Employers are being called to take stronger action to tackle pay discrimination after recent figures showed that the gender pay gap is at its widest when workers reach their 50s.
Figures published this week by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) revealed that the gender pay gap for 50- to 59-year olds and for those over 60 years old stood at 15% and is not declining quickly over time. Also, the mean annual salary for women in their 50s is at £32,052 compared with a mean remuneration of £44,561 for their male counterparts.
According to Rest Less, who carried out their own analysis, this means women in that age group earned on average 28 per cent less than men of the same age. The ONS figures instead use median hourly earnings excluding overtime to calculate the pay gap.
Stuart Lewis, founder of Rest Less, said women in their 50s were “taking a double hit when it comes to their salaries, caused by both gender and age discrimination”. The wage gap was narrowest between workers in the 22 to 29 age group, at 12.9 per cent. This rises to 25 per cent for those aged 40 to 49, which is the age range that average salaries peak for both genders. However, women’s wages saw a bigger drop than men after reaching the 50 to 59 age bracket.
“With such a tight labour market, and the wealth of talent and skills on offer among women in their 50s and 60s, it’s surprising not to see more employers actively seeking out and engaging with this audience to help fill a very real skills gap,”
Lewis added.
Charles Cotton, performance and reward adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), said the analysis illustrated that where there are biases against women, “either wittingly or unwittingly, age amplifies that”.
Cotton said hirers needed to consider what biases might be involved in their processes for recruitment and promotion, and how they supported staff with responsibilities such as caring by providing more flexible working opportunities and supporting employees’ returns to work following career breaks.
He added that dealing with pay disparities earlier in workers’ careers would make them less likely to be a problem for older workers. “If you’re able to nip it in the bud in [workers’] 20s and 30s, then it means that it won’t show up in their 40s and 50s,” he posited.
The official ONS analysis suggested another reason for the higher wage gap in older women is that women over 40 years are more likely to work in lower-paid occupations and, compared with younger women, are less likely to hold senior roles such as managers or directors.
The gender pay gap among full-time employees has declined by only 0.6% since 2012 and currently stands at 8.9%. However, the overall gender pay gap among all employees fell from 17.8% in 2018 to 17.3% this year, continuing a trend of consistent decline.
For age groups under 40 years, the gender pay gap in the UK for full-time employees is now close to zero, with 18 to 21-year-old women receiving just 0.9 per cent less than their male counterparts, and 22 to 29-year olds receiving 2.1 per cent less. The gap for full-time employees in their thirties is also just 1.9 per cent.
51-year-old BBC presenter Samira Ahmed is taking the corporation to court this week, claiming she earned just a sixth of the salary of her colleague Jeremy Vine, who she said carried out “a very similar job” as presenter of Points of View, compared with her role presenting audience feedback show Newswatch.
Ahmed said on Twitter that she received £440 per episode of Newswatch, compared with Vine’s salary of £3,000 per episode of Points of View until January 2018. His salary was subsequently reduced to £1,300 per episode until he left the show in July last year.
Commenting on the case, Gemma Rosenblatt, head of policy and campaigns at the Fawcett Society, said: “The cumulative year-on-year impact of the gender pay gap leaves women with a significantly lower lifetime income and pension pot than men.
“Fifty years on from equal pay legislation, we know women are not being paid equally for work of equal value, as today’s reporting of Samira Ahmed’s case demonstrates.”
Kate Palmer, associate director at Peninsula, warned employers to be aware of the risks of workplace discrimination including gender pay gap. She said: “It is unlawful to pay a female employee less than her male colleague for either doing the same job, work that is broadly similar or undertaking roles that could be classed as being ‘of equal value’.
“There can be several reasons that the pay gap increases as employees get older but, regardless, employers should remember that a successful discrimination claim could result in unlimited compensation being awarded at a tribunal.”
29th October 2019.
