Can We Really Put it All Down to Gender?
AUGUST 22, 2018
The Gender Pay Gap fiasco. It’s almost reaching Brexit level- we can’t avoid the topic! We turn on the news, it’s there. We walk down the street, it’s there. Just like Brexit, people see the headlines in the news and make up their minds with no further thought.
I am not here to argue the facts: 77% of FTSE 100 companies still do not have a female CEO, CFO or chair. Data conducted by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), commissioned by the Sunday Times, did find that female chief executives earn less than half as much as their male counterparts. I am not disputing these facts. But as we saw with Brexit, when we are presented with information (such as the £350 million NHS bus!) and we do not question where it is coming from or the surrounding, external factors that contribute to the end result, how can we really come up with a solution to the problem?
You may have seen my previous blog concerning the Gender Pay Gap- Gender Pay Gap, What’s All the Fuss About? I explained that discrimination in the workplace is something I never experienced, but it doesn’t mean that I deny that a problem exists; I just question whether it is fair to put it all down to gender.
I think it is important to take responsibility for ourselves; our achievements, failures, and our defeats. Something I have noticed with younger generations, being a mum to two lovely girls, is that it is no longer instilled in them to be accountable for their own self-development as it was for my generation whilst growing up. A lot of millennial’s, and I am in no way suggesting this is true of an entire generation, expect things to be given to them on a plate. They have grown up with information at their fingertips and anticipate everything in life to be just as simple. Thus, when things aren’t perfect within society there is less intensity to find a compelling solution to the problem, but to shift blame.
It is true that women are still being dominated and excluded in the workplace- if we look exclusively at headlines. There may be (and is!) a gender pay gap, but this is due to a number of reasons. One of which is gender. To accurately decipher the root cause of the problem, we need a multi-varied analysis. We have a responsibility to break this down further; to look at age, occupation, experience, interests and personality!
A uni-varied analysis is not scientific, and if anything, stunts the progression of our society. Let’s take, for example, the personality trait of Agreeableness. Agreeable people are more compassionate and polite than non-agreeable people. Women, statistically, are more agreeable than men. Agreeable people, statistically, are paid less than non-Agreeable people. This is just one component of a multi-varied equation that helps us to predict salary. Again, I do not deny that there is prejudice, but personally I believe that it accounts for a much smaller proportion of the variants than the headlines would have us believe.
As a woman myself, I agree that there is a problem and that the entire country would benefit from increased equality. However, I think we limit our ability to find an appropriate response to our societies issues if we refuse to give these facts context.
The highest-paid male boss from the data conducted was Jeff Fairburn of the housebuilder Persimmon, who earned a total of £47 million during 2017. Emma Walmsley of the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline was the best-paid woman, pocketing just £4.9 million in comparison. This is concerning, but let’s look deeper into the issue. How much experience has Ms Walmsey had in comparison to Mr Fairburn? Do they have different personality traits that have enabled Mr Fairburn to progress to this level? I don’t know the answers to these questions, some of you might! But in my opinion, we need to question these facts further if we properly want to resolve the issue.
I understand that this is a sensitive topic, and although I have never faced discrimination based on gender, I know many of my friends and clients have. With fear of repeating myself, I don’t deny that an issue exists but we must put these headlines into context if we hope to find a long-term solution to the Gender Pay Gap.