How the Gender Pay Gap Can Be Fixed

New numbers show the gender pay gap is real and that has many people in the UK incredibly frustrated. Most of us knew all along that there was a pay gap from the male gender to the female gender with earnings being a high as 38 percent in some industries with the higher pay favouring men. For those who believe in the gender pay gap, the numbers are obvious, but for those who don’t, there will always be a different set of variables used that tells a completely different story.

Industries such as tech and finance have come under fire for their wage gaps and while many have tried to rectify the situation, others did little to nothing at all about it. At least until this past April 4th when Britain began forcing companies to report their pay gaps as they actually exist, without changing the variable in their favour. In fact, under the new regulation, any business with at least 250 employees working in the U.K. will have to disclose any discrepancies in pay between their male and female workers. This could affect more than 9,000 companies and over 15 million employees. Any company not reporting their pay gaps will be subject to fines and sanctions by the government’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission.

What Do Companies Have to Report?

The law is very clear about British companies must report. These numbers include unadjusted mean and median hourly wage and bonus pay for all men and all women and the percentages of men and women in each pay quartile. This makes it more difficult for companies to cover up any statistical differences and the fact that many of their higher-paid divisions are largely male.

Just how much less are British women being paid

Companies like HSBC Bank Plc pay female employees 59 percent less than the average man. With 54 percent of the bank’s U.K. workforce being female and most of them in lower-paying, junior roles, HSBC Bank stood out among the many other UK companies paying their female workforce much less than their male counterparts.

When will the Gender Pay Gap Shrink?

For many companies, this is the first time they’ve analyzed numbers like this and the results are shocking, at least to the mostly male corporate executive pool. These numbers reflect a globalized society structured so that men hold certain types of jobs and women others. Whether that is true or not, if we consider that the reason for the pay gap, we have not explained the gap, but justified it instead. Even with this new regulation, many of the UK’s female workforce feel that change won’t happen soon enough and that many companies could delay making the important changes for decades while creating mentorship programs that are designed to appease women, rather than promote them.

If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share it on your favorite social media sites.