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European Institute on Gender Equality 2020

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European Institute on Gender Equality 2020

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This graph shows the UK in comparison to other nations, ranking fairly high. However,  2021 has highlighted the flaws within the UK's approach to this issue with power scoring the lowest, women are largely underrepresented in political positions of power which is of concern considering women are being neglected in legislation , the question is now how can this be tackled? It is clear that the issue of Gender Inequality particularly in the UK is not a new issue it is a longstanding issue which continues to create a divide not only in the UK but worldwide.

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This highlights the tensions created in the UK, women have been largely representing the fight against covid doing the most paid and un-paid work, this also highlight the lack of responsiveness by the UK government to tackle the issue of gender equality leaving women behind whilst they are so in front in all other aspects of the pandemic.

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The government has "consistently failed" to consider gender in its response to Covid-19 despite men and women being affected in distinct ways by the pandemic, claim researchers from the London School of Economics.

While more men have died from the virus, women have suffered more due to the impact of policies introduced to prevent disease transmission.

Yet the subject of gender was largely absent from crucial meetings that informed the government's response to the crisis, say academics, who analysed the minutes from 73 meetings held in 2020 by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).

"Despite mounting evidence women have been disproportionately furloughed or made redundant while absorbing more of the unpaid work associated with the pandemic, we were concerned we weren't seeing policy changes to reflect that, particularly ahead of the third lockdown," said Clare Wenham, co-author of Why We need A Gender Advisor on Sage.

The assistant professor in global health policy explained: "The public has been repeatedly told the government is 'following the science' and given policy reflects the advice ministers are given we wanted to see if gender was being considered."

During the pandemic women have performed more paid work on the frontline of the crisis and taken on more unpaid work such as caring responsibilities and home-schooling, according to the paper.

Yet out of 73 meetings, only 13 made explicit reference to gender terminology with further analysis showing these mentions all related to biological sex - for example that more men were dying and the risks posed by Covid-19 to pregnant women.

"The only inclusion of a gender-related concern within the minutes was in relation to young men being less likely to adhere to lockdown rules," said Wenham.

Despite issues that significantly impact women being discussed such as schools, and social care and particular employment sectors, recognition of their gendered effects was largely absent.

Wenham said: "We found this alarming especially ahead of the decision to close schools in January when we already knew the impact of previous closures on mothers and single parents - 90% of whom are women."

Mary-Ann Stephenson of the Women's Budget Group said the government should ensure its policy advisers on Covid have expertise in gender. Photograph: WBG

She added: "We don't have insight into what took place off the record in those Zoom meetings but what we can say is that there was no reference to any discussion in the minutes of the social impacts of the pandemic on women."

Research early in the pandemic showed there were 3 million people in jobs with high exposure to the virus and 77% of them were women.

"In light of this it is hard to understand why the government did not consider it crucial to ensure that policies recognised and address the gendered impact of this virus," said Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson, director of the Women's Budget Group.

"Decisions to close schools meant that mothers on the lowest incomes are nine times more at risk of losing their job due to childcare responsibilities and 72% of mothers have worked fewer hours and cut their earnings due to lack of childcare."

The government is obliged to have due regard to equality in all aspects of its work under the Public Sector Equality Duty.

"This includes ensuring that their policy advisers on Covid have expertise in gender," said Stephenson.

Researchers at LSE said Sage members - made up of experts including epidemiologists, virologists, modellers and behavioural scientists - are not necessarily to blame for the "gender blindness" across the meetings.

They wrote: "Instead of looking at the approach taken by Sage we need to consider why a gender adviser did not have a seat at the table in the same way we might question why an adviser in black, Asian and minority ethnic integration was only introduced to Sage in June despite decades of NHS work and policy on ethnic health inequalities."

The gender parity of the meetings was also examined. Having more women present did not translate to increased discussion of the pandemic's impact on women.

The average proportion of women among experts invited to participate in Sage was 33% with the highest participation being 44%.

"Covid-19 is a deadly virus that has affected everyone in the UK and we recognise it has had a disproportionate impact on certain groups of people, particularly those working in frontline and caring roles," said a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson.

"Our new Women's Health Strategy will help us learn lessons from the pandemic and take action that will improve the health and wellbeing of women across the country."

Sage advice is drawn from a pool of more than 240 participants including 21 public health experts and supported by a series of sub-groups.

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UK government 'failed to consider gender' in its response to Covid pandemic

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The government has "consistently failed" to consider gender in its response to Covid-19 despite men and women being affected in distinct ways by the pandemic, claim researchers from the London School of Economics. While more men have died from the virus, women have suffered more due to the impact of policies introduced to prevent disease transmission.

