Gender Pay Gap reporting

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Purple

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Organisations with more than 250 employees must report their Gender Pay Gap.
It will be applied to organisations with 150 or more employees within 2 years and 50 or more "at a future date".

PWC have advice but I'm not clear what organisations are actually meant to do with the information. Is there a requirement to address the "issue"?
 
I was wondering the same. From reading the information it looks like companies just have to publish the data on their website or some other format that's accessible to employees/ public for the first year, and in future, data will be uploaded and available online. Will it be a register of some sort and who's going to monitor it - the WRC?
 
bipped said:
I was wondering the same. From reading the information it looks like companies just have to publish the data on their website or some other format that's accessible to employees/ public for the first year, and in future, data will be uploaded and available online. Will it be a register of some sort and who's going to monitor it - the WRC?
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  • disclosures by job classification will not be required
How will an employee determine/know if there's a gender pay gap if he/she can't compare to others within function eg large multi national where there's 30 engineers doing the same type of work such as maintenance engineer as an example?
 
Bluefin said:
  • disclosures by job classification will not be required
How will an employee determine/know if there's a gender pay gap if he/she can't compare to others within function eg large multi national where there's 30 engineers doing the same type of work such as maintenance engineer as an example?
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What happens if a business is dominated by one gender but one or two of the minority gender are in highly paid jobs?
Where I work the average pay of the females is vastly higher than the males but the median wage of the males is higher.
 
Men earn more on average, over their lifetime, than women. There are a multitude of reasons for this. but it's mostly down to life choices. A snapshot will likely show men earning more on average. The Government seem to view this as a problem that needs to be 'addressed' and will likely waste time and taxpayers money trying to fix something that ain't broke.
 
michaelm said:
Men earn more on average, over their lifetime, than women. There are a multitude of reasons for this. but it's mostly down to life choices. A snapshot will likely show men earning more on average. The Government seem to view this as a problem that needs to be 'addressed' and will likely waste time and taxpayers money trying to fix something that ain't broke.
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In fairness they are asking for an hourly wage comparison but it is without question that the overwhelming reason for the gap in earnings between men and women is down to life choices. The 14% figure that is often thrown around is nonsense.
 
A wonderfully well written piece of legislation. The CSO used to capture this information in the NES report, but they stopped doing it as a productivity increase for Benchmarking! Unfortunately the CSO have no involvement and were not consulted in the art of capturing data.

To answer questions:
The data is to be published on the Employers website within 6 months of the snapshot date. A 'portal' to host the data will/should be made available next year.

It is starting with employers (company groups) with 250 or more Male/Female employees in the state. Other genders are to be excluded. The reporting threshold will drop by 50 each year until it reaches employers with 50. There are GDPR issues as the numbers drop, making employees identifiable.

You have to give a reason as to why you have differences, such as all 30 of our engineers are male.

The legislation requires reporting on a 'when earned basis', so you cannot get most of the data from your payroll. This turns the reporting excise into a big spreadsheet job, with data from many sources. I have seen estimates of 2 person months of work from the big accountants.
 
Ultimately, if women could be paid less for the same work, and they can't, employers would largely want to employ women over men.
 
An academic article on the gender earnings gap in a large firm, Uber:


Abstract

The growth of the “gig” economy generates worker flexibility that, some have speculated, will favor women. We explore this by examining labor supply choices and earnings among more than a million rideshare drivers on Uber in the United States. We document a roughly 7% gender earnings gap amongst drivers. We show that this gap can be entirely attributed to three factors: experience on the platform (learning-by-doing), preferences and constraints over where to work (driven largely by where drivers live and, to a lesser extent, safety), and preferences for driving speed. We do not find that men and women are differentially affected by a taste for specific hours, a return to within-week work intensity, or customer discrimination. Our results suggest that, in a “gig” economy setting with no gender discrimination and highly flexible labor markets, women’s relatively high opportunity cost of non-paid-work time and gender-based differences in preferences and constraints can sustain a gender pay gap.
 
