Exploring Equality and Diversity: Dealing with the Gender Pay Gap

Exploring Equality and Diversity: Dealing with the Gender Pay (Wage) Gap

Part A: – Secondary Data Analysis

Choose one of the protected characteristics from above and complete a 1000-word secondary data analysis (this includes existing reports, policy, and research from ACAS, CIPD, EHRC, pressure groups, newspapers, twitter groups e.g., @EqualityForumUK). From the data analysis you are required to present either.

• The challenges facing this protected characteristic
• Best Practice or Policy when dealing with this protected characteristic

This will feed into part B.

Part B: – Educational Toolkit

From the secondary data analysis, you are required to design an educational toolkit which will be used by managers to develop an awareness around how their staff unconscious bias can lead to discrimination, victimization, harassment, and bullying (direct and indirect). The educational toolkit can be in the form of one of the following (choose 1 only):

• A website
• A Podcast (no more than 6 minutes)
• A 2-day staff development session (including support material) (no more than 1000 words)
• A Vlog (no more than 6 minutes)
• A Employee Manual (no more than 1000 words)

This will feed into part c.

Part C: – Literature Review and Reflection

From completing parts a and b of the assessment you are required to complete a 1000-word literature review and reflection on the following.

• How did the secondary data analysis support or contradict the literature (the theory) on your protected characteristic?
• From reviewing the literature (the theory) how can you overcome unconscious bias?

Solution

Introduction

Discrimination, victimization, harassment, and bullying are common elements in the workplace environment. Women in our society are paid less than men because of personal thinking and perception about working nature of women. The existence of unconscious biases in our society is creating discrimination and inequality in the workplace. In this report, a detailed secondary data analysis is performed regarding the gender pay gap. In the second part, the educational toolkits developed, and reflection is made in the third part of a report about the causes and mitigation steps to close the gender pay gap.

Part A: – Secondary Data Analysis

Research commissioned by EHRC in 2015 on disability, ethnicity and gender pay gaps with the aim to identify the main causes and potential solutions to gender pay gaps. According to the view presented by the commission, broader inequalities were reflected in a society that required a professional way to tackle them to make Britain fairer. According to the results, the median gender pay gap was 18.1% in 2016 for full time and part-time workers.  The analysis of this study revealed that occupation is one factor due to which the gender pay gap is created, and there is a high level of concentration of female employment in general occupational grouping and low paying sectors. The report identified that in June 2016, the employment rate for women was 69.7% higher in contrast to the previous year. According to the EHRC statistical analysis conducted in 2017, the segregation of occupation and work choices are two main factors due to which dealing with the gender pay gap has become difficult (Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2017).

The results revealed that the causes that create a gender pay gap are very complex. In the newspaper “The Daily Telegraph” the analysis revealed that the gender pay gap is standing at 35% in 2017. In the newspaper, it has identified that women are paying 35% less pay than men at Telegraph Media Group. According to the response of chief executive of the group, Nick Huge, this pay gap would be closed by the end of 2025. In the newspaper, it was mentioned that most of the highest paid staff in the group were male, while there were only 26.9% women in the top earners of the group. When the comparison is made in the context of bonuses, then it is revealed that men are taking bonuses twice time more than women (Neate, 2018).

There are different levels of challenges facing the organisation in dealing with the gender pay gap. One of the prominent challenges identified in secondary data analysis is considered as access to workplace authority. According to the research, disparity in the context of access to authority in the workplace is a situation or condition in which two or more individuals who are equally qualified are denied to authority opportunities by gender, race and other factors. The study conducted by the World Economic Forum in the year 2017 revealed that it would take 100 years to close the global gender pay gap that showed that the achievement of equality looks like very difficult (Harris, 2017).

According to the report released by the Office for National Statistics, in the context of full-time workers, the gender gap is in favour of men. The consideration of age groups revealed that at a younger age, the gap for workers who are working full time remains small, but the gap reached its peak level between the ages of 50 and 59. The growth in the context of pay for women was noted at lower than the growth for the men. There were some of the important challenges in dealing with the gender pay gap (Evans, 2018). The report identified that discrimination in companies is a great challenge to manage or reduce the gender pay gap. Another important challenge is that the skills and the competencies of women are undervalued, so earning of the women is frequently less than men for doing similar jobs. Gender stereotypes are another important factor in the gender pay gap. It is a common thing that the commitment level of the women is considered lower than men and it is perceived that the women are less managerial or competent due to which the number of women in managerial and top positions of companies is lower or even this is the main reason why women are paid low at the same job position to me (Guibourg, 2018).

