International Women’s Day: the gender pay gap
Gender Equity and Women’s Empowerment is covered in the ASI Performance Standard (V3.1) under criteria 9.2. The Performance Standard Guidance notes that a gender pay gap assessment is a useful metric to measure the effectiveness of efforts.
11 March 2024
Since 2006, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has been benchmarking gender gaps to provide consistent annual metrics that can track progress towards gender parity. Their Global Gender Gap Report 2023 covered 146 countries. It found that the Economic Participation and Opportunity sub-index scored only 60.1% – representing the percentage of the gap closed to date. Compounding this, the annual pace of change is very slow. At this rate, WEF found it would take 169 years for the gap to close and reach equity between men and women.
Gender Equity and Women’s Empowerment is covered in the ASI Performance Standard (V3.1) under criteria 9.2. The Guidance notes that a gender pay gap assessment is a useful metric to measure the effectiveness of your efforts. Some countries are requiring gender pay gap information to be published, which is proving to be a stimulus to change.
Calculating the average gender pay gap is straightforward: it is the difference between the average earnings for men and the average earnings for women, expressed as a percentage of men’s average earnings. (Part-time roles should be scaled to full-time equivalent for comparability).
To walk the talk, ASI has crunched its own numbers at March 2024, and has found our gender pay gap is 2.1%. A useful target is between -5% to +5%. ASI’s team is 57% female and 43% male.
This International Women’s Day: review or ask to know the gender pay gap in your organisation.
Closing the gender pay gap ultimately requires cultural change to remove the barriers to the full and equal participation of women in the workforce. Some of the ways that business can reduce the gender pay gap include:
- conducting an audit to understand the size of the gender pay gap
- reporting the findings to management and employees
- setting KPIs for leadership to reduce the gender pay gap
- taking action to increase the number of women in leadership positions
- encouraging men to access flexible work arrangements and leave entitlements.
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