I think you maybe forgot to read Monzo’s blog post.
The video you linked clearly states that they’re dismissing a pay gap in terms of equal pay for equal work, which actually aligns with what Monzo are saying (and is illegal not to in the UK anyway).
The video you posted actually highlights the point Monzo and others are making, which is that the median pay for people who identify as women is lower than the median pay for people who identify as men.
That is factual, and Monzo shared their own stats in their blog post, which support that.
Pretending that their is no gap or that it isn’t an issue when we’re trying to live in a society that treats people equally is ignorant.
Typically as market rates rise, new employees have a higher salary than those who have been in a role for a number of years. Existing employees are rarely given salary increases that meet the market mean for a set location.
I agree with you that this is usually the case. However, at Monzo when we have had to raise our offers in order to compete with rising market rates we have raised the salaries of those who are in the same role to ensure that there is parity. No one should be penalised for loyalty.
I agree that we can’t solve the gender pay gap ourselves. We will always hire the best candidate for the role. However, if we can ensure that our roles are as accessible and attractive to as many people as possible, while still ensuring we have a talented, high performing team we want to do that. We want as much diverse thought and experience as possible as we believe it makes us stronger.
At this point, as much as we would love to, we can’t promise to get involved in programmes in our community to help the next generation, so we’re committing to doing what we can internally to try and start the change we want to see. The needle moving a tiny percentage is still a bit of movement in the right direction.
The traditional investment banks I’ve worked in chose to dedicate resources to fixing the gender disparity where an authentic difference can be made (at the beginning and middle of the pipeline). Code clubs for young girls etc.
So in that respect, “old banking” is outdoing Monzo - just like they are with Apple Pay.
It does make one question whether newer is always better.
It’s reassuring to see that people acknowledge that equality of opportunity is always preferable to equality of outcome - which can only lead to unfair discrimination eg on the basis of gender, race or other characteristics.
That is the issue being debated at Google right now post the James Damore memo - whether Google unfairly discriminated against white men and other characteristics in the name of “diversity”.
The reality is a University social studies/gender studies department will argue that gender is a social construct and that all differences between men and women are learned, but various sciences departments e.g Biology, Psychology will argue that there are inherent differences between the sexes that manifest in various ways e.g interests, personality which then affects career choice.
Of course, our society is currently more polarised than ever before and these topics inflame a lot of emotion. Discussions around subjects like the “pay gap” seem impossible because both sides are so entrenched…
I think it’s sensible to acknowledge that men and women are different, thus choose different careers but there is still an element of social stigma around certain professions or jobs.
Society/Employers should do all they can to increase opportunity and reduce social stigma, but nobody should be surprised if teaching and nursing are still dominated by women or if an airline gets more male applicants to be pilots than women (although of course nobody complains about the gender gap in unglamorous roles like binmen…)
There is an excellent Norwegian series on youtube which explored the nature vs nurture debate, each episode examined a different subject eg career choices.
This first episode is well worth a watch on the Nordic Equality Paradox - the gender gap in professions only increased in Norway despite attempts to reduce it…
Excellent post @fmsfms - you will, of course, get pilloried for mentioning James Damore with anything other than righteous indignation. But he was a considered thinker who backed up his original memo with dozens of peer reviewed studies. It’s deeply unfair that these citations were omitted when his memo was leaked to the press.
One sex inseminates the other. The sex that carries the baby inside her for 9 months, supplies it with nutrients, brings it into the world, feeds it from her breast etc is “expected” to be more caring, nurturing and family focused.
That bloody Patriarchy again!
As in my previous post, I acknowledge that social stigma exists eg about men being the provider and women the caregiver/childraiser, that we should increase opportunity for men to raise the children if they wanted to.
But I also acknowledge that if we gave men equal paternity leave and eliminated ALL social stigma overnight that we would still have a society where the majority of primary child-raiser is the mother over the father, because they have a greater biological bond with the infant
Your dismissal of pink and blue brains ignores lots of evidence that testosterone does influence behaviour.
Here’s a good example. Uber Drivers pay is set by the Uber app, there are no compensation committees or biased hiring managers.
Male Uber drivers still earn more than Women Uber Drivers (on average)
Why?
They work longer hours, they work different shifts, they drive faster, they take different routes.
that was last year, this year they are now big enough to need to report, so instead of show the one year statutory data they voluntarily also show the previous year’s data
Relevant article re: companies with the biggest gender pay gap. A lot of the wage gap comes from not having women in higher positions- it’s usually an old boys club up at the top even if lower waged roles are pretty much equalised. I think you see similar patterns in Monzo’s management & investors. I can’t remember how old the statistic is but I know there’s a pretty even spread across all Monzo users but women are really underrepresented at meets/ on forum/ at the top.
That’s not what the article says at all! I’m really not sure how you’re reaching that analysis tbh.
The article is actually a list of companies with the biggest gaps, some of these companies give reasons and some don’t. To suggest that it’s an “old boys club” based on the data/reasons given is just projection on your part.
Look at #3, the womens lingerie store Boux Avenue. It’s an entirely sensible and legitimate explanation that men have no interest in working in a lingerie shop, and thus their shops have to be “manned” wait I mean staffed almost entirely by women on retail level hourly wages. The relatively few men that they employ tend to be in non store roles and on salaries rather than hourly pay, hence the gap.
#4 is a recruitment firm that specialises in construction, a quick look at their website for the vacancies they fill shows “digger operators” “scaffolders” and “welders”. I assume that the majority of their candidate pool is male and they are placing those male candidates into traditionally male professions like construction, and that their consultants are mainly male. This is a reflection of the industry rather than any “old boys club” (PS, of course women should be able to work on a building site if they want to…but again let’s not hold our breath expecting the site to be 50/50 any time soon…)
#7 Ryanair, the data is skewed by well paid Pilots mostly being male. As I said earlier, let’s reduce the stigma that says Pilot isn’t a female job, let’s encourage more women to be pilots but let’s not discriminate in order to achieve a specific outcome.
In 2017 we were not required to submit and so were not registered. The deadline for 2018 is not until 04 April 2019 so we’re just super early. We submitted our registration and are just waiting to be added and we will then submit
