Andrew Wade, senior reporter
The recently published salary list of top BBC broadcasters has highlighted the gender pay gap like never before. Opening up Auntie’s books was always going to provide ammunition for the organisation’s critics, but most expected the focus to be on overpaying the ‘talent’ in general. Instead, the glaring disparity between male and female presenters has become the hot topic, and the conversation has taken on a life of its own beyond the Beeb.
Long recognised as a major issue in the engineering industry, the gender pay gap is now being exposed across a variety of sectors, from education and healthcare, to finance and farming. These figures are finally coming to light as a result of new regulations that require organisations with more than 250 employees to report on pay disparity between men and women. Though just recently introduced – and with an initial reporting deadline of April 2018 – several companies have already begun to publish figures.
Firstly, credit should be given to all companies that are being proactive and delivering reports well in advance of the cut-off. However, the figures we’ve seen so far have not made for comfortable reading, particularly in the engineering sector. Of the 40 employers for whom data is currently available, just one could accurately be described as an engineering firm, with another two being manufacturers. Naturally, there is a danger of reading too much into figures from such a small sample group, but longstanding trends suggest the numbers may be indicative of the wider sector.
Bilfinger Industrial Services UK is a provider of integrated technical services to the process, petrochemical and power sectors. Just one in 14 employees at Bilfinger is female, with women’s average (mean) hourly pay 32.6 per cent lower than men. That gap can largely be attributed to the fact that the vast majority of women in the company work in the lowest pay quartile, where they account for 21 per cent of the workforce. As pay grades increase, women virtually disappear. In the lower middle, upper middle and top quartiles, they fill just 2 per cent, 1 per cent and 3 per cent of roles respectively.
Now, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that the process, petrochemical and power sectors have traditionally been dominated by men, and it is an extreme case even among the overall gender gap in engineering. However, the almost complete lack of female representation in the middle two quartiles – where one would expect to find the majority of engineers – makes for stark reading.
Come next April, this is a pattern we will likely see repeated across this subsection of industry, and my intention is not to admonish Bilfinger, but rather highlight just how deep the wider structural problems are. In fact, as the company’s report highlights, Bilfinger has four women in senior business roles, represented in the upper quartile. The presence of these women at the top of the tree means the average women’s bonus is significantly higher than the average men’s (184 per cent mean/ 82 per cent median). Throughout the company though, 19.6 per cent of men received bonus pay, compared to just 13.2 per cent of women, with many in the lowest quartile presumably missing out.
Bilfinger’s report states that it intends “to integrate gender pay gap considerations into future reviews of pay and reward”, a welcome acknowledgement that representation is not the only issue here. As the BBC salary list indicated, women are often being paid less than their male counterparts for essentially doing the same job.
The Engineer’s 2017 Salary Survey revealed that, on average, female engineers earn 10k a year less than men. That’s a fairly sobering statistic for any young women considering a career in the sector, and it is this that must be addressed first and foremost. By taking real steps to address the gender pay gap, engineering can enhance its position as a progressive meritocracy, where ability is the primary barometer. In doing so, it might finally start attracting more women into the profession, something it has long hoped to achieve.
Additional reporting by Louise Fordham at Employee Benefits
So I see a lot of percentages and quartiles quoted, but none of this actually demonstrates a gender pay gap, rather a gender balance differential.
Can we see anywhere that engineers with the same length of service doing the same or comparable roles in the same company are paid differently according to gender? Not so far. Nor is comparing part time and full time workers relevant. Engineers will be in the main salaried, not hourly paid.
As for other work sectors, we are told about females in education earning less. Nothing is said about the 90% of primary school teachers who are female – no call to address this imbalance. I wonder why?
Do we count maternity leave as service? Up to 2 years at a time away from the job while other colleagues continue to accrue practical service and experience does not then create equivalence.
Does your employer publish median pay rates for each grade? Does it also practice performance related pay? If so how long before a significant pay gap (in whatever direction) develops?
Ultimately pay equivalence is a myth, and we spend too much time debating gender issues and too little looking at engineer numbers as a whole.
The article is supposed to be about the wage gap, but then segues off of it for almost it’s entirety. Different pay for same work is a fairly obvious issue. There can be some mitigating factors, but it’s a pretty clear issue overall.
Lack of representation is another thing entirely. It may be a case of sexism, or it may not be. Are women pursuing these positions? How does this play out in women-dominated fields? It may be an issue that should be addressed (e.g. if women are not pursuing these issues, why not? And what can, and should, be done about it), but it’s not a pay gap.
If the BBC pay male presenters more than women, that doesn’t mean that the television license should be increased to pay women hundreds of thousands of pounds to match the men.
It means they are paying the men too much. They should cut the men’s pay and cut the license fee.
If female engineers get paid less than men, (for the same ability), the industry can easily fix this, just by employing more women.
I’m not saying they should be sexist.
They should be “value-ist” and employ the person that is best value for money.
So the best value potential employees would be sought out. This would have the effect of closing the gap.
There are lies, damn lies (and at one time it was said “the annual report and accounts of my former employer” -who made the machines which put the crimp into Crimplene) and statistics: and this piece adequately confirms that.
Totally agree with Steve, all personnel should be employed and remunerated for what they do their commitment, their expertise and their worth to the company.
Race, gender, colour, creed, physical attributes etc., etc., should not enter the equation and fabricated arguments only serve to cause pointless and disruptive divisions.
David Mynard pretty much says it all, if a job is done by male or female to the same requirements then there should be no pay differential.
