The gap in men and women’s pay ‘all but disappears’ if comparisons are made between comparable, like-for-like jobs, for example, by looking at individuals doing the same function in the same company. This is the finding of new research from the Korn Ferry Hay Group, based on more than 20 million salaries at 25,000 organisations. An examination of pay disparity for like-for-like jobs suggests that the gender pay gap is ‘remarkably small’, as low as 2.7% in France or 8% in Great Britain.
The real pay gap is rooted in structural causes, the research suggests; women get paid less than men because they are not in the highest-paying roles, functions and industries. As a result, overall pay disparity is high even in those countries where a like-for-like comparison suggests parity, for example, soaring to 28.6% in Britain and 17% in France.
Peggy Hazard, the firm’s co-lead for Advancing Women Worldwide solutions, said:
‘Our research shows one key way to achieve wage parity is to ensure more women advance to senior managerial levels . . . To get women there, we need to ensure that early, and throughout their careers, they receive mission-critical and complex assignments, and that they receive candid feedback about their performance.’