Pay gap caused by less steep career path women
Equal work has to be equally rewarded. That was the reason for closing the appeared salary gap between men and women at APG in one go in June 2019. This required a salary increase for 125 women. And to prevent a new gap from arising, APG then conducted an extensive investigation into the causes. The explanatory factor appears to be that women at APG are less often and less quickly promoted, meaning their salary also increases less quickly. HR director Marloes Sengers provides an explanation.
APG want to close the salary gap of 2.2 percent durably and fundamentally. The organization therefore had to assess the underlying causes. Both quantitative and qualitative (interviews) have been conducted to find out the reasons behind this pay gap.
What were the results of the investigation?
Sengers: “First of all, it appeared that this inexplicable difference in pay does not arise upon commencement of employment. In other words: women enter APG with the same starting salary as men. Second, the difference also doesn’t appear to arise as a result of the annual performance reviews. Women are assessed equally well compared to men. However, where we do notice a difference is when it comes to promotion. Female APG employees appear to be promoted less often than male employees. That is less the case though for women who are working under the leadership of a female manager. Moreover, women appear to be promoted less quickly than men, so it takes longer for them to get a promotion. And in the latter case, it doesn’t seem to make a difference whether they have a male or female manager.”
What is the conclusion APG draws from these results?
"The conclusion we draw is that the salary path of women runs less steep because their career path runs less steep.”
Shouldn’t you rather talk about a career or promotion gap instead of a salary gap given these outcomes?
“Yes, you could call it that in a way, and the one is related to the other. But that was not the primary focus of our investigation. We focused on explaining the pay gap of 2.2 percent between men and women, and that resulted in this difference in promotion perspective.
How do you explain that less steep career path of female employees?
“We are safe to say that this is not caused by the promotion or internal recruitment policy. That policy is no different for women as it is for men. However, we were able to conclude based on the interviews that a man is more likely to consider himself a good candidate for a higher position, compared to a woman. Women are less focusing on getting promoted. On the contrary, women who get promoted often indicate to be asked for or made aware of the higher position. Women are less likely to feel qualified for a certain career move. Slightly exaggerated: where a man already dares to apply if he meets four out of ten job requirements, women don’t even consider themselves to be sufficiently qualified if they meet nine out of ten.”
APG has closed that gap of 2.2 percent last year by raising the salary of 125 female colleagues. Could we say that they received a salary increase for a promotion not made?
“In a certain sense you could indeed say that they were compensated for the difference in promotion perspective. That has been rectified one time. And because it is so important for this not to happen again, we conducted this follow-up investigation.”
What will APG do with these results?
“We take this very seriously, especially because we also want equal pay for equal work in the long term. Anything different simply doesn’t fit the APG we want to be. In order to close that gap structurally and durably, we have, to begin with, entered into a dialog internally. We present a few questions, such as: why is it that women with a male manager are less likely to get promoted than women with a female manager? What’s the reason behind it? Based on the answer to those kinds of questions, we look at possible interventions, aiming at awareness among both women and managers. We are already paying a lot of attention to equal opportunities. Internally, we are organizing unconscious bias trainings and the senior management commits to the theme. We encourage managers to apply diversity to their teams and to be a role model in that respect. Moreover, we explicitly include the theme succession planning, promotion and attracting talent. As of 2021, we will apply a new HR cycle in which we also want to include the conversation on future perspective more explicit.”