Value has another dimension that is likely to cause raised voices because it touches on sexism and the law as it stands and that is that often it is the choices that create issues. To explain; A woman has of course the right to have a family and all the opportunities at work under todays law. What is indisputable is that some jobs are so demanding of the employees time and stressful at the same time that it simply may not be possible to fit in looking after sick children or other duties that demand flexibility on the part of the employer and the client. Things like job related travel, site time (often away from home) and a whole host of time pressures that come with such jobs. It is a fact of the (work) life not a sexist comment, thus is becomes a choice upheld by rights bestowed through law.
In the company that I have worked in for over 35 years I have seen a real closing of the pay gap and job availability to all regardless of gender but I have also seen female employees bring claims of unfairness compared to male colleagues that spend months away from home and work, on call 24 hrs 7 days a week to the client (at the project 15 hrs a day six days a week) Even Wonder Woman can’t fit that in with a teething baby and one crawling. Face it men can’t have babies and you don’t find many female steel erectors, when the two truly have parity then the rest might just fall into place – What is going on at the BBC is almost certainly simply against the law and whi the heck is worth £600k reading the news? I am in the wrong job.
The gender wage gap certainly must be closed, but this is not the first priority (as in the title).
The first priority must be to attract more females into engineering and technical work: they have demonstrably higher academic qualifications (A-level results and degrees show that). But they are put-off technical courses at school, shown particularly clearly by the number that quit physics, much higher than boys.
This cultural resistance may be amenable to publicity based improvement: but history suggests otherwise.
My suggestion remains that we should make great efforts to convert scientifically qualified young women into engineers by conversion courses. This used to happen many years ago (1950s) when chemists and mathematicians were converted into engineers due to shortage of engineers. This would show girls that a real career path existed. It would be resisted by the stick-in-the-mud institutions who have vested interest in controlling acceptance criteria.
With such a small sample of female engineers to base the stats on (3 out of 97 on my EE course in the 80s) any finding will be unreliable. If a decent percentage of the engineering work-force was female then some meaningful conclusions could, perhaps, be drawn. But you can’t force women into science and engineering, or can you? Money talks remember.
I totally agree with the last point made by Stephen Rose above (Stephen Rose 2nd August 2017 at 2:28 pm) about the size of some BBC salaries. The issue for me is hardly the pay gap (in the BBC), but why are they paid such ridiculous amounts of money?
As others have noted, the issue as always, is battling against society’s stereotypes and getting more women to consider and take up careers in engineering.
Engineers should all be paid the same for the same/equivalent work – and we should all be being paid a great deal more!
I don’t really care how much people are paid as long as they earn more than they are paid. From managing director to cleaner they must all give added value to the company they work for.
Would paying women presenters at the BBC more money increase the BBC revenue? More importantly, would paying male presenters less increase BBC revenue? Probably yes, by the amount of salary saved, as it is unlikely to reduce the number of viewers/listeners.
In all walks of life there should be no discrimination, positive or negative, just the best person for the job. This includes engineering (and politics), and equal pay for equal work.
More importantly, there is no such thing as a gender pay gap. Has “The engineer” lost the plot? Please keep this liberal political narrative totally away from the important things we all like about engineering. I do believe that I would speak on behalf of thousands of people and say we dont care about gender in anything engineering. We only want news and articles about engineering and not this political rubbish…
Thanks for clearing that up for us Michael. It’s good to know that we can now ignore the mountains of evidence pointing to the gender pay gap, due to your important declaration.
Every time this comes up, several of us point out that the data has not been analysed in a way that shows a pay gap. Most importantly, there are a higher % women in the younger age bands, which means there are disproportionately more women in the lower paid bands, which means the average pay for a woman engineer is less than for the average male engineer. With like-for-like experience and job, is there a difference? THEENGINEER must get decent data before it reiterates the same old attention-grabbing headlines. So what’s the plan, THEENGINEER?
There is no evidence for a pay gap. The fact that the average pay for female engineers is less than that for male engineers does not imply that women are being paid less for the same work.
It’s remarkable how otherwise rational people are willing to uncritically swallow the slogan du jour just because it feeds into their sense of social justice. This is hashtag politics, please keep it away from engineering and let us focus on stuff that actually matters.
Clearly demonstrates that certain sector of the community has still got blinkers on and lives in the dark ages. This is the sector that still feels women should be kept under the man’s thumb and is not compatible with modern England. Another respondent referred to maternity leave, possibly a valid consideration, but should we not be paying based on ability rather than just experience. The two go hand in hand.
“…why are they (like many others including university vice-chancellors) paid such ridiculous amounts of money?” As I have said to those (in four so-called universities) who claim that such is necessary because there is a competitive market and they are running £100 million businesses……” So prove that! -divide their salaries by four (or ten?) and see how many leave.”
I would suggest that the answer will be -“0”. Lets give it a try?
True work place equality will have been achieved when the statistics for serious injuries and fatalities are no longer weighted at over 90% men.
The Engineer is losing its credibility by publishing politically correct nonsense like this article. The UK is not a communist state – therefore organisations pay engineers different salaries depending on their experience, qualifications, the job they actually do and their capabilities.
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Top industry priorities are: cash flow, profit, quality, costs, staff skills, competing in their market, etc.
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Industry need to be worriedabout their business survival and growth, not all this nonsesnse dreamed up by liberals who don’t understand how business works.
Following-up on Mike Blamey’s point above that if their salaries were quartered they would stay as the jobs are so soft; that is true of many jobs in financial services as well as with our sporting heroes of course. In private industry they would not survive for one year in most cases: certainly not in the tight sectors of business where at equivalent levels little quarter is given at much lower salaries.
As outlined in our salary survey, female engineers are paid 10k a year less on average than their male colleagues. This is a gender pay gap. There is nothing politically correct or ‘dreamed up’ about it. It is simply a fact. The reasons for this pay gap are no doubt complex, and should be discussed. But to dismiss the – widely acknowledged – issue as somehow being liberal nonsense does the profession a disservice.