Gender Pay Gap

Really interesting seeing the results that are popping up on the gender pay gap list. 

My company isn't up there yet, but will be soon no doubt. I know that my company looks to be 'forward thinking' and 'progressive' - and is very good at promoting things like diversity,  women's leadership, has minority diversity groups, LGBTQ groups, etc internally,  and diversity in hiring, trying to reach girls through STEM work at schools, etc. 
They talk the game, but actually, within engineering functions as a whole in the company, it's 90% men.  Not unusual I suppose and it's going to really be interesting to see where we fall on the gender pay gap.  And chances are, there's going to be some explaining to do.... 

I know not everyone believes it's real - but it is.  Being in finance, I have access to all the salaries, benefits, and bonuses people get.  And it can be infuriating to know that info!  I hate having access to it as it always upsets me.

I don't think a woman should be promoted just because she's a woman.  But I do think more women should be in leadership roles.  I don't like to play the woman card but each job I've lost out on in recent months, the chosen candidate was male.  I'm also in a very male dominated industry and it can be HARD to get ahead!

But you know, I'm a goat.   

This has been a hot topic for us for the last couple of years due to a high-profile legal case put forward by a number of women in our company. The company is now putting through a pay deal to reduce both the gender pay gap and the 'experience' pay gap (where people doing exactly the same job as me are getting paid a lot more for it simply because they've been doing it for 20 years longer).

One the one hand the new deal has positives... our salaries are being brought more into line with the private sector, but on the other hand, there's a cap on the money available from the government to pay our salaries and so they're basically just redistributing the same amount of money differently rather than being given a larger pot.

So, while I'm getting a pretty significant rise in my base salary, my annual 24/7 shift allowance is being cut and I'm completely losing all weekend and bank holiday allowances. So a several thousand-pound increase in my base salary actually equates to only about a £200 increase in my annual take-home pay (assuming I start at the bottom of the new pay grade) .

I also have colleagues whose base salaries are being cut by several thousand AND they are losing their shift/weekend/bank holidays allowances, which means they will be much worse off after the new pay scales come in than they are now.

So, basically, most of the people who work 9am - 5pm, Monday to Friday are getting large pay rises, and those of us who work 24/7 shifts are essentially getting either a significant pay cut or are not seeing any real change to our overall pay.

I know not everyone believes it's real - but it is.  Being in finance, I have access to all the salaries, benefits, and bonuses people get.  And it can be infuriating to know that info!  I hate having access to it as it always upsets me.

I don't think a woman should be promoted just because she's a woman.  But I do think more women should be in leadership roles.  I don't like to play the woman card but each job I've lost out on in recent months, the chosen candidate was male.  I'm also in a very male dominated industry and it can be HARD to get ahead!

But you know, I'm a goat.   

It's also weird being a male dominated field because when you get female leadership they sometimes only want to hire and support men, as if to protect their stature. I'm smart and I do my job well but I have absolutely no management goals, it doesn't suit my skills and personality. I'd never experienced that until my most recent role, but I'd also only had male senior managers up to that point.

The gender pay gap is very real. I keep getting short changed because of being underpaid in the previous role and having my salary based off that, even with small increases its lower than the men starting out. I have been understanding of it because I'm disabled and I feel like being underpaid may help with more leeway when I need to work remotely and need time off for doctors. But that's another issue... Disabled people are also typically paid less too doing the same job / same amount of work.

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I have been understanding of it because I'm disabled and I feel like being underpaid may help with more leeway when I need to work remotely and need time off for doctors. But that's another issue... Disabled people are also typically paid less too doing the same job / same amount of work.

This is a major issue and there are too many companies not willing to make 'reasonable' accommodations (and 'reasonable' has no real definition, but I do know it's complicated based upon the industry and type of work being done)
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/pay-gaps/disability-what-does-pay-gap-look

I don't think you should be accepting of a lower pay just because you need doctors appointments and need to work remotely sometimes  I do understand if this becomes detrimental to your output, this can indeed be a hardship for an employer (especially a small employer), but can often be solved through flexible working,  job sharing and other creative means.   I do then realise job sharing means lower pay (part time hours, etc). It's not an easy one to solve, at all. 

I refuse to answer the question of how much I made at my last job.  I simply tell them how much I want to make now.  That old number means nothing.  There's so many ways to take advantage of people.

I don't think a woman should be promoted just because she's a woman.

Agree. And there are definitely reasons to promote someone over someone else because of job performance, etc. But are a wide net of people getting the good projects in the first place to then get the skills needed for the promotion?  Are people being given a chance?   

