{"id":2348,"date":"2020-02-19T20:22:27","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T20:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/?p=2348"},"modified":"2020-03-10T21:28:57","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T21:28:57","slug":"pay-gaps-14-why-use-gender-pay-fingerprint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/pay-gaps-14-why-use-gender-pay-fingerprint\/","title":{"rendered":"Pay Gaps #14 – Gender Pay Fingerprints are better than Gender Pay Gaps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, a lot of people have been making incorrect claims about what a gender pay gap tells you.\u00a0 I have been pointing out these errors but in doing so, I am conscious I come across as a pedant or a negative voice.\u00a0 The problem is that the official gender pay gap measure (the difference between the median man and the median woman) is just a single number and that single number does not capture the full nuance of what is going on.\u00a0 I have decided it is time to introduce the Gender Pay Fingerprint<\/strong> to the world as an alternative and going forward, I will be encouraging people to use this instead.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Employers are already producing Gender Pay Fingerprints\"\"<\/b><\/span><\/h4>\n

When employers’ submit their annual returns, in addition to reporting the mean and median gender pay gap<\/a>, they also have to report the gender breakdown for each Income Quarter<\/strong>.\u00a0 Together, these figures make up the Gender Pay Fingerprint<\/strong> for the employer.\u00a0 So employers already have the data, what they are not doing is putting it altogether into a single picture i.e. a fingerprint.<\/p>\n

Why Income Quarters are so important<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

\"\"If gender parity is your goal, what would be the perfect set of figures to report?\u00a0 It is not just that your pay gap is zero, I would contend that it would also be an employer with 50:50 men and women across all pay scales and job functions.\u00a0 In other words wherever you look, you will see a perfect gender balance.\u00a0 In other words your chart would look like the one to the left.<\/p>\n

Can we expect every employer who (correctly) reports no gender pay gap to look like this?\u00a0 The answer is no since all we need is the same gender ratio in each income quarter but that ratio could be anything from 100:1 men:women to 1:100 men:women as shown in the 3 charts below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

If we saw 3 employers like this, you should have 3 different reactions even though each is reporting no gender pay gap which is what we want.\u00a0 The one on the left is clearly male dominated which should prompt the question why?\u00a0 Conversely, the one of right is female dominated which should also prompt the question why?\u00a0 In both cases, it is possible that this reflects genuine gender preferences but I take the view that this conclusion should only be reached once all other explanations have been exhausted.<\/p>\n

These charts don’t show the mean gender pay gap.\u00a0 I have regularly downplayed the importance of the mean pay gap since it can be influenced by a few highly paid individuals but it would be reasonable in all 3 cases above to expect the mean pay gap to also be zero.\u00a0 If the mean pay gap differs notably from zero, that might be a clue to a possible equal pay issue though further analysis would be needed.<\/p>\n

Let’s look at another 3 employers, all with no median pay gap.\u00a0 What would be your reactions this time?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Again you should have 3 very different reactions.\u00a0 Mine are –<\/p>\n