Women continue to be outnumbered, outranked and out-earned by men. The Women’s Collective initiative is designed to set female employees up for success by providing insights, knowledge and expertise to move the needle and create the changes necessary to close these gaps. Written by Waheeda Harris. Click here to view the original article.
Whether it’s a small office or a massive corporation, what’s the biggest secret in every workplace?
Salary.
It’s the last taboo of office culture to know the salary of your fellow employees. Whispers of what an office mate earns are always the down-low discussions around the water cooler, but why is it still a secret?
According to Erin Reid, associate professor, Human Resources & Management at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business, salaries function as a signal of worth in our society.
“We are taught from … an early age we should not discuss salary or money in casual settings. This may be particularly true for women, who tend to be encouraged to value meaning over wages in their career choices,” Ms. Reid says.
Employees may be reluctant to reveal their salaries out of a “social fear” that their workmates will discover they are paid less than others in similar roles.
Employers, meanwhile, have other reasons to keep salaries a secret.
“For employers, salary transparency makes the value they assign to different employees painfully clear, opening the door to conflict and a need to make some changes,” Ms. Reid says.
PAY TRANSPARENCY MEASURES
Since Jan. 1, 2021, federally-regulated private sector employers (including airlines, banks, radio and television broadcasters and telecommunications companies) are required to report their salary data in a way that shows aggregated wage gap information. These pay transparency measures were enacted by the federal government to “raise awareness of wage gaps experienced by women, Indigenous people, persons with disabilities and members of visible minorities,” with the new salary data to be first compiled and released in June 2022.
As more data emerges in more industries, will this encourage salary transparency to become the standard?
“It is unlikely widespread salary transparency will happen and it is unclear that it is a useful solution to the gender wage gap,” says Sarah Kaplan, distinguished professor and director, Institute for Gender and the Economy at Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.
“The main driver of the gender wage gap is job segregation. Women are tracked into lower-paying roles either because of bias by managers or because women’s greater responsibilities for care work at home mean they are excluded from the highest-paying roles.”
Ms. Kaplan says that Ontario’s “Sunshine Law,” highlighting government employees paid more than $100,000 per annum, has shown that men are in the higher-paying positions, and it has also led to a small but statistically significant closing of the wage gap in public universities, mainly by depressing increases in men’s wages.
But transparency at that level of pay doesn’t help everyone. Leslie Nichols, instructor in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University and author of Working Women in Canada: An Intersectional Approach, points out that Ontario’s Sunshine List “doesn’t include workers at the lower end of the salary range, who are marginalized and experience more financial hardship. For example, an academic offered a tenure-track position at an Ontario university can in most cases use this list to determine their worth when negotiating their salary, but a full-time public school administrative assistant cannot.”
A NEED FOR CHANGE
Ms. Nichols believes there would have to be significant changes throughout the economy in order to increase salary transparency.
“To begin with, we would need to change the status quo around gender and be open to seeing people across the gender, race and class spectrum in a variety of labour market roles,” says Ms. Nichols. “Even Hollywood is struggling with salary transparency. In 2015, Jennifer Lawrence stated publicly that she and her female co-stars earned 7 per cent of the profits on American Hustle while her male costars received 9 per cent; she expressed fearing that she would be seen as difficult if she pressed for better terms.”
While salary transparency may not be welcomed by most employers with open arms, perhaps it is a worthy goal. Ms. Reid says that widespread pay transparency could benefit women and other equity-seeking groups.
“Information is power,” says Ms. Reid. “Transparent information would help equity-seeking groups by making it more likely they are offered an equitable salary … and make it clearer what salary they could negotiate for.”
ASK WOMEN AND WORK
Question: I’m a mid-level manager at a large corporation, hoping to advance to the C-suite. I’m considering taking an executive education program, but I’m wondering if it’s worth the time and money. Is this a good investment in my future career or can I reach my goals without it?