Transparency is considered one of the important factors in making a policy to deal with the gender pay gap. It is revealed by different studies that had been supported by EHRC that the gender pay gaps are narrower in those companies in which there is greater pay transparency. According to the research conducted on 70 different organisations by a legal firm revealed that there were only 2% of the organisations which were following the shared parental leave since its establishment in 2015. According to the research, the cultural perception was the key factor due to which the companies were facing the challenge of dealing with the gender pay gap. Another important challenge is difficult for the management to maintain an even distribution of jobs between women and men. The recruitment decisions of the company’s management are directly impacted by this gender bias against women (Brown, 2017).

According to a report presented by the Office for National Statistics, the women are taking median hourly pay of 18.4% less than men employees. In this way, the gap is noted as 17.4% in mean hourly pay. The report of ONS showed that observed differences existed between the male and female employees in the context of their characteristics could explain only a third of this gap. But the role of some important factors that help in explaining the reason by which the male and female staff are paid differently had not explained by this analysis. According to the study there are certain occupational differences between the male and female staff due to which the companies are facing a challenge of dealing with the gender pay gap (Tetlow, 2018).

The report of CIPD identified some basic ways of dealing with the gender pay gap. The first, best practice and policy for dealing with this problem is that the management of companies should need to balance gender at all levels. It is important to ensure that there is even distribution of men and women across the company’s pay scale. Second best policy and practice are to set targets to wad the dripping talent pipeline within the organisation (Mohdzaini, 2015).

Part B: – Educational Toolkit

An Employee Manual

Dealing With the Gender Pay (Wage) Gap

What is gender pay or wage gap?

The difference between the average pay of men and women is known as the gender pay gap. The gender pay gap reflects the level of inequalities that exist in the labour market. The gender pay gap is considered a high-level indicator in determining the earning power of women and men.

What is unconscious bias?

The unsupported or prejudice judgments in against or favours of one group, individual or thing to another in an unfair way is known as an implicit bias or unconscious bias.

Unconscious bias in the context of the gender pay gap

The gender pay gap is considered as one of the complex issues for companies. Unconscious bias leads to discrimination, victimisation,and bullying in the context of gender equality.

Factors that affect the gender pay gap:

• One of the important factors of the gender pay gap is that women are more likely to prefer part-time work in contrast to men, especially when they had children or when they are older. This more attraction to part-time work and more likely to take more leaves eventually resulted in a reduction of hourly earnings of women (Alderman, 2018).
• The differences perceived in the context of women’s and men’s human capital are another factor that causes the gender pay gap. It is the fact that an employee who works full time acquired more human capital in comparison to that employee who works part-time (Suddath, 2018).
• A third important factor that is creating a gender pay gap is the sectorial and occupational segregation of the roles by gender. It is perceived that women and men want to perform the different level of work (Topping, Barr and Duncan, 2018).
• Another common factor observed is that the work of women is undervalued due to which the women are paid less in comparison to men.
• Discrimination is another risk factor in contributing to the gender pay gap. There are different ways of discrimination, for example in direct discrimination women is paid less because of the reason that she is a woman and in indirect discrimination, a group of people is paid less by the company because of the reason that they are working part-time (CIPD Ireland, 2017).

How the gender pay gap is analysed

The analysis of the gender pay gap could be carried out in the following steps:

• The first step is the investigation of the gender pay gap. The gender pay gap is considered as an imperfect measure to measure equality in the context of gender because of the complexities associated with it. The best way to investigate the gender pay gap is taking a multi-faceted approach. In other way pay audit is considered as one of the effective tools to identify and address gender pay gaps (Mckinsey and Company, 2018).
• The next step should be the conduct of data analysis. To assess pay data and analyses the gender pay gap, there are two thresholds identified by EHRC. These thresholds should need to be used. The first threshold is identifying the difference of significant nature between women and men’s earnings for an equal level of work. The second threshold is considering patterns in pay differentials.
• The third step is turning analysis into an activity-based approach that requires identifying measurable, sustainable and specific initiatives for making positive changes. It is important to tailor the proper action plan to address specific manifestations regarding the gender pay gap.
• The next step is to measure the outcomes of strategies developed for reducing the gender pay gap within the company. For this, it is required to adopt a gender pay gap reporting to demonstrate in a clear way how these manifestations are addressed.

Why is the gender pay gap reporting important?