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#ChooseToChallange a campaign theme for International Womens Day 2021

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Mandatory gender pay gap reporting was first introduced in the UK in 2018. This required UK businesses with more than 250 employees to publish the median average pay of their male and female staff.

In 2020, due to the COVID pandemic, the UK government decided to postpone the requirement for organisations to publish their gender pay gap. Of all the compulsory reporting that businesses in the UK must do, the gender pay gap was the only one that was suspended, sending an unfortunate message that equality is nice, but not essential.

Prior to COVID, the UK was making slow but steady progress towards reducing the gender pay gap. But the pandemic has disproportionately impacted women in work. A study by The Fawcett Society, published in November 2020, found that 35% of working mothers said they had lost work or hours due to a lack of childcare during the pandemic. Separately, a report by McKinsey found that women's jobs are more vulnerable to the pandemic than men's, in part because the burden of unpaid care is more likely to be carried by women and also because they are overly represented in industries that are expected to decline significantly in the current economic climate, for example hospitality and retail.

At a time when data on the gender pay gap is needed more than ever, the reporting deadline has been moved to October instead of April. While this is preferable to cancelling the requirement altogether (as had been rumoured) it is a lost opportunity for organisations to look at their data on the current gap in pay between women and men, and make decisions about internal investment, growth and resilience accordingly. Job losses in the UK are inevitable when the government furlough schemes comes to an end and gaining early insight could result in some organisations taking steps to ensure that further planned job losses don't disproportionately impact women.

This delay in reporting will contribute to slowing down or reversing the gender equality progress that has been made.

Global Witness is not required to report our gender pay gap (we don't have 250 employees) - but this year we feel it is important to do so, and at the time that it would normally be reported. We would ask other organisations within our sector and more broadly to do the same. Data is an important part of understanding what is happening to women at work. If we understand what is happening we can have the right conversations and make change a reality, not just a corporate slogan.

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#ChooseToChallenge 2021 - Our gender pay gap | Global Witness

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Mandatory gender pay gap reporting was first introduced in the UK in 2018. This required UK businesses with more than 250 employees to publish the median average pay of their male and female staff. In 2020, due to the COVID pandemic, the UK government decided to postpone the requirement for organisations to publish their gender pay gap.

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This video and Infographic introduce inequality in the UK by providing statistics which showcases the imbalance. The European Institute For Gender Equality has scored the UK at 72.7 out of 100,  whilst this score is comparably better to most countries a flaw which has been highlighted in this report is the pay gap in larger in some areas of employment, this can certainly be seen to have carried through into 2021.

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Across different job roles and industries, a lack of diversity between genders has proven controversial, but what is the true extent of the issue? We have gone in-depth to see where the problem lies, going from Universities to the Boardroom.

Higher Education Vs Industry

Total number of students currently enrolled by subject in the UK female vs male.

Percentage of students female vs male in the UK:

Gender Distribution By Profession

Gender Across Sectors

For the key industries, there are disparities in both job type and salary. See how the different sectors compare below.

In the Boardroom

Many nations are doing their bit to close the gap in terms of having females at the very top of companies. We've highlighted the best and worst countries for disparity in boardroom.
Bottom 5 Top 5 Global Average Sources: Other popular small business topics:

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Gender Inequality & Imbalance In Business: 2021 UK Facts & Statistics

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Across different job roles and industries, a lack of diversity between genders has proven controversial, but what is the true extent of the issue? We have gone in-depth to see where the problem lies, going from Universities to the Boardroom. Higher Education Vs Industry. Total number of students...

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UK Gender Pay Gap - Further Discussion Into Statistics

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New data on the gender pay gap present at British companies has been released, shining fresh light on the scale of gender discrimination at businesses across the country.
The gender pay gap widened across the UK economy in 2020-21, reaching 11.1% (up from 10.6% last year) The Times reports. Ad agencies recorded a higher-than-average gender pay gap compared to the rest of the economy, at 17.8%.

The data shows the progress made by some firms in closing the gap - and exposes failures at others - and will be useful for informing future discussion of pay disparities in the UK.

Below, we have compiled a selection of the data published by the government, including major UK marketing agencies and media companies.

We've used the median pay gap in the tables, since it's considered the most representative measure of disparity. For ease of comparison, we've only included firms which have reported data for 2020-21.

What does the data show?

