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Gender Pay Gap Reporting and “Meaningless” Statistics
The gender pay gap reporting measures, mandated by the UK government, mean large companies self-administer gender pay statistics in their organisation. This data can then be viewed by the public. These reporting measures have now entered its second year. The Royal Statistical Society has published a series of recommendations on how to improve this reporting, including better guidance, calculators, and enhanced measures.
This article will consider multiple issues: the supposed ‘myth’ of the gender pay gap, statistical misunderstandings and misrepresentation, differences between the ONS gender pay gap and these reporting measures, decomposing pay differences, and whether the reporting measures are “meaningless”.
Mythos and Demos
The gender pay gap is defined as: the difference between the pay of the average woman and the average man, expressed as a percentage of the average male pay.
To fix that definition properly, we need to further define what we mean by ‘pay’ and ‘average’. ‘Pay’ typically means hourly pay (which could be just for full-time workers). ‘Average’ usually stands for the median, but you do see the mean used.
In the UK, the median hourly gender pay gap for full-time workers, excluding overtime, was estimated to be 8.6% in 2018.
