It’s time to come clean on the pay gap
Knowledge is power, and now is the time for the kind of transparency on pay that other countries require.
The Government’s push to collect data on the gender pay gap might just be the first meaningful step to solve an intractable problem.
Like the five stages of grief, the worldwide discussion on the issue looks to be moving past denial and into anger; although academics and the more savvy business leaders have known for some time that the gap is there and should be nixed (because that makes good business sense) it has taken a series of resignations by high-profile media women to bring it sharply into focus for everyone. This is unfortunate and unfair (why should it be the injustices in ivory towers that get all the ink?) but true.
Readers who enjoy their entertainment news will know that late last month, Catt Sadler, after 12 years on screen, quit E! Channel after an executive let slip that her pay was half that of her male on-screen partner.
Just this week the BBC’s China editor, Carrie Gracie, publicly resigned her post in disgust at what she described as the broadcaster’s illegal pay discrimination.
Closer to home there was Australian Today show host Lisa Wilkinson, who left Channel 9 in October after revealing she earned almost a million dollars less than her co-host.
You might rightly have buggerall sympathy for those women. They are all famous, white, and arguably overpaid – something Gracie was at pains to point out in her open resignation letter.
She was not interested in more money, offering to take a pay cut if that’s what it took the BBC to ensure fairness. She needed equality.
This seems pretty noble to me, but some of her co-workers were overheard to take it rather badly. On Friday, BBC Four’s Today host John Humphrys, who earns almost six times Gracie’s pay, was caught on tape asking another male presenter ‘‘How much of your salary are you prepared to hand over to Carrie Gracie to keep her?’’ before adding ‘‘Oh dear God she’s actually suggested you should lose money. You know that, don’t you?’’
So much for noble. At least Gracie was willing to acknowledge her position of relative privilege, the underlying point being, that however high the dollar amount, the discrepancy is wrong. And, as Gracie says, unlawful.
Famous women are getting to tell their stories first, because they’re the ones with the megaphone. The hope must be that their stories open the door for the many, many others.
We’ve seen a similar thing happen with the #TimesUp campaign. Famous and wealthy Hollywood women have come up with dollars and a plan, to combat rampant sexual harassment not just in their glamorous industries, but also for female farmworkers, carers, cleaners, IT workers and any and all others.
The media types’ stories are instructive, though, because we know that equal pay within each occupation is the fastest way to close the gender pay gap. In 2016 Elise Gould, senior economist at the US Economic Policy Institute, studied the results of two approaches; number one, equalising proportions of women to men in a particular occupation, and number two, equalising the earnings of men and women doing the same jobs within the same occupation. The latter model narrowed the pay gap by double the former (68 per cent versus 32 per cent.)
Gould’s research makes really interesting reading. Or, if you’re one of those persistent wage-gap deniers, it makes your eyes glaze over. It’s just one of hundreds of reports showing that even after adjustments for education, time off for child rearing and all the other excuses – er, variables – women earn less than men in the same jobs. The gap is 2 per cent even in their early 20s, where there shouldn’t, under any rationalisation, be a gap at all.
Never has so much research been ignored by so many.
Audrey Malone’s story on this page quotes Hawke’s Bay businessman Mark Greer, who does not deny the possibility of a gap, but at the same time does not know whether it exists in the private sector. He can’t see it in his own company, and, like most SME owners, is understandably too busy running the business to delve into whys and hows. His focus on finding the ‘‘best candidate for the job with the right skills’’ will make total sense to many who run businesses like his.
But (no disrespect intended) Greer’s wrong when he suggests there’s nothing the Government can do. There is, and it would not mean ‘‘saying I had to have certain percentage of females and males’’.
At the beginning anyway, it would not affect businesses like Greer’s at all.
This year, the UK will by law require all businesses employing 250 or more people to report the gap between what they pay their male and female employees. Australia’s been doing this since 2012, for companies of 100 employees or more.
In this scenario, information is power in several ways according to NZ Equal Opportunities Commissioner Jackie Blue. One, you can track the progress being made; two, the chief executives have to work out why the gaps are there, and three, there’ll be a competitiveness between business leaders who won’t want to be shown up as failing.
Starting with big businesses makes sense as they can carry out the work without too much cost or disruption. Maybe now’s the time, then. Coupled with whatever Statistics New Zealand comes up with after minister James Shaw’s directive, we could start seeing a real difference.
Information is power, and right now, what we don’t know is most certainly hurting us.