Pay gap reporting is important to ensure that the company has a high-level commitment to close the gender pay gap and management holds itself responsible and accountable to close the gender pay gap. Pay gap reporting is important for ensuring the employees that their basic rights are filled by the company, and it is the nature of the employees’ that they want to know about the job type and pay grade. The gender pay gap guidance was published by the government in collaboration with ACAS in March 2017 to inform the companies regarding gender pay reporting (Gender.Bitc.Org, 2017).

Benefits of closing the gender pay gap:

According to CIPD different benefits could be gained by the company by closing the gender pay gap. Some of the important benefits identified by the CIPD report include that at the organizational level the growth and the earnings of the business could be increased by closing the gender pay gap, it helps the company to retain and attract highly skilled people in the company, it resulted in the promotion of gender equality that increases the positive perceptions of the people regarding company.

How to tackle the gender pay gap?

Gender equality does not only benefit the company, but it plays a significant role in economic development. To ensure the company’s commitment to equality, the law requires companies to report their gender pay gap. Therefore, it is needed to take proper actions to close the gender pay gap. Structural and cultural change in an organisationis considered as the best way to achieve gender equality within the company (Wisniewska, Ehrenberg-Shannon and Gordon, 2018).  Some important aspects of closing the gender pay gap are given below:

• The managers of the company must need to ensure that there are equal opportunities and rights for both the men and women working in the organisation. For ensuring this the conduct of equal pay audit because it is helpful in understanding that to what extent gender pay gap is driven by unequal pay.
• The consideration of unbiased promotion, appraisal, and recruitment processes within the organisation is considered a good way to close the gender pay gap. To ensure that the decisions of the company are bias-proofed, the managers must make decisions that are meritocratic, inclusive and transparent.
• A third important way of closing eh gender pay gap is to provide the right support when needed by both the women and a man, for example, to achieve equality at work, the gender quality at home is considered as important for the company.

Part C: – Literature Review and Reflection

In our society, we could see that a lot of inequality exists in our society. I come to understand that women in our society are taking a greater share of those caring duties which are unpaid for example, they have the responsibility to take care of their children and home. It is the reason that the women are in higher proportion to work as a part-time employee.  I realised that the main focus of the women is on that job which looks easy and simply to do which eventually becomes the reason of undervaluation of the work performs by the women. EHRC research conducted in 2017 proved that work of choices and segregation of occupation is two significant factors of increasing the gender pay gap (Alderman, 2018).

By secondary data analysis, I observed that the productivity level of the women is lower than the men. In most, of the companies in both the developing and developed countries the percentage of women workers in senior positions is lower in comparison to men. Itis reflected by assessing the estimated yield productivity of women and men that in those firms in which the management is under the control of women has shown lower value added per worker in comparison to those firms in which the management is under the men. It could be seen in the case of Telegraph Media Group that the percentage of women in senior positions are lower than men because of the reason that the women have lower productivity capabilities (Mckinsey and Company, 2018).

The unequal provision of authority to employees who are similar in the context of qualification and skills is a company thing in businesses. The problem of the gender pay gap is increasing because of the inequalities in the exertion of authority among men and women. This discrimination at authority level is creating a major problem for the women due to which their skills and capabilities are undervalued. It is reflected from the study of the World Economic Forum that certain levels of restrictions have been created for the women in the context of gaining the authority equal to the men. The highest percentage of the gender pay gap is because of this type of problem and perception (Evans, 2018).

By assessing the report of the Office for National Statistics, I conclude that it is a common perception and gender bias that the male qualities are more suitable for the leadership positions within the organisation. It shows that organisational cultures are playing a very important role in increasing the gender pay gap. The belief and perception within society is a significant factor of undervaluing the skills of women. It is assumed in the current society that leadership and managerial traits closely resemble those which are attributed and existed in men. The wrong expectations exist in our society that men have argentic traits like control and assertion and women have communal traits like gentleness, helpfulness, and affection. A framework is created by these types of the generalised expectations in society that eventually widespread stereotyping in the workplace and culture of the organisation (Harris, 2017). A deep-rooted complexity of expectations is experienced by the women when entering leadership or managerial positions in the company. It creates a certain level of frustration and stress for executive women, which directly impact the performance of the women. It was proved by the statistics presented by the Office for National Statistics by pointing out that in 2016, on average a woman who works as the full-time worker was earning £5,732 less than men per year.

Pay transparency is reflected as a key factor in reducing or closing a gender pay gap. I learned that it is the basic right of every employee of a company to know that each of their colleagues in the company. It is eh reason that I would say that this transparency in the company is the best way to close the gender pay gap. While on another side of the coin I noticed that pay transparency is considered relatively rare in companies’ intheprivate sector because of different factors like jealousy among the employees. It is the common thing in workers of today’s time that they want to know what others in the companyare earning. For example, if I have no idea about the earnings of my colleague, then it is a natural thing that I will assume that he or she might get more than me. So, in response to that, I would reduce my performance. A similar thing is observed that lack of transparency in the context of paying equal salary for women and men is the main factor that reduced the value of women work (Mohdzaini, 2015).

