Gender pay gap plans move a step forward

Nick Elvin

The Government is to press ahead with plans to force large firms to publish details of their gender pay gap.

This week it launched a consultation into new rules that would mean every company with more than 250 employees having to make public the difference between the average pay of their male and female employees.

The consultation, which will run until September 6, will look at the detail of how the new gender pay gap regulations will be designed, including what, where and when information will be published.

Writing in The Times, the Prime Minister said the proposals would “cast sunlight on the discrepancies and create the pressure we need for change, driving women’s wages up”.

Responding to the Government’s announcement, the CBI’s deputy director-general, Katja Hall said: “Addressing the gender pay gap is the right priority – and we should set a target for reducing it. While we believe publishing pay gap data could be misleading, we will work with the Government to ensure that rules on what is published are flexible enough to be relevant to each company.

“To see real progress, however, we need to challenge occupational stereotypes by encouraging more women into male-dominated industries and investing in careers advice.”

Matthew Sanders, CEO of recruitment and business services group Brookfield Rose, said employers and recruitment agencies should “consider the realities behind the announcement”.

“It would be foolish to jump to conclusions that this gender pay gap is quite the ‘epidemic’ that many are sensationally branding it,” he said. “The reality is, not all companies will cheer the introduction of compulsory gender pay gap reporting, because it takes a complex set of issues and condenses it to a few headline statistics.

“In Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) April 2015 Labour Market report, it was reported that just over six million women work part-time and so, naturally, are not able to command as great a salary. This is compared with just over two million men who are working part-time.

“In addition to this, 1.64 million people are in temporary work (broken down by 861,000 women and 779,000 men). ONS reported that 24% of women choose to be in a temporary role as a lifestyle choice, compared to 19% of men.

“Even once comparing employees in the same type of role, there are so many variables to consider; previous experience, education, their own unique abilities for instance. These all determine a person’s salary, none of which can be taken into context by macro-level comparisons on a stark spreadsheet.”