Quote:
Originally Posted by chezlaw
Can you expand on this? It's interesting because part of the solution in my view has to be distortions in the recruitment market. A benefit of doing it this way is that directly legislating the distortions is both very hard to do and then hard to undo. Any distortion in recruitment will dissolve as the gender wage gap gets resolved - this almost certainly includes more women in the most senior positions.
Having worked through the '90s under a regime where positive discrimination was unofficially enforced and watched the organisation slowly and predictably fall apart as lower-ability people were continually over-promoted, I feel that the primary function of recruitment should be to employ the 'strongest' candidate where there is one (according to the selection process), and only to use demographics as tie-breakers.
That the gender pay gap still exists in this day and age (9-10% for full time workers in the cited link), almost 50 years after the Equal Pay Act, is an indication to me of two things: that in some workplaces women probably still (illegally) earn less than men for doing the same work; and that for various reasons a smaller proportion of women still work in the higher paid jobs (eg technical, scientific, legal, financial etc) than men, and a higher proportion of women still work in low to medium paid jobs (eg catering, retail, HR etc) than men. It also seems likely to me that there are some types of work that appeal to fewer women than men and other types that appeal more to women.
I see declaring gender pay gaps as a positive step if the reasons for the gap are understood and artificial means of eliminating the gap are not adopted in an attempt to compensate for systemic faults in education and upbringing - two wrongs not making a right - but then I also see all salaries being declared as a desirable step towards greater transparency and fairness in the workplace.
Last edited by jalfrezi; 04-09-2017 at 09:08 AM.