April 14, 2017
Gender pay gap legislation may be aiming at the wrong target, claims report 0
Britain’s new gender pay gap legislation is addressing the wrong issue and so will fail to do what it sets out to do, according to a new report from executive search firm Korn Ferry Hay Group. The firm claims that its analysis of over 570,000 people on its UK database shows that the gender pay gap is “virtually non-existent” when men and women do the same job at the same level in the UK, but that the differences become pronounced in senior and executive arenas. The study backs up data from the Office for National Statistics which recently began publishing details of pay differentials by age and sex and the results are eye opening. The most startling finding was that women in their 20s and early 30s earn slightly more than men of the same age and in the same job. However, as people get older, the pay gap goes into reverse, with men marginally out earning women at the age of 35, with the pay gap then widening rapidly into early middle age. As we reported earlier this week, the major issues arise both at a senior level of organisations and when women start families and begin paying a ‘motherhood penalty’ in terms of their pay and careers.
April 12, 2017
Research shows how the gender pay gap can be directly related to motherhood 0
by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, News, Workplace
A new piece of academic research provides more evidence that the underlying reason for the gender pay gap is the discrepancy between the way women with children are treated compared to men, and other women without children. According to new research from Université Paris-Saclay, mothers are paid 3 percent less for every child they have compared to their female colleagues who do not have children, while fathers suffer no such penalty at all. The figures were compiled from a 16-year study of data from organisations in the French private sector between 1995 and 2011 by Lionel Wilner, Director of Graduate Studies at engineering and statistics school ENSAE, a founding member of Université Paris-Saclay. He separated the effect of childbirth from other firm-specific wage determinants, and accounted for full-time and part-time work, to find that the difference between mothers and non-mothers is approximated a 3 percent lower hourly wage. The effect was found to be more pronounced after the birth of the first child. More →