Disturbing stats on the gender pay gap — and 10 things men can do to start addressing it.

Inequities in the work place are well and thriving and while this will probably come to no surprise to most working women, it can sometimes come as a shock to us, men. Of course we are aware (most of us, at least) that our Western societies are traditionally unfair to women and minorities but we tend to look for the positive and we prefer to believe that we are slowly but surely aiming for a more equal status quo. That’s because it is easy for us not to see the stigmas of inequalities when we are not directly affected by them. To some degree, it is more comfortable for us to keep our blinders on.

Until we see the stats.

There is an insane gender salary gap of about 20% that forms once women have kids and keeps going over the long run. Take a look at the stats above, from a January 2018 National Bureau Of Economic Research report, with researchers from Princeton, London School of Economics, and Denmark.

This study examines the situation Denmark and compares it to other countries. The situation in Denmark shows that although there has been convergence, there still is a large gap in salary, and Denmark intuitively may not be the country with the most important gender pay gap! Northern European countries are often depicted as rather advanced on the matter. Equal pay is not yet a given.

Why is there still a gender pay gap?

In practice, it looks like women bear the weight of having children not only physically but also socially when they are the ones actually “paying” on their salaries for having kids. This financial impact seems like the main lasting sequel of gender pay gap after some progress has been done over the past decades — the so called “gender convergence” which originally led me to erroneously believe that things were fine for women at work.

I just have to look around me: I work in Software. It is one of the industries that pays the best and offers the most advantages like maternity or paternity leave (this varies from country to country but should stand generally true). One could thus argue that this industry could be attractive for women. However, there are very few women in engineering or leadership position. In fact I have read multiple times that there are in proportion less women engineers now than in the 90’s. The gender gap is increasing. The percentage of women has decreased to about 10 to 15%. Google, reportedly a good student in the matter, has 20% of engineer women.

Such a gender gap is different from the gender pay gap but it can impact it in turn. The gender pay gap can worsen if the volume of women engineers in scientific fields does not enable them to effectively support each other and if they still appear as outliers. As a manager, I might think “Who cares if I do not pay as well as others, if the 90% others are well paid and stable”? This is in turn may explain why so many women seem receptive to the gender gap / gender pay gap issue. For instance see the success of Girls who Code (thank you PTC for inviting Reshma Saujani at Liveworx) or Women who Code among others, which both involve mentoring as a major career building tool.

The study gives one detailed approach to the problem, among which interesting data on hours worked. Is the reason of the gap purely social or also mechanical in some ways? The study describes that having a child impacts participation and hours worked: “Underlying this earnings penalty, we find sharp impacts of children on labor force participation, hours worked, wage rates, occupation, sector, and firm choices”.

And how could it be otherwise? How could having a child not impact hours worked… I can relate pretty well to this as I have a 3 years old son. Even if some of the inequality in salary is partly due to mechanical loss of participation and hours worked, I believe that companies should acknowledge the necessity of having kids. If they do, they will accept that women having a kid have to work less momentarily and should be supported to come back to work gradually more when kids go to school. Shouldn’t women receive a bonus when they come back after maternity leave?

For now, I would simply love to see other men in Tech support the Equal pay cause because it’s not difficult, and we can make it work. I feel like women around us would not only feel better if we did, but would actually be paid more fairly.

10 ways men can help close the gap

• Be aware of your men bias. Many men around me are aware that women think there is a problem with gender equality, but many — I believe — think it is an exaggeration. Even if we do believe there is a problem with gender gap, we quickly forget about it. Be an Engineer, do your research, and inform your opinion.
• Educate yourself. Are you sure that this is not happening in your team? You may not know. There is no easy way to derive meaningful stats on limited amounts of data and comparability. You can decide to gather as much information as possible and ask around for best practices on this topic.
• Pro-actively raise women salaries. You will be able to better retain women in your team. You will create stronger teams. Salary raises should be dependent on merit with a special attention to women so that they do not have to merit more than others to earn the same.
• Help forge women role models. Young women generally feel like Computer sciences are not for them and men will play a critical role reversing this. Role models we follow early generally move the needle for a lifetime of decisions. There are not so many well-known examples of women that achieved widespread recognition in Sciences. More of these models could help not only recruit or retain more women in science but give a sense of normal to women in STEMs which could in turn enable better conditions for salary negotiation. Your daughters will thank you.
• Talk to women. Several women I know around me are worried that men will look at them differently with all the cases of men being fired for sexual abuse. It might help if men addressed the topic a bit more. When I go to a meetup about gender equality with 200 people attending and see that roughly 3% of the attendance are men, there really is a problem.
• Be a champion for families. Do not take advantage of women coming back to work after a maternity leave. I heard several stories about managers negotiating harshly salaries when they sense someone is in a position of weakness. This may make sense in general business but seems rather counter-productive when your goal is to create an inclusive and dynamic team. Here again, women should not individually bear the weight of having children.
• Have a baby bonus. When women come back from maternity leave, give them a baby bonus so that they can make up the salary gap. Take that on the rest of the team’s bonus pool if necessary and have meetings organized to explain why. It is everyone’s benefit if your team is more equitable salary-wise. As women lose durably 10% or more of salary per kid, something must be done so that they know they can make up their losses and are motivated to come back strong.
• Offer childcare options. Speak to your HR team to welcome kids at the company. Negotiate fees with close-by daycare businesses and privileged access to nanny-sharing marketplaces for your department or the company. Locally organize multi-companies child transport support if your company is too small to achieve more.
• Go to meetups. Do something on April 10th, “Equal pay day”. Talking about the issue is really important for women. A recent survey showed that women who network have better chances than others to get a 10% salary raise in the next year, than those who do not. See for instance Essteem’s meetup on the issue.
• Show your support to the cause, and to women at work. In general, no need for a whole article like what I am doing now… UN Women has built a great movement around their flagship moto #HeforShe . They also use #breakthesilence . See more here and you will likely be inspired to join the 99K other men to date in the USA for instance. We can inspire others. More specifically at work, women may need to be more recognized. We men could simply say they’re great, support them by not imposing our views too quickly — and make sure their views are heard. Repeat or quote what they are saying. In a natural, respectful, at all cost not paternalistic view… Not so easy.

Let us simply be more inclusive and change career opportunities and salaries for people we care about. We will impact women, ourselves and others.

Below, a short list of Nonprofits and companies that act against the Gender Pay Gap.

Essteem — Earn up to $2000 when you refer someone to a job, while supporting a Nonprofit partner (of which some of the Nonprofits below), and getting recognized for your own skills and soft skills.

Girls who Code — a nonprofit organization which aims to support and increase the number of women in computer science. The organization is working to close the gender gap in technology and change the image of what a programmer looks like and does.

Women who Code — a global non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers.

Girl Develop it — a nonprofit organization devoted to getting women the materials they need to pursue careers in software development.

UN Women — the global champion for gender equality, working to develop and uphold standards and create an environment in which every woman and girl can exercise her human rights and live up to her full potential.

Author: Hugues Seureau

CEO @ Essteem

www.essteem.com

Essteem powers fortune 500 companies through innovative D&I apps & services.

2018