Why Gender Quotas Are Necessary To Close The Gender Pay Gap In The UK
Gender quotas are the quantity of a group within another group which can be received and reviewed by the government or other agencies. So, with regards to gender quotas, we are looking at why keeping an eye on the numbers of women and men working in certain roles can show the gender pay back and potentially close it.
If we explore the actual numbers of men and women in certain roles, you will discover a discrepancy in age groups. There isn’t much of a gap between men and women of younger ages, but as women age their pay does not increase at the same rate as their male counterparts.
The government recently asked all businesses with 250 or more employees to report on the pay of their employees. This was then tabulated against gender and has showed that although the gender pay gap is a lot smaller than it was 10 years ago it does still exist. The world, more than ever, is astute to the gender pay gap. Even last week, actor Amy Adams was asked, in The Telegraph, about the gender pay gap in Hollywood. Her response was to ask the public to look at waiters and teachers first and make sure they are getting minimum wage. Her comments were then under fire, with journalists saying she didn’t care about he gender pay gap.
Issues like these are why the gender pay gap still exists.
When are told to look at the pay gap in the working world, people would rather look at Amy Adams’ and the pay gap between her and her male co-stars.
Amy Adams’ also mentioned the ‘Me Too’ movement and spoke about how this movement is essential to helping to eradicate the gender pay gap. There is now a conversation and we are talking about the gap, we are talking about the treatment of women in the workplace. Through these conversations, facts and figures are being enlightened and people are changing their attitudes accordingly.
Gender quotas help us to see the issue.
It is printed, by the government, in black and white and it is visible. Companies can no longer hide their biases. The BBC has been called out through their own gender quotas and since being called out, have made changes to eliminate the pay gap within their company. Similarly, the two stars of ITV’s ‘This Morning’ were being paid significantly differently and meant that ITV had to cough up £200,000 per annum to pay to Holly Willoughby to match co-star Phillip Schofield’s yearly wage.
These two examples show how gender quotas is already creating rifts and closing the gap within prominent British businesses and could hopefully be affecting smaller, less publicised businesses in the same way. However, without the public’s involvement in these cases, would there have been change? Is there still a massive difference in pay in businesses that isn’t being looked at?
But the changes we’ve seen with the BBC and ITV are hopefully just examples of how times are changing and of what is to come in all companies.
Despite this, there is a negative side of using gender quotas to try and close the gender pay gap.
By using gender quotas, it is almost as if publicity is being used as a stunt to help women be paid the same as men. Publicity shouldn’t be the reason for women being paid the same, we should be paid the same due to having the same skills and attributes.
Recently, BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour did an episode looking into new technology which asses working skills. Such as how much you work, the effort put in, the time put in and other things and creates an algorithm to show how much individuals should be paid. These kinds of innovations might be the answer, along side gender quotas as a sure-fire way of closing the gender pay gap.
