Mind the gap – why the gender divide on pay is still with us

As the deputy leader of the Labour Party and Minister for Equality and Women, Harman's call for one of the party's two top jobs to always be occupied by a woman came just weeks after she introduced last summer's controversial Equality Bill to address the gender pay gap.

Her comment incensed many, including former MP Edwina Currie, who believe people should be appointed on merit, regardless of their sex. It also meant the old debate about how to solve the difference between male and female pay was reignited.

Although the pay gap between men and women has narrowed in the last decade, according to the Government's National Equality Panel, women still earn on average 21 per cent less than men.

Forty years on since the creation of the Equal Pay Act, despite on average getting better degrees than men, four years after graduation, half as many women are earning more than 30,000 and the pay discrepancies exist at both ends of the spectrum. Early this month, Sheffield City Council's policy of paying male manual workers bonuses to boost productivity while denying them to women was branded discriminatory by the Appeal Court. The case centred around 13 women working as carers and the decision could leave authorities across the country facing a massive bill for backdated bonuses.

"Even though many people think we have moved on from old-fashioned sexist attitudes, there is clearly still large-scale discrimination against women in employment," says Ceri Goddard, chief executive of

The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for equality between women and men. She insists more needs to be done.

The Government's new Equality Bill would give employers a legal right to choose women over equally qualified men and force companies to divulge how much they paid men and women, but not everyone is convinced increased transparency alone will be enough to breach the gap.

"Transparency is certainly a help for men and women alike," says Dr Catherine Hakim, a sociologist at the London School of Economics and author of Key Issues In Women's Work.

"But it can also simply produce greater jealousy and resentment of those who get paid more and tends to inhibit managers' discretion, both to reward, and to withhold rewards.

"What we really need to do is rethink the emphasis on the gender pay gap. We measure the pay gap because money is visible, everybody has a salary, so it's a simple and easy indicator.

"But we don't measure all the other aspects of a job that affect how people evaluate it, that are part of the total remuneration package. For example, women prefer flexible jobs and part-time jobs that are closer to home, with shorter travel distances to work. They prefer fixed pay scales, so they avoid having to negotiate pay rises and benefits.

"The pay gap reflects a huge number of differences between the occupations held by men and women, differences that are not identified comprehensively in government data sets."

Juggling the figures and taking into account a whole host of new criteria may help to paint a much less bleak picture of pay

differences, but the basic facts remain stark. Women earn less and, if they decide to have children, they will more than likely face a financial penalty.

"There are a large number of other variables which contribute to the pay gap," says Gloria Moss, a expert in human resources and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. "One such variable is children.

"The National Equality Panel's report found women's pay relative to men's declines not just at the moment of first becoming a mother, but through most of the first child's childhood."

As Moss says, the ease with which women can return to work after childbirth and start progressing again, depends on the availability and cost of childcare. Latvia has the most female managers in the EU, where free kindergarten is available.

"It's an element in the infrastructure of the country that seems to assist women greatly in combining the roles of mother and manager.

"I guess what we need is a balance of the two genders.

We're not talking about one dominating the other, there are strengths that both men and women can bring to the workplace."