Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

GenderEqual payGender pay gapUnconscious biasOpinion

Gender inequality: still work to be done

by Gloria Moss 22 Jul 2015
by Gloria Moss 22 Jul 2015 Male, pale and stale: UK boardrooms now are broadly similar to the 1960s. Photo: Rex
Male, pale and stale: UK boardrooms now are broadly similar to the 1960s. Photo: Rex

While plans to make gender pay gap reporting mandatory in larger organisations will go some way to address male and female imbalance at work, underlying structural issues still need to be dealt with, argues Gloria Moss. 

Cameron’s proposals to publish figures on the gender pay gap give pause to reflect on the imbalances still besetting organisations.

Gender pay gap reporting resources

Gender pay reporting in Europe

S.78 of the Equality Act: the practicalities of promoting pay transparency

The Fawcett Society estimates the gap between men and women’s earnings is nearly 20%, while just 9.25% of executive directors in the FTSE100 and 5% of the FTSE 250 are female. These board figures alone speak volumes about the blockages in the system.

The supply side is not the problem, seeing as women are as likely (if not more likely) to embark on higher education – the number of women enrolled in tertiary institutions has grown almost twice as fast as that of men since 1970, according to UNESCO figures.

Moreover, there is evidence now on the commercial advantages of a more diverse organisation, with Catalyst finding in 2007 that companies with more women board directors outperformed those with the least on three financial measures: return on equity (53% higher), return on sales (42% higher), and return on invested capital (66% higher).

And the existence of the “female economy”, in which women make 83% of purchases, presents a compelling case for organisations to be more gender diverse and customer facing.

Producing real change

Cameron’s recent announcement that gender pay gap reporting will become mandatory for organisations with more than 250 employees from 2016 will – if the figures are not massaged – go some way to highlighting the structural and non-structural factors that underlie women’s failure to advance in equal proportions to men.

These include issues such as extensive part-time working for women and the lesser prestige accorded to some female-dominated occupations.

Why men like straight lines and women like polka dotsWhy Men Like Straight Lines and Women Like Polka Dots by Gloria Moss, is available now.

However, real change can only come with initiatives to reduce both the structural obstacles, such as presenteeism and long-hours cultures, and the non-structural obstacles (for example unconscious bias) that can block progress.

The first is a major problem but so are non-structural obstacles, a major culprit and the worse for being hidden in plain sight.

The homogeneity principle, for example, where leaders seem to recruit in their own image, appears to go unchecked at Tesco. The supermarket chain’s board membership falls into the “male, pale and stale” category, with just one female non-executive director.

Yet, with persistently negative profitability, Tesco stakeholders might well be better “served” (to use Chairman Dave Lewis’ word) by a senior talent pool that better reflects its substantially female customer base.

A more gender-diverse board might, for example, have resisted the strikingly masculine elements in Tesco’s new in-store design, disastrous according to research findings that show a strong tendency for women to prefer design with subtly different elements, often created by other women.

HR holds the key

Achieving a more diverse organisation may be kick-started by gender pay gap data but real change, as we know, can only come with a move away from masculine organisational cultures.

This is where leadership plays a key role seeing as, according to Professor Ed Schein of MIT, between 80% and 90% of behaviour in an organisation is shaped by how its leader behaves.

In fact, much of the leadership rewarded in organisations today is of the “command and control” or “transactional” variety rather than the more people-focused “transformational” and inclusive leadership, and this creates a masculine culture even if this is not the intention.

Why is this the case? Quite simply, research shows a predominantly male preference for transactional leadership over transformational leadership – both in terms of the qualities preferred in a boss and as a manager of others – and a female preference for transformational leadership.

Of course, there will be exceptions, as men and women are not binary opposites, but female candidates may well be more predisposed to deliver transformational than transactional leadership.

The evidence relating to men and women’s relative leadership preferences deserves our attention not least because it’s thought that transformational leadership, taken with the “contingent reward” element (payment by results) of transactional leadership can deliver a 20% enhancement in performance.

Some might say that there is a case for people-focused transformational leadership across the board, whether or not organisations view themselves as ‘’prospector” (innovative) or “defender” (protects themselves), to use the terminology of Miles and Snow.

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

This means HR people have a major opportunity and responsibility here. Not only can they move things forward on equal pay, but this initiative can be used to kick-start other initiatives to create more effective and diverse organisations.

Something as simple as a focus on leadership competences can achieve both high performance and diversity, render organisations better able to serve their heterogeneous customer base.

Gloria Moss

Gloria Moss PhD FCIPD is a former training manager for Eurotunnel and is Professor of Management and Marketing at the Bucks Business School at Buckinghamshire New University. She is author of ‘Why some men like straight lines and women like polka dots’ and most recently ‘Personality, Design and Marketing'.

previous post
Employee recognition: an app for a tap on the back
next post
Responding to an employment tribunal claim: five tips for employers

You may also like

Redefining leadership: From competence to inclusion

21 May 2025

Consultation launched after Supreme Court ‘sex’ ruling

20 May 2025

RCN warns Darlington NHS trust over single-sex spaces

16 May 2025

EHRC bows to pressure and extends gender consultation

15 May 2025

Culture, ‘micro-incivilities’ and invisible talent

14 May 2025

Period pain and absence harm women’s pay and...

13 May 2025

Rethinking talent: Who was never considered in the...

7 May 2025

Eight ways to best support grieving employees

6 May 2025

‘Unacceptable to question integrity’ of Supreme Court judgment

2 May 2025

Tackling suspect gender pay gap data

30 Apr 2025

  • 2025 Employee Communications Report PROMOTED | HR and leadership...Read more
  • The Majority of Employees Have Their Eyes on Their Next Move PROMOTED | A staggering 65%...Read more
  • Prioritising performance management: Strategies for success (webinar) WEBINAR | In today’s fast-paced...Read more
  • Self-Leadership: The Key to Successful Organisations PROMOTED | Eletive is helping businesses...Read more
  • Retaining Female Talent: Four Ways to Reduce Workplace Drop Out PROMOTED | International Women’s Day...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+