Interestingly, a law firm in Ireland use the Uber study as a case study to explain the possible causes of the gender earnings gap:

www.matheson.com

What Drives the Gender Pay Gap? Lessons from the Uber Study

The regulations to give legal effect to the much anticipated gender pay gap (GPG) reporting requirements. We look at a Stanford case study analysing the GPG between male and female Uber drivers.
www.matheson.com
 
Another academic study, this time of a bus and train operator:


Abstract

Female workers earn $0.89 for each male-worker dollar even in a unionized workplace where tasks, wages, and promotion schedules are identical for men and women by design. We use administrative time card data on bus and train operators to show that the earnings gap can be explained by female operators taking, on average, 1.5 fewer hours of overtime and 1.3 more hours of unpaid time-off per week than male operators. Female operators, especially those who have dependents, pursue schedule conventionality, predictability, and controllability more than male operators. Analyzing two policy changes, we demonstrate that while reducing schedule controllability can reduce the earnings gap, it can also make workers—particularly female workers—worse off.
 
There is no evidence that any gender pay gap is down to social construction. The fact is that in general women and men behave differently and have different priorities. The result is that men tend to end up at the top of the societal hierarchy but they also overwhelmingly end up at the bottom as well.
We really need to decide if the level of social engineering required to compensate for those fundamental differences at the top end is worth the cost.
 
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Towger said:
It is starting with employers (company groups) with 250 or more Male/Female employees in the state. Other genders are to be excluded. The reporting threshold will drop by 50 each year until it reaches employers with 50. There are GDPR issues as the numbers drop, making employees identifiable.
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What happens when a business has a large number of one gender and a small number of the other gender and one or two of that minority are highly paid? It would be quite easy to work out what the high earners are getting.
 
Some US states ban employers from asking in interviews about current salary. The theory being that this perpetuates historic discrimination (or any kind) if that question impacts offered salary. I would prefer to see something along those lines than this.
 
How can one possibly hope to colkext accurate information about the gender pay gap when, under Irish law, a male who declares himself to be a woman is counted as such in every domain? A company made up of 50% men and 50% males who identify as women is perfectly integrated and might well have eliminated the gender pay gap in the eyes of the law.
 
banjopotato said:
How can one possibly hope to colkext accurate information about the gender pay gap when, under Irish law, a male who declares himself to be a woman is counted as such in every domain? A company made up of 50% men and 50% males who identify as women is perfectly integrated and might well have eliminated the gender pay gap in the eyes of the law.
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Developing that theme slightly, is an employee legally obliged to inform their employer what gender they identify as? If not, then how can the employer possibly complete the required report?
 
banjopotato said:
How can one possibly hope to colkext accurate information about the gender pay gap when, under Irish law, a male who declares himself to be a woman is counted as such in every domain? A company made up of 50% men and 50% males who identify as women is perfectly integrated and might well have eliminated the gender pay gap in the eyes of the law.
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That's not really going to happen though, is it? Trans people make up a statistically insignificant proportion of the population. It's also hard to allow for people who are being deliberately mischievous.
 
Purple said:
What happens when a business has a large number of one gender and a small number of the other gender and one or two of that minority are highly paid? It would be quite easy to work out what the high earners are getting.
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That question has been asked, I'll would need to check if there is an official answerer now available. You have to remember that the legislation was drawn up by public sector employees, were everyone is on known grade/salary range so it was not taken into account.
 

Ireland fares very well when it comes to "gender pay gap" , other countries like Germany have a much bigger issue with this and a far larger "gender pay gap". As another poster above said, how much money is being spent on this , how many government paid jobs are as a result of addressing this.
Would it not be more honest to address the gender gap in certain jobs and occupations and spend money on that. For example why so many male engineers and construction workers, why so many female teachers and child care employees .
Maybe many government organizations themselves would be under the spotlight then
 
Groucho said:
Developing that theme slightly, is an employee legally obliged to inform their employer what gender they identify as? If not, then how can the employer possibly complete the required report?
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No. But if they arrive into their employer with a 'Gender Recognition Certificate' the employer must use the gender the employee recognises as.
This is were it gets interesting, the GPGR is only for Male/Female employees, other genders are to be ignored. If you look at the official 'Gender Recognition Certificate' application form it only allows Male/Female, unless you scribble them out and add your own!
 
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