Covid-19 has waged war on gender pay gap progress

CERTAIN niceties must go by the wayside in times of crisis, but the degree to which corporate UK has seized the chance to dispense with the annual sackcloth of reporting on gender pay disparity looks opportunistic in the extreme.

The first deadline for mandatory gender pay gap reporting was in April 2018. This applied and continues to pertain to all public sector, private and charitable organisations employing more than 250 people, based on a “snapshot” of pay data on April 5 of the previous year.

That inaugural round of reporting generated widespread coverage and criticism as we finally got a quantitative grasp on the scope of the problem. Companies were named and shamed, and the data was sliced into a profusion of permutations to ascertain why women were still earning a median 11.8% less than men.

But for all the furore there was no tangible impact. Go to 2019 and the median pay gap had edged higher to 11.9%. We’ll never really know about 2020 because as the coronavirus pandemic was raging, the Government announced in March that it was suspending the reporting requirement to relieve hard-pressed companies of this administrative burden.

It sounds reasonable enough, but consider this: the announcement came just two weeks before the reporting deadline. The data required to report would have been collected nearly a year earlier. Surely most conscientious organisations already had this information compiled and ready to go?

Perhaps, but whatever the case may have been, the fact remains that half the number of companies that would normally be required to report have chosen not to share their figures. Furthermore, among those who have, the situation has deteriorated to an even greater degree.

According to analysis released on Friday by the Business in the Community network, the gap among the 5,581 organisations that did provide gender pay information in 2020 jumped to 12.8%. That, combined with the lack of data from so many others – including members of the FTSE 100 – has led to concerns that the Covid-19 crisis could set back women’s equality by a generation.

“Pay gap reporting is a vital tool in understanding and tackling gender inequality at work,” said Charlotte Woodworth, campaign director at Business in the Community. “If we don’t have a clear picture of women’s status at work entering the crisis, we won’t be able to take the right steps going forward.

“It is hugely disappointing to see so many opted out when the legal requirement was lifted – and a worrying sign of attitudes towards gender equality during the crisis.”

If Brexit was already proving a distraction for the C-suite denizens, then coronavirus has literally sucked all the oxygen out of the boardroom when it comes to gender equality. While understandable, this dramatic shift in focus comes at a vulnerable time for women, who are among those bearing the brunt of this health crisis.

Even before Friday’s report from Business in the Community, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) had warned that

Half the number of companies that would normally be required to report on gender pay gaps have chosen not to share their figures. Furthermore, among those who have, the situation has deteriorated to an even greater degree