A call to action. Closing the gender pay gap.

Feb 3

Kerry Round shares her thoughts and experiences.

Among full-time employees, the gender pay gap in April 2021 was 7.9% for full-time workers (1).

18 November 2021 marked the day in which women effectively began working for free due to the average gender pay gap. It doesn’t take Einstein to work out that this means women worked for 30 days of the year without compensation for their labour.

I started my career in 2001 when the gender pay gap for full-time workers was 16.4% (2). From then until now, not only have I worked a lot of ‘free’ hours, I’ve also witnessed the following:

I’ve been in a meeting when a CFO said, “why would you give someone pregnant, on maternity leave or their first year after maternity leave a pay rise”?
And I attended another meeting where the CEO said that it was “perfectly acceptable” to have a 23% gender pay gap and to “not worry about it”.

I remember being rendered speechless on both occasions. My lack of words still haunts me today. Why didn’t I say something? Why didn’t I make a calm, reasonable and rational argument about the merit and worth of a woman raising a child? Or the value of one juggling and succeeding at two full-time jobs? Let’s face it, raising children is a full time and unpaid job.

Why did I not challenge, that in my world, the one where I like to see everyone thriving, respected, rewarded and fulfilled, it was not acceptable for a woman to be paid 23% less than her male counterparts for the single reason that she is in fact, female?

Blissfully unaware

I grew up under a Queen of England and the first-ever female Prime Minister of my country was born just down the road from me. Miss Piggy reigned supreme on the telly and I attended an all-girls school. I can honestly say, hand on heart until I turned about 21, I had absolutely no idea that it was a disadvantage to be born a woman.

As my time in the workplace evolved, so did my understanding of a glass ceiling. I thought that if you weren’t bullish or brash then you would be overlooked and underpaid. [Of course, I’m using provocative language for dramatic effect, many many men deserve their pay rises. Many many men don’t get them when they deserve them, but here, right now, I’m talking about the clear injustice to women].

Reflecting on those times when I witnessed blatant discrimination, I realise that I didn’t speak up because I’d been conditioned to believe my voice didn’t matter in the workplace. I didn’t think anyone wanted to hear what I had to say. It all started to feel normal I suppose.

Join us in closing the gender pay gap for our future generation

Fast forward to 2022. My experiences, passion for gender equality and good governance have opened doors for me. I’ve now got the opportunity to make the world a better place using my business and my voice. And I’ll use it now to say I don’t believe the gender pay gap legislation is the be-all and end-all. In fact, I think it’s fundamentally flawed. It allows large group structures to manipulate their gender pay gap figures according to their payrolls. Organisations can ‘hide’ behind their corporate structure. I’ll use my voice to urge FTSE Small Cap and AIM 50 to report on their gender pay gap. I’ll urge companies with large structures to report their group gender pay gap figures voluntarily. And I’ll urge large private companies to publish their gender pay gap figures – after all, future employees should be able to see what lies ahead for them!

Speaking of the future, I want to raise my daughters in a world where they don’t have to know what a gender pay gap is. I want my son to grow up knowing he needs to work his hardest to be the best at what he does because being white and male does not give him an automatic right to climb the ladder. It’s the thought of my children’s future that ignites the fire within me when it comes to closing the gender pay gap.

I hope the next generation is shocked that we need to have gender and ethnicity quotas. But until a truly diverse board becomes the norm and not a box-ticking exercise then we do need targets. And it’s these targets that I will continue to push my network towards so their female employees can reach that glass ceiling…and smash right through it.

We’ve been working on some content for you to download. It’s our Mind the Gap 2022 infographic and it tells you everything you need to know when it comes to producing a gender pay gap report. We hope it’s something that helps drive even a small amount of change. Subscribe to our mailing list to download for free.

We aren’t stopping there. We’re currently working on a piece of content to help advise on board diversity. The narrative around diversity, equity and inclusion is loud right now and RGS want to help turn up the volume.

Thanks for reading.

Kerry.

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