Question

What can women leaders do to bridge the pay gap between women and men? Please list all the variables in the sentence.

Answer 1

1. The women leader should make reporting on pay data mandatory. Apart from the complete wash-out that is Think, Act, Report, a voluntary programme which encourages companies to review their remuneration structures and then report their findings (unsurprisingly, hardly any of them do the last part), there has been no government push for greater transparency around pay. The culture of secrecy which surrounds pay means that employees feel they can’t talk about it and businesses do everything they can to hide it. Why? Because it saves money. But by ignoring recommendations around pay transparency, companies never have to explain themselves to their employees and can keep raking in that extra 10%.

2. Pay attention to your company’s data. If you happen to be the CEO of your company then please, start a pay audit now. Then act on the results. Organisations regularly tell me that they spend vast tracts of time studying employee remuneration, yet I never hear of anyone acting on this knowledge. Why has no organisation ever seen that it pays its women less and awarded them all a payrise? Or the men a pay cut, if that’s more palatable. If you’re a big company with huge profits, maybe you could allocate some of them to paying your staff fairly. Even the most enlightened only change pay going forward. This is better than nothing but really only benefits those starting off their careers, not those already half way up the ladder.

3. Women need to ask for more money. I hate to blame the women but all the research shows that women don’t ask for enough at the outset. If a man wants a salary of £35,000 they’ll tell a recruiter they’re looking for £40,000. Years of this has led to a belief by all HR teams that when they ask you how much you expect to be paid (rather than just telling you what they want to pay for the job), the number you come back with is merely the starting point in a negotiation. So ladies, next time you find yourself discussing your salary, decide what the job is worth and then add 20%. It is completely ridiculous that we all have to go through this rigmarole, but that is the world we’re living in. Until the revolution, obviously.

4. Stop blaming children. There was a time when employing a young man with a wife and kids was seen as a smart decision, after all he had a family that he wanted to provide for. He would be loyal to the company and work hard to look after them. In fact, we still think this. A US study found that men with children under 18 earned more than their childfree counterparts. Unsurprisingly, this trend reversed for women. When will we realise that women with children are no more or less committed to their careers than anyone else? Perhaps they’re working reduced hours or they seem to be more determined to leave the office on time each night, but if they’re still doing a good job then they need to be rewarded for that. This will only happen when we stop valuing presenteeism and start valuing performance. And when we end the belief that someone working outside of the office is actually lolling about the house in their PJs, waiting for the ITV2 repeat of Jeremy Kyle.

5. Start valuing “women’s work”. Although the CMI’s report looks at men and women in the same roles, there is a tendency to find women working in sectors where the pay is overall lower, for example, in the public or third sectors. As this article on why we need more men in “female” professions points out, there is a correlation between sectors that employ large numbers of women and low pay. We need to change this, partly so that we get a better gender balance across all industries, partly because it seems intrinsically wrong that caring for our children is seen as deserving less money than running a bank and mainly because while we keep associating women with low-paying areas, women will keep associating themselves with being worth less. And that has to change.