Across the agencies which reported data for 2020-2021, the average median gender pay gap is 17.85%; this represents an increase of 0.56% compared to last year.

However, ad agencies have reduced the median gender pay gap 1.42% since 2017.

The companies with the highest median percentage difference between men and women's pay are WPP 2005 (44.9%), OMD EMEA (27.3%), and Grey (26.5%).

WPP 2005's pay gap has grown 12.5% since reporting began in 2017; this gap at the WPP parent company doesn't reflect wider trends across the WPP group, which saw the pay gap narrow 0.1% over the last year.

A WPP spokesperson said: "WPP and its agencies are introducing new global, long-term strategic goals to increase inclusion and diversity of all kinds within the company, with a key aim to achieve greater gender balance at the top. To increase accountability and accelerate the pace of change, with effect from 2021 progress against these goals will be included in business performance reviews and within the incentive schemes of senior leadership across WPP."

The agencies with the smallest gender pay gaps were PHD (0.1%), Mediacom Holdings (4.2%) and Hill & Knowlton (2.6%).

Wunderman Thompson has seen the biggest shift in its gender pay gap, narrowing the difference between men's and women's pay 23.3% since 2017; most of that change occurred in the last year, following J Walter Thompson's merger with Wunderman.

Media companies again recorded smaller gender pay gaps than adland, with the largest pay gap Channel 4's, at 23%.

The Economist and Newsquest, which owns Scottish daily The Herald, recorded the biggest shifts since 2017, 10.2% and 11.9% respectively.

Why is the data being released now?

British companies with more than 250 employees must release detailed statistics on the differences between men's and women's pay; data on the pay of other gender identities is not collected.

Advertising titan WPP has already released its gender pay gap data for 2020 and 2019, revealing a modest improvement across the group.

The data is released at the close of the financial year, each year. Due to the pandemic, last year's pay gap reporting was suspended by the government to ease the pressure on hard-hit businesses.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission, which prosecutes companies which do not provide gender pay gap data in time, has granted firms a further reprieve of six months.

With many companies exercising the option to use an extended reporting period of six months, and the option not to report statistics for 2019-2020, this year's sample is significantly smaller than previous reporting years.

The Drum will update this article with the final gender pay gap statistics after the passing of the extended deadline, October 31.

Agencies

Media

Notes: Wunderman Thompson was formerly J Walter Thompson. While not an ad agency itself, WPP 2005 is the parent company of the WPP group. WPP Brands was formerly Y&R. Essence Global and Wavemaker were ineligible for data reporting in 2017, so their percentage difference was calculated using the earliest available data, from 2018. The hyphens for Telegraph Media and DDB in 2019 indicate that they chose not to report last year's data.

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Gender pay gap at UK agencies widens as industry progress stalls

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New data on the gender pay gap present at British companies has been released, shining fresh light on the scale of gender discrimination at businesses across the country. The gender pay gap widened across the UK economy in 2020-21, reaching 11.1% (up from 10.6% last year) The Times reports.

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The UK Gender Pay Gap, appears to shrink when employers are forced to reveal the differences in rates.

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Forcing employers to reveal their gender pay gap has been effective in its main goal of narrowing the gap. The difference between women's and men's pay has shrunk by just under a fifth at affected employers. Jack Blundell writes that female workers show a strong aversion to high pay-gap employers, suggesting that organisations have felt compelled to make changes in order to attract and retain workers.
The size of a worker's paycheck depends on a vast number of factors, from family background to industry to the number of years they've been at their employer. However, a single factor, fixed at birth for most, explains a strikingly high share of wage variation across workers. Before Covid-19, the latest data showed UK women earned on average almost a fifth (17.3%) less than men. Though the gap has narrowed over the last few decades, at its current rate of decline it will take several decades more to close.

After years of delay and as part of a Europe-wide initiative on improving wage transparency, in 2017 the UK government introduced gender pay gap reporting. Since then, all private-sector firms and public-sector organisations with over 250 employees in England, Scotland and Wales have had to report a handful of statistics on the difference between male and female wages. Recent Covid-19 disruption aside, new statistics have to be reported every year.

The idea behind the policy is that making individual employers publicly accountable for their gender pay gaps will force them to explain why gaps exist, and in many cases to take pro-active steps to narrow them. This argument is not without academic grounding. There is a rich literature showing that transparency can have big effects on top wages. Part of the gender pay gap is driven by different approaches to salary negotiation, and increasing the information available to workers can help level the playing field. Practically speaking, transparency policies are a cheap way for governments to do something (or to be seen as doing something) about inequality.

