| | By Mick James
Everyone agrees that
one of the answers to the
skills shortage in
consultancy (and possibly
a few other problems as
well) is to radically
increase the profession's
ability to retain women,
particularly at senior
levels.
So everyone must have
groaned at figures from
the Chartered Management
Institute and
Remuneration Economics
that show that senior
women are resigning at a
far higher rate than men,
but that the pay gap
between men and women has
actually widened for the
first time in many years.
At all levels, female
managers are earning less
than men.
The news has been
received with predictable
despair by all sections
of the media, with the
Guardian, in
particular, claiming that
at this rate, it will
take "80 years" to reach
pay parity. Calls for
strengthened
anti-discrimination
legislation have come
from all corners.
Sometimes a set of
stats like this hits you
in the face with such
force that you simply
have to put your hands up
and surrender.
Alternatively, you can
hit them back a couple of
times to see if they're
as tough as they're
pretending. The release
accompanying the survey,
and most of the
commentators that
followed it have made
much of the fact that
women managers are on
average younger than men:
as the CMI puts it:
"...despite rapid | |
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| | promotion and a higher
incidence of bonus
payments, the survey
reveals that efforts to
redress the pay gap have
begun to stall. These
findings come, despite
women enjoying faster
career progression than
their male colleagues."
At 37 years old, the
average female team
leader is five years
younger than her male
counterpart. Aged 40,
female 'department heads'
are three years younger
than their male
equivalent. The age gap
expands in more senior
roles as, at an average
age of 44, women still
achieve director roles
quicker than men (age
48).
Let me construct a
little scenario of my own
here:
Imagine a practice of
a consultancy firm which
consists of a male
director (48), five
partners, of whom one, a
44-year-old woman, is at
the top of her grade, and
nine managers, of whom
four are 40-year-old
women and also at the top
of their grades.
Expansion allows the firm
to have a round of
promotion: the female
partner makes director,
the four female managers
get partnership and
another five women are
promoted to manager. The
firm sits back and waits
for the plaudits for its
commitment to diversity
but instead the next
thing it receives is a
stern letter from the
Equality Commission about
its widening pay gap.
It's easy to see why –
all the women managers
are on the bottom of
their new grade scales, | |
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| | and it will take several
years for this
discrepancy to work its
way through the system.
I'm not saying this is
the full explanation for
the CMI's results. But
you have to take into
account that the survey
is also reporting the
rather unremarkable fact
that younger managers
earn less than older
ones.
And there are good
reasons why women
managers should be
younger than older ones:
it's a bit of a leap to
assume that a younger
average age means that
women are "enjoying
faster career
progression" than men.
That would work, but what
would also cause this is
a rapid increase in the
number of female managers
in recent years – and
that's precisely what has
happened. Since 1999 the
number of women managers
in the workforce has more
than tripled, to over a
third of the total, but
that still leaves a lot
of ageing men in post.
You also have to be
very careful with
aggregating these kinds
of figures to avoid
Simpson's paradox. This
mathematical quirk gained
notoriety when the
University of California
found itself on the wrong
end of a discrimination
suit for failing to admit
a higher percentage of
female than male
applicants. Yet when the
university investigated
it found that each
individual department was
admitting a higher
proportion of women
applicants than men. The
maths is complex but the
result basically stemmed | |
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| | from the fact that women
were disproportionately
applying to courses that
were harder to get.
It's unlikely that the
CMI figures are simply an
instance of this, but if
women are overrepresented
in lower paid sectors,
then that would drag the
average down. And that
is in fact the case – our
ever-expanding public
sector has made great
strides in achieving
numerical parity between
male and female managers,
and pays significantly
less than the private
sector.
There's also a
decapitation effect –
women tend to take
themselves out of the
workforce as they get
older. Discrimination or
choice? Probably both.
From a resources view we
may deplore the loss of
talent, but it's not
everyone's dream to be a
senior manager until they
drop. For many couples I
know the decision of who
steps back and does the
parenting is a purely
pragmatic one based on
salary. In a surprising
number of cases in my
circle that's been the
man, but on the CMI
figures (and bear in mind
a high proportion of the
sample will be married to
each other) it's nearly
always going to be the
women.
So is there room for
complacency? Almost
certainly not – there is
real and significant
discrimination out there
– but I think it's a
little early to declare
that the whole gender
equality project has gone
into reverse. This
year's results are the
first for a decade that | |
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| | don't show women
increasing their pay
faster than men – and
then only by 0.2 of a
percentage point.
What we shouldn't do
is reach for the statute
book: anti-discrimination
legislation isn't
actually helping anymore.
Many, smaller employers
have privately confided
to me that they shy away
from precisely those
candidates who come
equipped with the most
rights and means of
redress. What I would
like to see is a culture
– quite possibly backed
up by legislation – of
greater transparency
about pay. Nothing
promotes change in an
organisation faster than
a leak from payroll.
Employees need to be
confident that they are
getting the right rate
for the job, whether they
are men or women – I
strongly suspect that if
you analysed just male
employees, you wouldn't
necessarily see much in
the way of "equal pay for
equal work". It might be
culturally uncomfortable
to start with, but I've
heard nothing but
positive feedback from
consultancies with open
policies on salaries, and
I see no reason why the
rest of the industry – if
it is serious about
diversity – shouldn't
follow suit.
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