As of 2017, UK companies with at least 250 employees have to report how much they’re
paying men and women on average.
And they’re not the first.
From Japan, to Australia, to Belgium, several nations around the world have implemented
gender pay gap reporting schemes, in the hopes of holding businesses accountable.
Hey guys I’m Alex, this is NowThis World, and in this episode we’re taking a look
at some of the countries around the world who are reporting their gender pay gap.
So U.K. companies released their gender pay gap stats for the year - and the results weren’t
so good.
From the more than 10,000 companies that turned over their data to the government, an analysis
showed women are paid an hourly rate of 9.7% less on average than men.
But in certain sectors, like finance and banking, that gap is much wider.
For example, at HSBC, the UK’s biggest bank, women earn an average of 59% less than men.
At the U.K. branch of Deloitte, it was 17% less.
Intel?
33% less.
And Goldman Sachs?
A whopping 55.5%.
Critics say this reporting scheme is an imperfect system, because some companies’ disclosures
don’t take into account that men are more likely to be in leadership - and therefore
higher-paid - positions, which skews the averages.
“What [the pay gap] is saying is that that company employs more lower paid women and
its higher paid jobs are held by men.
That doesn't mean that the company doesn't have a problem.
But it's important to understand exactly what it's telling us.
But higher-ups at several firms, including executives at Deloitte and Goldman Sachs,
acknowledged that the reporting is still shedding light on some important issues,.
“It's about empowering women to be able to rise up the ranks within those organisations.
And I think in doing that then we get more equality.”
Some experts say shining light on the “position gap” - the disparity of women versus men
in positions of power - can also help address the gender pay gap.
In 2012, Australia introduced the Workplace Gender Equality Act, requiring non-public
employers to release data on gender composition, pay, and more.
In the years following, the country’s wage gap decreased about 2%.
It’s unclear whether the reporting mandate caused the pay gap to shrink - one Australian
economist argues the shift may have had more to do with a booming economy than anything
else.
But since the participation in the reporting scheme has grown, many Australian firms have
publicly released internal goals to help women advance and shrink their own pay gaps.
In 2015, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe instituted a law as part of his economics
reform plan, affectionately dubbed “Womenomics”, to help address the country’s large gender
wage gap - the third highest in the OECD, an intergovernmental economic organization
of 35 member countries.
The law, which took full effect in 2016, requires firms with 300+ employees to publicly assess
and set goals for promoting and hiring women.
Abe even provided government incentives to reward companies with ambitious plans to achieve
gender parity.
In 2016, Japan reportedly narrowed it’s gender wage gap to an all-time low, since
comparable records began in 1976.
In Belgium, which has one of the lowest gender pay gaps in the OECD and across Europe, the
government has published a national gender wage gap report each year since 2007.
And in 2012, Belgium introduced a law that requires companies with 50+ employees to conduct
and publish a gender pay gap analysis every other year.
Between 2011 and 2016, the gender pay gap decreased by more than 3%.
It’s worth mentioning that the U.S. almost joined the ranks of these countries and their
progressive policy toward transparent gender pay gap reporting.
In 2016, then president, Obama signed a rule requiring big companies to report gender and
salary data to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but President Trump rolled back
the rule a month before it was set to take effect, arguing the rules were unnecessarily
“burdensome" for employers.