Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The problem with the gender pay gap obsession

Would we condone teaching a child that 1+1 = 3, for the sake of increasing her interest in maths? No. Would we praise flat earth theorists for getting people talking about the health of the planet? No. So why are we giving credence to meaningless and often deceptive gender pay gap statistics, which have us focusing on women’s issues in a way that is damaging to women? With Brexit-mania dominating our national debate, you may have missed that today is the deadline for large organisations to report their gender pay gap data.

Now into the second year of reporting, it has become increasingly clear that the influx of data from the gender pay gap reporting measures fails to provide any meaningful insight into fair pay for men and women in the workplace.

Today’s headline stats of 30 per cent, 40 per cent, even 50 per cent gender pay gaps are empty in context. The required calculations do not take any like-for-like comparisons into account – age, background, experience, education and degree level, and critically, type of job are not controlled for. These figures are comparing the pay of the company’s CEO to the junior researcher straight out of university.

The measures don’t even distinguish between full-time and part-time workers, which makes a huge difference to results. When the Office for National Statistics calculates the UK’s official pay gap, its breakdown of workers into full-time and part-time cuts the figure in half for the former (8.6 per cent in favour of men) and reveals a pay gap in favour of women for the latter (-4.4 per cent).

To highlight just how bad the reported data is, look at the accusations made against the National Health Service and its alleged gender pay gap. The public body has been flagged for its 23 per cent gender pay gap – a gap that increases to 33 per cent when just looking at GPs.

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