It often feels as though the gender pay gap is the issue of our generation. It’s not a problem that can be solved overnight and there’s a great deal of progress still to be made – but it feels like action is being taken.
A similar issue often overlooked though is the ethnicity pay gap. An increasing number of companies have committed to publishing their ethnicity pay gap figures and the government is considering making this mandatory. But there is one crucial mistake the vast majority of organisations are making: they are viewing the gender pay gap and the ethnicity pay gap as separate problems. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth – and so the lack of attention given to the ethnicity pay gap is infuriating.
Take the controversy the BBC faced in November 2017. While much attention was paid to the difference between the salaries of men and women, far less was given to that between white and BAME staff. Breaking down the BBC’s figures by both ethnicity and gender shows the highest-earning white man earned up to £2,249,999: four-and-a-half times more than the highest-earning white woman (£499,999), seven-and-a-half times more than the highest-paid BAME man (£299,999) and nine times more than the highest-paid BAME woman (£249,999). In other words, the BBC didn’t just have a gender pay gap, it had a significant ethnicity pay gap too.
Read the full article on People Management.
