PITY Britain’s press officers. April 4th was the deadline for employers in Britain with 250 workers or more to publish details of the inequity between the average pay of their male and female employees,under a new annual reporting requirement (The Economist Group recorded a median gap of 29.5%). The overall figures are eye-opening: eight out of ten employers pay men more than women. Theresa May, the prime minister, and has promised to tackle this “burning injustice”.
Some choose the numbers to mean that women are paid less than men for the same job. In fact the exercise bluntly compares employees’ pay without accounting for their differing roles—so Premier League football clubs have huge but meaningless pay gaps,as the men on the pitch are compared with the women on the turnstiles. This may even create perverse incentives, as firms could appear better by outsourcing low-paid jobs done by women. Yet the exercise could also lead to deeper questioning of what causes differences in pay (see Continue reading
Source: economist.com