The implementation of cultural changes would be helpful in closing the gender pay gap. According to my learning from data analysis, it is the responsibility of the management of the company to ensure that there is a balance in gender dealing. I found that when women reach an age of 30 years,then they start facing the emergence of a genderpay gap that means age is the factor with which the genders pay gap increases. There should be balance and flexibility between the tasks of women and men. In case women are not able to do a task, then flexibility will help her to keep her performance track in competition with the men (Tetlow, 2018).

Conclusion

It is concluded that the gender pay gap in companies clearly showed the inequalities in both the private and public companies. The hard work and level of skills of women are not only valued because of wrong perception and culture of thinking about women. It is concluded that people think that women have the capability of low productivity naturally, but it is concluded that working women also involved in managing their families and homes so this is the reason that the companies should follow equal pay acts.

References

Alderman, L. (2018) Britain Aims to Close Gender Pay Gap With Transparency and Shame, 4 April, [Online], Available: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/business/britain-gender-pay-gap.html [6 December 2018].

Brown, D. (2017) Mind the (gender pay) gap: will gender pay reporting make any difference?, 5 April, [Online], Available: https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/news/mind-gender-pay-gap-will-gender-pay-reporting-make-any-difference [30 November 2018].

CIPD Ireland (2017) Measures to tackle the gender pay gap, October, [Online], Available: https://www.cipd.ie/Images/cipd-on-measures-to-tackle-the-gender-pay-gap-oct-2017_tcm21-28481.pdf [30 November 2018].

Equality and Human Rights Commission (2017) Tackling gender,disability and ethnicity paygaps, August, [Online], Available: https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/research-report-110-tackling-gender-disability-ethnicity-pay-gaps.pdf [30 nOVEMBER 2018].

Evans, T. (2018) Understanding the gender pay gap in the UK, 17 January, [Online], Available: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/

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Gender.Bitc.Org (2017) Toolkit 1: Measuring your gender pay gap, 1 September, [Online], Available: https://gender.bitc.org.uk/sites/default/files/bitc_toolkit_1_measuring_your_pay_gap_final.pdf [30 November 2018].

Guibourg, C. (2018) Gender pay gap: Six things we’ve learnt, 7 April, [Online], Available: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-43668187 [6 December 2018].

Harris, B. (2017) What the pay gap between men and women really looks like, 06 Nov, [Online], Available: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/pay-equality-men-women-gender-gap-report-2017/ [30 November 2018].

Mckinsey and Company (2018) UK Gender Pay Gap Report 2018, [Online], Available: https://www.mckinsey.com/uk/our-people/uk-gender-pay-gap-report [6 December 2018].

Mohdzaini, H. (2015) How to tackle the gender pay gap: lessons from higher educatio, 6 Aug, [Online], Available: http://www2.cipd.co.uk/community/blogs/b/reward_blog/archive/2015/08/06/how-to-tackle-the-gender-pay-gap-lessons-from-higher-education [30 November 2018].

Neate, R. (2018) Telegraph Media Group reveals 35% gender pay gap, 26 March, [Online], Available: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/26/telegraph-media-group-gender-pay-gap [30 November 2018].

Suddath, C. (2018) New Numbers Show the Gender Pay Gap Is Real: Corporate reports from the U.K. give the clearest picture yet, 19 March, [Online], Available: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-29/the-gender-pay-gap-is-real-say-new-numbers-from-the-u-k [6 December 2018].

Tetlow, G. (2018) Two-thirds of UK gender pay gap remains ‘unexplained’, 17 January, [Online], Available: https://www.ft.com/content/1ff5464a-fb98-11e7-9b32-d7d59aace167 [30 November 2018].

Topping, A., Barr, C. and Duncan, P. (2018) Gender pay gap figures reveal eight in 10 UK firms pay men more, 4 April, [Online], Available: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/apr/04/gender-pay-gap-figures-reveal-eight-in-10-uk-firms-pay-men-more [6 December 2018].

Wisniewska, A., Ehrenberg-Shannon, B. and Gordon, S. (2018) Gender pay gap: how women are short-changed in the UK, 5 April, [Online], Available: https://ig.ft.com/gender-pay-gap-UK/ [6 December 2018].