Wimbledon pays women equally - but will Gordon Brown?

The Fawcett Society today issued a challenge to the new prime minister to be the first to ensure that women and men in the UK are equally rewarded for their work.

Although equal pay legislation has been in force for more than 30 years, there's still a pay gap women working full-time still earn on average 17% less per hour than men working full-time, and women working part-time earn 38% less.

Dr Katherine Rake said: “Women tennis players are finally enjoying equal pay at Wimbledon – it’s time for Gordon Brown to give all women a sporting chance and finally end the pay gap. The ball’s in his court.”

Practical steps to end the pay gapAs the leading campaign for equality between women and men, Fawcett has set out the practical measures that Government could take to end the pay gap. These include:

• Safeguards: Compulsory pay audits for all organisations
• Bold ambitions: The Government to set dates for finally closing the pay gap
• Tackle long hours: Full sign-up to the EU’s Working Time Directive and other steps to tackle our long hours working culture, which limits the ability of women with caring responsibilities to compete on an equal basis with men.
• Include men: Government and employers to encourage men - not just women - to engage with work-life balance issues.
• New rights: a right to work flexibly for all employees, unless there is a strong business case against it

Research by Capital Consulting and Cranfield School of Management reveals UK companies are failing to develop top people

Training and development experts have championed the importance of talent management after a new report found more than half of UK businesses are failing to develop their top people.

Research by recruitment outsourcing provider Capital Consulting and Cranfield School of Management, found that only 49% of UK businesses had implemented talent development programmes.

Having questioned 608 HR directors, the research pointed to a lack of financial investment and insufficient senior management support as the main obstacles to talent development.

It found that while six in 10 respondents said talent management was essential to increasing profit, only four in 10 strategically managed their star talent. One in five did not link the strategy to their business plan, while only 15% measured the return on investment.

Victoria Winkler, training, learning and development adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, told Personnel Today she was not surprised by the findings. However, she believed that skills awareness was growing, and was not only on the agenda of HR departments, but also chief executives and finance directors.

"HR teams need to put a talent management structure in place to get the most out of their employees," she said. "It can have a major impact on the bottom line and retaining staff."

Jeremy Tipper, group managing director of Capital Consulting, said: "Creating an effective talent management framework has the potential to make HR directors organisational heroes because of the ever-growing impact it will have on business performance."

Dr Emma Parry, research fellow at Cranfield School of Management, said the report should serve as a wake-up call to employers. "The disconnect between what senior managers are saying and what they are doing is very worrying," she said.

Communication style defines difference between how men and women work

The commissioner for Public Appointments has highlighted the contrast in leadership and communication styles between men and women.

Speaking at the annual dinner of City Women’s Network Janet Gaymer said: “Men often prosper in hierarchical organisations, women in smaller groups.” Launched in 1978, City Women’s Network is a member group for senior business and professional women.

Gaymer called on women’s networks to put talent retention, the gender pay gap and a new contract at work at the top of their agendas. “Women have seen so many improvements. But there is plenty more to do. It is time to take networking to a new level,” she concluded.

Ann Summers CEO Jacqueline Gold claims ban on men in work is only way for women to succeed

The chief executive of adult retailer Ann Summers told delegates at the Brighton conference that the only way for women to succeed in business was to do away with men in the workplace.

And that is virtually what Jacqueline Gold has done in transforming the retailer from a turnover of £87,000 in 1987 to £155m this year, with 7,500 (all women) party planners and 141 retail outlets (mostly staffed by women).

Apart from a couple of exceptions, men are only employed at the company's head office. And even there the ratio is 60:40 women to men. But Gold justified this tactic by explaining that banishing men from most aspects of the organisation had created an environment in which women could thrive.

"Women [at other companies] will often say that they've had a fantastic idea, but they feel intimidated," she said. "The fact that we've got a female chief executive and a female managing director means we don't have that problem."

When asked from the floor how the public sector could be made to be more sexy, Gold replied that the way to create a dynamic workplace was to make it fun.

"But that has to come from the top. People at the top need to buy into it. [Your organisation] has got to be a fun place to work," she said.

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Women and Work Commission chairman Baroness Prosser pleased at pace of progress on gender pay gap

One year on from the publication of the Women and Work Commission's report into closing the gender pay gap, its chair Baroness Margaret Prosser said she was "surprised" with the progress that had been made.

