Pay Fingerprint

Pay Gaps #26 – Why are female dominated public sector gender pay gaps so large?

May 26, 2022 By Nigel

… & why are gender pay gaps so small at male dominated private sector employers?

When I asked people recently who on average had the larger gender pay gap, the results were –

62% said female dominated (>80% employees are women) public sector (snapshot date 31st March) employers. There were 420 such employers in April 2021 who reported their UK gender pay gap.
38% said male dominated (>80% employees are men) private sector (snapshot date 5th April) employers. There were 1584 such employers in April 2021 who reported their UK gender pay gap.

The majority are correct. In April 2021, for every £1 paid to the average man, the average woman was paid 90p at the average male dominated private sector employer and 77p at the average female dominated public sector employer. For context, the average woman at the average employer in the finance sector (who are often in the news for having large pay gaps) is paid 75p.

Pay Gaps #23 – How long will it take to close your pay gap?

August 9, 2021 By Nigel

Five months ago, I introduced the gender swap number as a superior statistic to the median gender pay gap. Feedback from clients and others since then has confirmed my hope they would find it more intuitive to use and interpret. This encouraged me to call on Parliament to amend the UK gender pay gap legislation so that swap numbers could be published for employers with 250 or more employees. I now want to build on this by showing a couple of simple calculations that can turn a swap number into an estimate of how long it will take an employer to close its pay gap.

Pay Gaps #22 – My 7 + 5 recommendations for amending UK pay gap legislation

June 30, 2021 By Nigel

When gender pay gap reporting was introduced by the government for the 2017 snapshot date for all employers with a headcount of 250 or more, it was made clear they would evaluate how the legislation had worked after 5 years. We are now in the 5th year of pay gap reporting and I would like to submit to the government 7 recommendations to improve the way employers’ data is reported and 5 recommendations to improve the data used in the calculations and to reduce various distortions.

Pay Gaps #20 – Abolish the Gender Pay Gap!

March 8, 2021 By Nigel

I call upon Parliament to abolish the Gender Pay Gap by requiring employers to report their Gender Swap Number instead. When presented alongside an employer’s Gender Pay Fingerprint, the Gender Swap Number tells everyone how much work the employer needs to do to eliminate their gender pay gap and allows for a fairer comparison between employers.