Is the Gender Pay Gap fake news?
Rethinking the Gender Pay Gap: Myth, Measurement, and Misguided Discourse
The omnipresent discourse surrounding the Gender Pay Gap resonates through media, academia, and policy circles as if it were an indisputable truth. But is it? Could the Gender Pay Gap, as popularly framed, be a case of ideological overreach?
Is it, in reality, “fake news”?
Let’s examine the evidence and dissect the assumptions underpinning this narrative.
The Industry of Inequity
Over the past few decades, a burgeoning industry, fueled by academic research and political momentum, has emerged to scrutinize and rectify the notion that women are systematically paid less than men for equivalent work. The internet is saturated with studies, articles, and advocacy pieces reinforcing this claim, drowning out dissenting perspectives that are either dismissed or derided.
Yet, despite this fervor, the measurable impact on narrowing the gap remains negligible.
A Closer Look at the Data
Bryce Covert, writing for Think Progress, highlighted the disparities among women themselves:
“While white women earned 78% of what white men earned in 2013, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women earned 65%, African-American women 64%, American Indian and Alaska Native women 59%, and Hispanic women just 54%. Asian-American women were the only group earning more, at 90%.”
This data, though U.S.-centric, reveals a critical flaw in the prevailing narrative: the Gender Pay Gap is not monolithic. Nor is it solely a gender issue.
The Unspoken Assumption
The entire discourse rests on a peculiar and rarely questioned premise: that white men earn uniform wages for equivalent work, experience, and qualifications. This implies a pay gap-free zone among men, a notion that simply doesn’t hold up in practice.
Drawing on over three decades of consulting experience across fifteen countries and all continents, we’ve observed that wage disparities among men in identical roles are often as substantial as those between men and women.
The real Pay Gap, in our view, is gender-neutral.
Women may be underrepresented at the top of the pay scale, but they are equally rare at the bottom. Wage gaps tend to flatten, often even disappear, in technical or lower-paid roles and widen significantly at senior levels, a pattern consistent across genders.
The Missing Discourse
Strikingly, there is a notable lack of research exploring wage gaps among men, or among individuals of the same gender, ethnicity, or background. Why is this blind spot so persistent?
Ethics and Equity
Let’s be unequivocal:
- Paying women less than men for identical work under comparable conditions is ethically indefensible.
- Paying men differently for the same work under comparable conditions is equally untenable.
Compensation should reflect the role, experience, and qualifications, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, or creed. This principle should be axiomatic.
Wage gaps represent a form of informed discrimination, and in many jurisdictions, that is legally prohibited.
Yet they persist, and persisted for decades. Why?
The Real Culprits: Agenda and Opacity
We posit two root causes:
- The discourse has been hijacked by a narrow agenda, focused on gender, diversity, and inclusion rather than on systemic inquiry.
- A pervasive lack of transparency in remuneration practices.
The central question should not be “Why do gender or ethnic pay gaps exist?”
It needs to be: “Why do wage gaps exist at all?”
Transparency as the Antidote
In our advisory work on remuneration strategy, we’ve consistently advocated for full transparency. Despite initial resistance, organizations that embraced this approach saw rapid improvements in employee satisfaction, trust, and equity across all levels and in diverse cultures.
Transparency is not just a corrective; it is transformative.
It dismantles the conditions that allow wage gaps to persist, whether gender-based or otherwise.
A Heretical View?
Perhaps. But challenging orthodoxy is often the first step toward meaningful change. We stand by this perspective, not as contrarians, but as pragmatists committed to equity, clarity, and strategic integrity.