I've got my own unconscious bias in these areas myself, something that I'm trying hard to overcome. It's difficult.  Everyone has a bias for something, whether we think we do or don't. 

On the whole, there isn't enough diversity in hiring (either in thinking types, skill sets, backgrounds, race, gender, age, etc, etc, etc)  - Basically, we need goats in a world of sheep....   

This is a major issue and there are too many companies not willing to make 'reasonable' accommodations (and 'reasonable' has no real definition, but I do know it's complicated based upon the industry and type of work being done)
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/pay-gaps/disability-what-does-pay-gap-look

I don't think you should be accepting of a lower pay just because you need doctors appointments and need to work remotely sometimes  I do understand if this becomes detrimental to your output, this can indeed be a hardship for an employer (especially a small employer), but can often be solved through flexible working,  job sharing and other creative means.   I do then realise job sharing means lower pay (part time hours, etc). It's not an easy one to solve, at all.

Completely agree!  A bit of flexibility to meet someone's needs does NOT need financial compensation towards the company.  It's just having a good company ethic.

My Mom tells me story about her grandmother.  In the 1920s, my great-grandmother divorced her husband* and he ran away to Texas to shack up with another woman. No child support, no presents, visits or anything from the man. He forgot they existed.   

My great-grandmother had two young daughters to raise and was able to get a job in a bank. She was doing a great job and went to ask for a raise and was shot down. She talked about how the men, doing the same job she was were getting much more money. And the bosses said "that's because they've got a household to run and you don't need that because you're a woman and this is all a bit of a hobby".   (Any talk about being the head of house was shot down and as you can imagine, they most like blamed her and it was her own fault the marriage ended. She hadn't been a good wife, hadn't tried hard enough, etc.)

And here we are, just about 100 years later, still talking about how women are paid (sometimes much)  less for the same work.   

*Uncommon, but she was pretty forward thinking and my Mom always looked up to her as a feminist, especially in the 1960s/1970/1980ss as my Mom struggled with her own gender equality in jobs, sexual harassment, gender pay, etc. The male dominated trustee banking industry, of which my Mom was a trailblazer, was rife with issues and this eventually caused her to leave.   

It makes me angry.  And as an engineer, who is female, these things really cut close to my heart. 

One of my side passions (that I'm admittedly mostly just a bedroom dj/producer) is writing electronic music. The scene as a whole globally has very few women as engineers (who do the technical work of mixing the track and making all the elements sit in correctly at the right frequencies etc), and in the little niche I'm in there are even fewer. One of my female friends had organised a compilation with a well established producer and was going to collaborate on a track. He showed up and said "oy, where's the real engineer then?" and the next time he saw her grabbed her bum. The treatment of women everywhere is appalling and I'm praying some of these movements cross across industries, because it needs to happen. The biases have to disappear and women deserve equal training and mentoring without being seen as lesser.

I saw the BBC news report today from the PwC audit, is there another wage report going around?

I feel like cutting wages to redistribute the funds is not the right solution. I feel like there will be a huge backlash from men if their wages are cut to raise a woman's pay, and it wont be pretty. Wages have been relatively stagnant in the UK for so long Perhaps cutting executive pay to redistribute wealth would be far more effective and present a better public image?

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I work in film/TV and it’s been an interesting year with the Weinstein scandal and the pay gaps being revealed. It’s amazing to me that people don’t believe that both are really really REAL problems that need to be solved.

I’m optimistic that companies being forced to admit these facts will bring about positive change. I just hope there’s not another backlash and we go back another 50 years...



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No ones pay should be cut!  That's awful ksand!!

No ones pay should be cut!  That's awful ksand!!

Yeah, it sucks. We're trying to fight the allowance cuts through the union but not sure if we'll get anywhere.

The company has already implemented back-dated payrises for the last couple of years in the November and December payslips, but the new pay structure comes into effect on April 1st, which means I'll have had 5 months of earning a higher salary (basic salary increase, plus usual allowances) and then it'll drop by potentially a few hundred a month starting in April when the allowances get cut and I'll likely be back down to what I was earning before November .

Right now, I'm just making the most of the extra pay and trying to build up my savings a bit before April.

I agree, no one should have their pay cut.  I know shift allowances fall into a strange space, but they are there for the hardship of having to work unsociable hours!  Uggh.

Cutting pay is one way to create a huge backlash.

No ones pay should be cut!  That's awful ksand!!

That seems to be the go-to response, though. Rather than giving the women a raise to match the mens' salaries, they're often cutting the mens' salaries to match the women's.  So the company gets rewarded for having the problem in the first place by saving money on salaries, but the women are no better off.  And now the men resent the company and the women.