International Women’s Day: when it comes to the gender pay gap, are businesses practising what they preach?

It is over 100 years since the first National Women’s Day in New York City in 1909 and this Sunday, 8th March, it will be observed again by countries all over the world. In some places it’s a celebration, in others it’s a protest and it’s marked by everything from social media posts to organised marches.

But every year the cynics ask – shouldn’t every day be women’s day? Why do we only recognise achievements once a year? Why do we need it at all? 

In short, because the job of creating a gender equal world isn’t done yet. With regards to the gender pay gap, the World Economic Forum stated in 2016 that, given the evidence that it has widened again in recent years, the gap will not be closed for another 170 years. 

In October 2019, the Office for National Statistics published research that showed the gender pay gap in the UK amongst full-time employees was 8.9% (insignificantly less than in 2018 and only 0.6% less than in 2012). 

Looking further into the research according to age uncovers a more nuanced reality. For age groups under 40 years, the gender pay gap for full-time employees is now close to zero but for age groups over 50 years, the gap is over 15% and not declining significantly over time. 

Furthermore, although the gap decreased in seven of the nine main occupation groupings from 2018 to 2019, it increased amongst high-paying managers, professionals and senior officials (13.9% to 15.9%). The UK’s top earning men are still making disproportionally more money than the top earning women.

And these stats don’t even touch on the complexity of the gender pay gap as it intersects with race. Last year Mona Chalabi, an artist and data journalist, posted an infographic on Instagram on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day which showed that although change is happening it is unequal. Black and Hispanic women’s increase in pay from 1987 to 2017 is a fraction of the increase for their Asian and White counterparts.

Carrie Gracie’s book Equal details her battle against the BBC for equal pay and is an investigation into why women and men are still not paid equally. At a Media Society event this week, Carrie urged audience members to write to the BBC’s managers and enquire into the status of its pay gap. Her point being – it’s still there. 

Despite Gracie’s ongoing efforts to dismantle the unequal pay structure from within the BBC and Samira Ahmed’s recent employment tribunal, which in January this year was closed by a unanimous judgment that the company had failed to prove the pay gap between Ahmed and Jeremy Vine wasn’t because of sex discrimination, the inequality persists.

Gracie provides a balanced and thorough account of her experiences and remains loyal to the company that she still works for. In the prologue she writes, “All employers face difficult pressures; we live in a time of shifting expectations for women, and pay structures are complex things. I have sympathy for employers who would like to do better and men who would like to support female colleagues but don’t know where to start.”

At the end of Equal, Gracie provides a bullet pointed list of advice for employers on how to create an equal pay structure. Speaking at the event, she reiterated some of these and made a clear case for the benefits of pay transparency when it comes to closing the gap further. Indeed, in Iceland (the country with the smallest gender pay gap in the world) a legislative move in 2018 to ban pay secrecy has been recognised as a major factor in the country’s top ranking. 

She also mentioned the importance of speaking up about issues even when (read: especially when) they don’t directly affect you. How much more is achieved when men denounce unequal pay as readily as women? Indeed, it’s an argument that should be applied to issues of discrimination according to any social grouping – gender, sexuality, race. 

This idea of the collective power of individuals is the foundation of the official International Women’s Day charity’s 2020 theme – #EachforEqual. It calls on every individual to use their behaviours, mindset and actions to generate change.

On the charity’s website, they state, “Equality is not a women’s issue, it’s a business issue”. The world needs gender equality for economies to thrive and we need it now. They continue, “This campaign runs all year long. It doesn’t end on International Women’s Day”.

So, if gender equality is a business issue, what are businesses actually doing?

This week, activist and writer Gina Martin coined a new phrase – women washing. On Tuesday morning, she posted, “We know about green washing or purpose washing but what about women washing? Companies sticking up pics or tweeting about their female employees is swerving accountability. This IWD? Make salary info available. Give women a 1% rise per year. Change your child care policies.”

Gina is best known for her tireless campaign to make upskirting illegal in England and Wales, which she achieved in January 2019, and no-nonsense posts to her following on social media. This one fit the mould. She went on to write, “Have we got complacent about International Women’s Day?” and called for radical action from businesses instead of cursory tweets and photos on one day of the year that do little to change enduring inequality.

She makes a good point. Although IWD is an important marker every year that reinvigorates us and demands change, it is the everyday efforts that will make a difference. And those efforts need to come from us as individuals and as businesses. As Carrie Gracie’s experience has shown, change is happening but it is slow and the gender pay gap is yet to close.

The numbers show that complacency can be a stronger force than the push for equal pay. It’s imperative that we all keep the conversation going, all year round.

Written by Fiona Johnston, Research Manager at Audley