This year new legislation comes into effect, which requires employers with 250 or more employees to publish statutory calculations showing the gap in pay between their male and female employees. The idea is that it will expose firms and motivate them to take action to close the gap.
Almost 1,300 companies have reported so far. A picture emerges of a majority of firms paying men on average more than women.
But we knew that. The existence of what is known as the gender pay gap is well established. What is almost never discussed is why it exists. It is assumed that a patriarchal conspiracy is at work, and the playing field needs levelling.
This exposes the glaring problem with the legislation: it is attempting to tackle a perceived problem of equality of opportunity by addressing a question of equality of outcome. The gender pay gap does exist, but it owes barely anything, if anything at all, to the perceived discrimination. It is down to factors like career choices, worked hours, pay negotiation strategy and various life style choices, not to discrimination by a shady patriarchy. Research by the Korn Ferry Institute, using date comprising 20 million salaries at 25,000 organizations in 100 nations found very small pay gaps for like positions (see figure below). The report found that those small disparities ‘can be pegged to women still not getting access to the highest-paying jobs’.
This kind of objective analysis is of course anathema to social justice campaigners aiming for equality of outcome. Politicians, who are running scared and falling over themselves to align their views with the PC standpoint, are all too happy to ignore the facts as well. And of course, when facts are refuted, decision making will suffer.
The ludicrous pay gap legislation is misguided and completely irrelevant. Companies will waste resources on the reporting, risk antagonizing their staff and customers, give ammunition to rabid social justice warriors but will be almost completely unable to act on the basis of the results of the reporting. How do you address the lower pay of a woman who only works 4 days a week or took 2 years out on maternity leave at the very moment where here male colleagues were on the brink of important career progression? The only way to eliminate the pay gap and satisfy clueless politicians and an outraged public will be to overpay women versus men for like jobs. This may be the hidden agenda of radical feminists pushing this kind of legislative overreach, but it is hardly the ‘fairness’ that the law intended to deliver.
The truth, unpalatable as it may be to social justice campaigners, is that in the Western world today, equality of outcome mostly is due to the choices and ability of the individual. So it is in pay. Hiding behind the notion of a patriarchal conspiracy, feminists have convinced spineless politicians to enact this law without any concept of the real-life consequences. The legislation is not aimed at delivering equality of outcome, but at rooting out pay discrimination – essentially at levelling a playing field that is already pretty level. This is what happens when you refuse to accept reality because it doesn’t fit your world view. Employers are now left with a headache: they simply cannot close a pay gap that doesn’t exist.