At a trade and industry sub-committee hearing last week on the commission's Shaping a Fairer Future report, published in March 2006, Prosser was asked what she thought about the government's action plan on her 40 recommendations.

"I was pleased that [the government] produced an action plan at all," she replied. "I'm surprised so much has been done already. I'm certainly not unhappy with the pace."

Prosser cited the Department of Trade and Industry's £500,000 part-time work fund and the Exemplar Employers initiative as significant achievements.

"More than 100 companies have taken part in the Exemplar Employers scheme, and are trialling more women managers and providing better careers advice," she said.

However, Prosser said she had some concerns that many schools still stereotyped women when it came to work experience and career guidance.

"The Department for Education and Skills accepted our recommendations on work experience, but I'm not sure how carefully [the department] is monitoring it," she said.

Norma Jarboe, director of Opportunity Now, which oversees the Exemplar Employers programme, said: "Lots of government reports have not had that much impact and have simply been shelved, but the government has reacted well to this one."

Jenny Watson, chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission, said the gender pay gap remained a stubborn 17% for women working in full-time roles.

"We are glad the government is taking this forward and look forward to seeing the report," she said.
But Prosser warned that the gender pay gap would remain a complicated and difficult issue to overcome.

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Women get to break through glass ceiling to senior management but only to do dirty jobs

Business leaders are more likely to appoint a woman to a senior-level post during times of crisis and poor performance than their male colleagues, according to a report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

However, the CIPD-commissioned study by Exeter University found that, as women are more readily appointed to tough roles during times of change, they are at greater risk of suffering from the “set up to fail” syndrome than men.

Dianah Worman, CIPD diversity adviser, said: “Due to the limited opportunities open to female leaders, many are forced to take the more difficult jobs in organisations with a history of poor performance, perpetuating the myth that women are poor performers in senior positions, and covering up the true extent of discrimination for the most desirable senior management positions.

"But the growth in the number of successful small businesses owned by women goes some way to indicate their business and leadership capabilities and highlights the talent other large organisations are missing. So old-fashioned attitudes are not only unfair and discriminatory towards women but they leave organisations shooting themselves in the foot.”

The Change Agenda, Women in the boardroom: the risks of being at the top report included more than 80 employers.

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Number of female senior managers in FTSE 350 firms falls by 40% in five years

The number of female senior managers working in major UK businesses has fallen sharply by more than 40% in the past five years, according to figures from professional services company Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

In 2002, 38% of senior manager level posts in the FTSE 350 were occupied by women, but this has now sunk to just 22%.

The news will come as a surprise to many companies that have introduced flexible working arrangements and appointed heads of diversity in an attempt address equal opportunities in the workplace and retain talent.

At the most senior level, the figures show an improvement, but progress is painfully slow. The ranks of FTSE 350 female full-time chairmen or chief executives have grown, but can still be counted on one hand.

The study suggests one possible reason for this is the growing cost of childcare. The cost of a typical full-time nursery place in England has increased by 27% in the last five years, according to the Daycare Trust.

There is also evidence that more women are going into business for themselves. The number of self-employed females in the UK recently rose above a million for the first time according to the Labour Force Survey.

Sarah Churchman, head of diversity at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said: “At the top, things are moving slowly in the right direction but our middle management data paints a very different picture.

“Businesses tend to pay more attention to gender issues in senior positions and there appears to be an assumption that a supply from the middle ranks will eventually feed through. For big companies at least, this pipeline is shrinking at a worrying rate.”

The report is based on figures from PricewaterhouseCoopers Monks pay database which records pay benchmarking information on more than 10,000 UK management roles.

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Government report admits link between lack of job opportunities and ethnic and religious backgrounds

Ethnic minorities and women with religious convictions have the toughest time when it comes to finding work, according to research published by the Department for Work and Pensions.

The research analyses the probability of being in employment based on different combinations of ethnic and religious group.

It finds that for women, the employment penalties faced by Muslims of all ethnic backgrounds are higher than the penalty for any ethnic group of no religion.

Work and pensions secretary John Hutton said: "We simply cannot afford to ignore the specific discrimination that exists in the UK labour market.

"Along with improvements in training and skills - such as the increased emphasis on English language training for benefit recipients [the government] announced earlier this month - ethnic minority employment rates can be improved," Hutton added.

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