UK tech's gender pay gap: HP Inc closest to parity with 1.8% sliver – Civica, Huawei, Siemens straddle 40% chasm The UK arms of Civica, Huawei and Siemens all paid women about 40 per cent less than men in 2018-19, according to data submitted to the government. Today is the deadline for companies in the UK to report their gender pay gap figures. More than 80 per cent of a cross-section of 100 IT suppliers, contractors, telcos and other …
The reporting on this data is a bit iffy, imho. While I agree that there is a job-specific gender pay gap in the UK job market, this data set does not compare jobs at all, but instead reflects only on salary of all employees in a company.
What the data implies more is a job-disparity, perhaps partly reflective of all those male baby-boomers being in the more senior positions (due to being the ones with the experience to do those roles, due to historic (and probably continuing) sex-discrimination), and thus earning more than those in the junior positions.
It will take time to achieve pay parity in this data set, as it requires the under-represented female gender to achieve job-parity to be a true comparison between the genders. When there is an equal number of women and men in each position in a company, then this metric becomes valid, until then, continue the fight to ensure that women have an equal opportunity for each job (as well as the corollary of having the same pay).
One of the frequent examples called out (at least in recent times) is the disparity between male and female pay at Tescos, which is brought about by their warehouse staff earning more than the shop-floor staff. Guess what, there are more men than women in the warehouse, and more women than men on the shop-floor. Within each category, the men and women earn exactly the same. Whether the warehouse job has more value than the shop-floor job, I cannot say - but it does to Tescos. I would also hope that at the very least the rate of application to each post from each of the sexes is reflective of the balance of the sexes in that role (e.g .if the qualified applicant rate for a post is 60% male, 40% female, then perhaps that should be the ratio of m:f employees in that role).
It's a complex area, and I think this dataset inadequately represents the extent of the problem.
Please stop perpetuating the claptrap of a gender pay gap. It has been many years since it was legal for men and women to be paid different amounts for the same work. It isn't that women are paid less, it's that they earn less, based on their choices, skills and experiences.
Any woman, in any industry, has the same opportunity to make it to the top as any man, if she puts the effort in. She probably has more chance, because of the PC crowd pushing for c-suite jobs to be "representative". Funny how they don't push for 50% of refuse collectors to be female, or sewage workers, or even warehouse pallet shifters.
Sorry but they absolutely do these days, in fact there is an amount of positive discrimination taking place. It still appears otherwise as in the over 40's age bracket, the industry and my organisation are still very male dominated, but grads / interns / early careers it's very even so positive change is well and truly underway.
Are we even comparing like for like here job wise or is it all consolidated stats to bloat the final figure?
In my department there are 2 men and 5 women. We all do different jobs so it would seem rather daft to compare salaries (which by the way would show the opposite of this survey).
Again, I'd like to note this compares the salary of men and women regardless of their position. Meaning this conflates differences of salaries for the same job, and differences between different jobs within the same company.
It can be a useful statistic if you look at the evolution compared to other years within the same company, but it's not really a good absolute indicator to compare companies, let alone companies in different industries.
What is the use of the information?
What is important is as follows.
Equal pay for equal work.
Equal opportunities.
So if the lower paying jobs are mainly one sex (techies and support staff normally male hence BT female skewed).
What is unacceptable is people earning more or getting better promotion simply due to trouser, pant or knicker contents.
So these companies are breaking equality and discrimination legislation? Oh that's right, this gender gap is not a measure of different pay for the same job, but just the median salaries for one gender vs median salary for another. So in effect it's a measure how diverse people make diverse choices and get paid differently for those choices. Which begs the question what's the point of this measure? Is it force people to make uniform choices?
Had to deal with a grievance claiming among other things gender discrimination.
On the surface it looked like there was a good reason for the grievance. Person selected was male the female making the grievance wasn't even interviewed even though they were both hired on the same day 15yrs ago. They were both working at the same site and the person grieving the selection had higher marks from school and while not more productive was well above average and should have at least had an interview.
