A BLOG POST BY REBECCA LURY Today, the Chartered Management Institute has the published its latest figures on the gender pay gap.
The headline figure shows that the gender pay gap has increased to £10,546, a £515 rise from last year. With such a slow rate of progress, the CMI estimate that parity will only occur in 2109.
As a result, the CMI have called on government to put pressure on businesses to make formal and more transparent equal pay and opportunity policies rather than advocating quotas to increase the number of female employees.
This anti-quotas sentiment was also adopted by Lord Davies in his review of women on company boards. Published in February 2011, the report called for an increase from 12.5% to 25%.
Latest figures show that women made up 23% of board appointments since the beginning of March, but 47% of all FTSE 250 companies continue to have all-male boards.
The bandying of statistics that it will take 100 years before equal pay exists does little to encourage women that they can break through the glass ceiling. Instead, we should be focusing on the positives from today’s statistics.
Female junior executives are, for the first time, being paid more than their male counterparts. Whilst not by a significant margin (£21,969 to £21,367) it could mark the beginning of a change in women’s fortunes.
At the same time, salaries for female executives are growing faster than men, (2.8% vs. 2.3%).
The potential to break through the glass ceiling is finally becoming a reality. Whilst there is a large, unwieldy overall pay gap that still needs to be challenged, the next generation of female boardroom executives are making a dent. When the CMI statistics on the gender pay gap come out in 2021 we may in fact see women closing the pay gap once and for all.