall around the first few weeks of November. Indeed, the European Commission marks the 10 November as the European Equal Pay Day – based upon an average of 14.1% lower pay compared to men.
Whilst in theory, men and women legally are expected be paid the same amount for the work they do, in practice this does not lead to the egalitarian society that we might hope for. Women are often past up for promotion to senior levels, or are undervalued for the work they do. Stereotypes still exist around the type of work women are capable of, meaning many organisations still do not see women as leaders, or typecast as secretaries.
Some high-paying fields such as engineering and IT are heavily represented by men which further skews the balance. Likewise, the gender pay gap also highlights unbalanced societal norms, where childcare are expected to be covered by women, whereas this is not expected of men. Similarly, the figure can also be further skewed by low percentage of women participating in the workforce in the first place, meaning at times the situation can be more stark than the figure itself shows.
Whilst Gender Pay Gap is clearly a wider societal issue, there is certainly far more that organisations themselves can do to tackle the problem. Unfortunately, the numbers have stayed consistent (and in the example of the UK actually gone up this year), meaning that we cannot expect the passage of time to solve the problem. Instead, here are some suggested ways for organisations to approach the problem:
- understand own gender balance internally – Organisations could do more to internally investigate their own gender balance. A step further would be to start looking at whether there are pay disparities that have arisen over the years of promotions and salary negotiations. Some firms are now looking to correct these discrepencies by either offering top-ups to lesser paid females at the same grade, or by creating clearer salary bands which harmonise pay.
- maternity and return to work schemes – Whilst generally we are seeing a generally balanced split of men and women entering the workforce in professional jobs, a large issue is women leaving work during pregnancy and maternity and not returning. This often places women having to make a choice between family and career, with corporate inflexibility making this feel a binary choice. Organisations can do more to put in place return to work schemes, regular check-ins during maternity and better policies to support women as they go through maternity leave and encourage their return afterwards.
- Increase participation of women in sector – Certain sectors have systemic issues around underrepresentation of women. A commonly cited example is the lack of female STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) graduates, meaning there is a lack of representation in this space in the workplace. Organisations have looked at developing a better pipeline of staff by supporting girls participation in these areas, for example through coding clubs or other initiatives. This does not just apply for technology though, but also other sectors such as construction where more could be done to make girls feel this is a viable career pathway for them.
- reviewing internal culture – It is vital that an organisation itself does not simply chase numbers of women, but instead also looks at how the organisation is run, and how genuinely inclusive it might be. Many organisations do not realise that their processes and work culture can be exclusionary for women. For example, in tech companies which are often male dominated, they may have a drinking culture which may mean that a working mother is unable to progress due to not going for a drink after work due to childcare, therefore not being seen as a ‘team player’ and being passed up for opportunities.
- Shifting performance management and HR policies – Organisations should review how they value their employees and see how they can make their workplaces more inclusive, for example introducing flexible hours and more options for part-time working and job-share roles. Importantly, those who benefit from these schemes should also be seen as viable for promotion as well. Another practical way to tackle this is to support the creation of a women’s network which can help women support one another within an organisation as well as advocate for more inclusive policies.
These are some of the ways organisations can tackle issues of gender within their organisation, though I am sure there are many other ways that I have neglected to mention here.
What do you think organisations can do to tackle the gender pay gap?