PINSTRIPE

A depressing feature of the current debate on gender pay equality is that the media have decided to go on a company bashing spree. UK Government proposals to require larger companies to publish the difference between what they pay men and women has been seized on by unthinking journalists and mischievous politicians as a means to “Name and Shame” companies where there is any difference in what the men and women who work for them are paid.

This is depressing; in part because yet again companies , instead of being celebrated for creating wealth and jobs , paying taxes and funding our pensions are being lined up to be kicked on this issue. Even more depressing is the manipulation or unthinking use of statistics to show problems where there aren’t any coupled with the fact that companies may in fact react by acting in a way which is unhelpful to women, in order not to be lambasted as unfair employers.

Companies do not pay women less than they do men for doing the same job. Legislation and, more importantly, people’s attitudes have put a stop to that. When the statistics are compiled, however, they will show a difference between the average pay of an organisation’s male and female employees, in most cases the men will earn more that the women.

I read this week in this very newspaper - and it was put forward as a scandalous statistic - that the difference between men and women’s pay in legal firms was 42%. Far from indicating a problem this statistic is actually caused by opportunities for women getting better not worse. Legal firms have in recent years seen a huge change in the gender of those they recruit. 20 or 30 years ago it was mostly men, now it is mostly women. The gender change in recruitment has been very marked. This means that the junior ranks of a law firm have a significant majority of women whereas the senior ranks - those people recruited 20 or 30 years ago - are predominantly men, the average pay of the men is therefore currently inevitably higher than the women. The more women than men a firm recruits the worse the pay imbalance initially becomes until the composition of the firm as a whole reflects the same gender profile as its recent recruitment. The scandalous statistic, carelessly used, gives the impression of there being a problem when in fact it reflects progress in terms of equal opportunity.

What about the company which tries to help a mother with young children by giving her shorter hours to help juggle family and work responsibilities? Or the company which allows its employees the flexibility to sacrifice pay in order to have extra holidays? Or the company which tries hard to recruit more women from university? Well, unless this company wants to be thumped in the press for paying women less than men it had better stop that sort of thing right now because it will only look bad.

The tragedy is that the real equality scandal - the collapse of social mobility - is entirely overshadowed by the gender debate. The latter is well on the way to being fixed, the former is a disaster which is being largely ignored. The bright boy or girl from the challenged economic and social background has less chance of making social and economic progress than they had 50 years ago. This is the inequality which men and women, Government and companies should concentrate on.

Pinstripe is a senior member of Scotland's financial services community