Forbes April 16, 2017 By Tim Worstall There is, as we all know, a considerable head of steam under the idea that the United States should introduce paid family leave as a legal right. And perhaps it should. Yet there is a problem here, which is that the introduction will reduce women’s wages and thus increase the gender pay gap. …
Business Insider April 14, 2017 Lianna Brinded The gender pay gap is so huge it could take 170 years to close. And data shows that women working in some of the world’s largest professional services institutions are less likely to make it beyond the junior rung of the career ladder. However, a new report by private research software company Qualtrics …
CNN Money March 7, 2017 By Kathryn Vasel The gender pay gap has persisted for generations, but the end could be in sight for young women. Pay equity could be achieved in developed markets by 2044, according to new research released by Accenture on Tuesday. That’s 36 years earlier than previous estimates of 2080, and means women who graduate in …
PEW February 17, 2017 By Teresa Wiltz California has the most stringent equal pay laws in the nation. But among its own workers, the state is still struggling to close the pay gap between men and women. Women who work for the state earn 79 cents for every dollar that men earn, according to a 2014 report by the California …
The Business Journals February 16, 2017 By Dana Manciagli How far is far enough when it comes to promoting women’s advancement in the workplace? The accounting profession may be a barometer for U.S. businesses at large, making great strides for gender equality in some areas, while lagging in key metrics. The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), for example, reports women …
Slate February 16, 2017 By Christina Cauterucci Male alumni of elite universities can expect a substantial salary advantage over peers from less selective institutions. But the gender wage gap is wide enough to put women who graduated from even the country’s best colleges behind men who graduated from the least selective ones. In a recent study published in Social Science …
The Washington Post January 7, 2016 By Jena McGregor Studies have long shown that women are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety than men. And attempts have long been made to explain it, citing everything from biological differences to the challenges women disproportionately face, such as balancing the additional child care and family responsibilities often expected of them …
BY BEN FROST
KORN FERRY HAY GROUP
What makes the gender pay
issue a board-level concern?
In a word, profitability.
According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics’
recent study of 21,980 companies in 91 countries, the presence of
more female leaders in top positions of corporate management correlates
with increased profitability.
The gender pay gap has become a rallying cry among shareholder
groups, in the media and also as a much-talked-about issue during
the US presidential election season. According to one widely quoted
statistic from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR): “In
2015, female full-time workers made only 79 cents for every dollar
earned by men, a gender wage gap of 21 percent.” That quote has
been repeated, reprinted and retweeted countless times, but how
accurate is it?
While there is some consensus that a gender pay gap exists, what is it
really? Equally important, what are the causes, and what can organizations
to do to ensure that individuals are paid what they are worth,
regardless of gender?
AN APPLES-TO-APPLES COMPARISON
Korn Ferry Hay Group set out to create a more accurate view of what
the gender pay gap actually is. We had one advantage at the outset,
one lacking in other analyses: We were able to control for job level—
the biggest driver of pay. Our pay database holds compensation data
for more than 20 million employees in more than 110 countries andacross 25,000 organizations, making it the largest and the most comprehensive
such database in the world. In addition, for every country for
which we have the granular data (in this case for 33 countries), we were
able to compare pay for men and women at the same job level; at the
same job level and in the same company; and at the same job level, in the
same company and in the same function.
By isolating the main factors that influence pay—job level, company and
function—we found that the actual gender pay gap looks far different
from the image broadcast in the media. In fact, the deeper we drilled into
the data, the smaller the pay gap became. And when we compared like
with like, it became so small as to virtually disappear.
Jessica Milli, Ph.D., Yixuan Huang, Heidi Hartmann Ph.D., and Jeff Hayes, Ph.D.
This briefing paper summarizes analyses of the 2014-2016 Current Population Survey Annual
Social and Economic supplement and uses statistical controls for labor supply, human capital,
and labor market characteristics to estimate: 1) how much women’s earnings and family incomes
would rise if working women were paid the same as comparable men (men who work the same
number of hours, are the same age, have the same educational attainment and urban/rural status
and live in the same region of the country); 2) how much women and their families lose because
women earn less than similarly qualified men; 3) how many children would benefit from the
increased earnings of their mothers; 4) how many children and families would be brought out of
poverty if women received equal pay; and 5) how much the economy as a whole suffers from
inequality in pay between women and men.
The Washington Post February 11, 2013 By Joan C. Williams When children were asked in a 1999 study whether they spend enough time with their parents, they had something interesting to say. They have quite enough time with their mothers, thank you. What they wanted was more time with their fathers. Not too much has changed in the past decade. …