Figure 1. Gender pay gap report for LSE

The policy has not been without its critics. Unlike in some other European countries employing reporting policies, the statistics reported are remarkably crude. They make no adjustment for whether or not workers are full-time or part-time, the type of job they are doing and their experience. We know that these factors can help explain some (but not all) of the gender pay gap. Furthermore, while employers are mandated to respond, there is to date little evidence of any serious enforcement in practice. Some pay gap reports are statistically unlikely and others downright impossible. Statistician Nigel Marriot estimates that up to 17% of first-round reports contained errors. One interpretation of this is that some companies lack the statistical capabilities required to construct the measures correctly. A less generous interpretation is that a minority of companies are deliberately fiddling their figures.

The chance to name and shame high profile companies has been seized by tabloids and broadsheets alike. In the first round of reports, The Independent ran with "Gender pay gap: worst offenders in each sector revealed as reporting deadline passes", while the highlighted the high pay gap of low-cost airline Ryanair. Surveying 2,000 UK workers, I found that just under three quarters (71%) had seen news stories on gender pay gap reports.

Figure 2. Coverage in The Independent (5 April 2018)

How can we rigorously assess the policy's impact on the gender pay gap? One simple approach would be to look at what has happened to the aggregate pay gap in the UK. This is unlikely to yield useful insights. Male and female workers are found in very different sectors, work in different occupations and hold different levels of seniority within employers. They also differ in their responses to aggregate economic shocks. This implies that male and female wages will exhibit different trends over short time periods, independent of the pay gap legislation. In other words, even if the overall pay gap declined around the policy introduction, it would be difficult to argue that this was due to the policy rather than some other factor.

Instead, I use the fact that only employers with over 250 employees had to report, comparing the pay gaps of employers either side of the 250-employee threshold. The argument is that employers with say 251 employees, who therefore have to declare their pay gaps, are likely to be pretty similar to those with 249 employees, who do not. These smaller employers can then arguably provide a control group against which we can compare the employers covered by the policy.

Applying this strategy to data on wages from 2012-2019, I find that the policy led to a 1.6 percentage point increase in women's hourly wages relative to those of men. This is a large effect, corresponding to just under a fifth (19%) of the total gender gap in my sample. Interestingly, the effect is not driven by a reshuffling of highly paid women into affected employers, but rather due to changes in individual workers' wages.

Before declaring the policy a resounding success, it's worth noting that while women's wages have risen, the observed closing of the gender pay gap is due to men's wages rising by not quite so much. While female wages increased at the same rate at both affected and control group employers, male wages increased at a slower rate in affected employers than in control group employers. This implies that when compared to the control group, average wages at affected employers actually fell as a result of the policy, which typically isn't great news for workers. Furthermore, this effect is rather immediate. It remains to be seen whether the impact will be sustained in the long-run.

So, why did employers act to close their gender pay gaps? In my survey, I find that while male workers are insensitive to pay gap information, female workers exhibit a strong preference against high pay gap employers. This is particularly true for young female workers, for whom 'glass ceilings' at companies are likely to be most relevant. The survey evidence is consistent with employers feeling compelled to make changes in order to continue to attract and retain workers.

My core results on wages are echoed in a concurrent study by a different research team, who furthermore highlight that employers are adapting their online job ads in response to the policy. Internationally, the picture is mixed. Analysis of a pay gap reporting policy in Denmark finds remarkably close results to those discussed here, but evidence from Austria finds their policy ineffective at closing the pay gap. Policy design details across countries differ in important ways, and in the future there is likely to be value in rigorous cross-country comparison studies.

The question of the policy's effectiveness has become particularly relevant during Covid-19. In late March 2020, when the crisis started escalating rapidly, the government announced that it was suspending reporting for that year. Reporting is back on in 2021, but with a six-month extension to give firms a little more time. In light of mounting evidence of the crisis' disproportionate labour market effects on women and a broader concern of gender equality taking a step backwards during the pandemic, there has never been a greater need for informed, evidence-based policies designed to ensure a fair and equitable society. My research suggests that transparency-based policies, even if somewhat crudely designed, can have a substantial impact.

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UK gender pay gap reporting: a crude but effective policy?

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Forcing employers to reveal their gender pay gap has been effective in its main goal of narrowing the gap. The difference between women's and men's pay has shrunk by just under a fifth at affected employers.

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Concerns over the governments approach towards women, or lack there of during covid-19, in terms of gender roles reversing to that of the 1970's, the toll on women has significantly increased due to the closures of child minding services.