Gender inequality: still work to be done

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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. 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 compell