But the male had 15yrs experience, the women didn't even have 10yrs. How could that be?
It started a couple years into her employment. Extended paid time off to have children. five children, carefully spaced to take full advantage of benefits. Maximum time off for having children was less than 1yr. She had managed to make that 18months in a couple of cases, records didn't explain how but I suspected leave without pay.
The person selected moved around to different sites, including remote sites where more responsibility for no more pay was the norm and took advantage of training including training for the position in question. It looked like they had been preparing their whole career. The person making the grievance stayed in one place, worked far less overtime, far fewer weekends, and little optional training but had better evaluations.
The grievance went through the stages largely because of the genders involved, how would you have ruled?
Keep in mind that there are consequences either way. Also keep in mind that the person making the grievance was more attractive, more pleasant to be around, more intelligent, and more socially skilled. Even though the job didn't require such skills they would make an impact if and every time you met her.
If that grievance had failed and the job selection stood a simple median pay gap measurement of that department would prove a gender pay gap.
If the grievance succeeded and the selection was overturned people would notice that as well.
And that there is the elephant in the room - women (in general) earn less than men because they take time out from their careers to drop sprogs.
Career women without children earn the same (or in many cases more) than men. That's the sacrifice they make.
"The median pay gap is calculated by arranging the hourly pay rates of all male full-pay staffers from highest to lowest, and taking the hourly pay of the middle-ranked man. The same is done for the women, and the two figures are compared."
What do the figure look like if you exclude all those doing less than 35 hours per week?
You need to compare people doing the same job and that have the same number of years in full time employment. Absolutely meaningless figures, what's the median of apples and oranges?
All that the median number tells us is how many men/women go for the higher paid jobs or work longer hours - which, to an extent, is up to the individual. There might be some prejudice in the hiring and promotion of people, that will be harder to flush out as it will need careful analysis of the decisions made that result in a job offer or promotion.
A like for like comparison (ie job rôle, experience, hours worked) will tell us if there is real wage discrimination - this difference should be zero.
My university is having a series of deep inward reflections about having a less than 50:50 student sex ratio and whether to block some women only colleges going mixed.
It also reported that 15% of it's students are from comprehensives but doesn't seem to be worried about that.
"The UK arms of Civica, Huawei and Siemens all paid women about 40 per cent less than men in 2018-19, according to data submitted to the government"
Missing disclaimer in article: "Because the men and women aren't all doing the same jobs or working the same hours and grouping an entire gender for these figures is incredibly misleading."
Eh, it would mean a lot more with data about disparity from role to role for different genders.
Rather than, I dunno, cleaning lady getting paid less than a male CTO. Which suggests the job itself doesn't matter, when it does.
And you get cynical types denying there's a problem at all because of this slightly overhyped approach.
Does this survey look into the number of hours worked per week gap?
Others have found men working more hours, a greater differential than the wage difference on a title by title comparison.
Of course just adding in the CEO's pay and the cleaning crew with no control of the titles, sure shows a big difference.
These stats seem meaningless, but I don't think anyone can argue with the fact that people doing the same job with comparable hours/responsibilities/experience/etc. should get the same pay regardless of gender, race, age, etc.
But what happens in the cases when women are already earning *more* than men in like-for-like comparisons?
If women (or whomever) want equal pay for equal work, then in the interests of fairness anyone earning more their male counterparts should get an immediate pay decrease.
People doing the same job with comparable hours/responsibilities/experience/etc are getting paid the same...
Think about it, businesses exist to make money, they don't pay their staff any more than they have to. If you could pay women less for the same work, why would any business ever hire any men at all?
Especially considering that all the media hype about discrimination focuses on higher paid male dominated roles, there is never any focus on female dominated roles or low paid male dominated roles. If your business hired only women, no attention would be paid to your discrimination and there would be no visible gender pay gap anyway as you'd have no male staff to compare to.
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