Posted: Thursday 11 March 2010
Leading Firms Missing Out On Female Talent
I noticed that the BBC has reported on the World Economic Forum’s findings that the world’s leading firms are missing out on the talent offered by female employees with senior management positions still being predominately occupied by men.
This has led to calls from the UK Government for firms to take action to ensure the talent and skills of women are “properly represented”. Gordon Brown has floated the idea that firms could be forced to report on their efforts to recruit women in senior management jobs. The report has also highlighted the continuing gap in pay between men and women. In terms of the Equality Bill which is due to come into force later this year there is provision to require private organisations to report on the gender pay gap within their organisation. The Government have indicated that this aspect will not be implemented until 2013 and will only be implemented if sufficient progress on reporting has not been made by then.
While some may argue that women are fairing better in obtaining senior posts and higher salaries than previously, employers must always ensure that they take steps to comply with equal pay legislation and that they are not discriminating on the grounds of gender. There is an interesting provision in the Equality Bill which allows employers to positively discriminate in favour of an employee from an underrepresented group when they have two equally qualified candidates for a post. It is possible that this could be used by organisations to appoint a female senior manager rather than a male assuming that both candidates were equally qualified.
It will be interesting to see how this provision operates in practice and whether it will make any difference.
