Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Dellwyn Stuart: Mind the Gap co-Founder on the Government's decision to make gender gap pay reporting voluntary

Transcript

Dellwyn Stuart: Mind the Gap co-Founder on the Government's decision to make gender gap pay reporting voluntary · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The meantime back here of the government is developing a
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: pay gap calculator for companies to help bridge gender inequality.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: So it's going to replace Labour's mandatory pay gap reporting
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Pledge the gap currently sits by the WAD to eight
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: point six percent. Delvin Stewart is co founder of Mind
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the Gap and is with us. Delwin, very good morning
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: to you.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Good morning.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Make we ever going to crack.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: This or not?
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Or do you think I'll be bringing you in twenty
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: five years time will still be debating it.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: It's wholly possible that we can crack it, and it
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: was great to see the government take some action yesterday
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: as a start in the right direction.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: If you had to choose one reportage, mandatory or not
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: or a calculator, what's the better trick?
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Mandatory reporting will make the most significant difference. We've seen
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: in many countries overseas, and we know that the voluntary
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: reporting is starting to shift the dials, so mandatory reporting
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: will make a difference.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: So is that are you basically shaming business into hiring
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: people they may or may not normally hire.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: I know that most businesses don't set out to pay
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: people unfairly like no they just don't see what's happening
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: in their pay on until they use a tool to
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: do the measurement, and when they do, they want to
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: fix it.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, so how is this calculator going to work? You're
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: just going to tap in and go, I've got x
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: number of women, X number of men the average pays
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: this that, and then bring there's a number.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't I haven't seen the detail on that yet.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: But it's actually not a complicated calculation. No, it's just
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: that the causes of that number that you get are
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: different and different businesses.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Would you be I mean, would most people running their
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: business be cognizant if you rolled up to them and
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: said do you have a gender pay gap? And they
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: would know roughly what it is, yes or no, and
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the number behind it.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: No, not most businesses, So they.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Won't say, well, even if they do, with all the
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: debate we've had, they couldn't tell you what their situation is.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: No, not for many businesses. We have an enormous amount
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: of small businesses in this country and they wouldn't know that.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: What we've captured so far as the early adopters, the leaders,
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: and they are showing the way and we really need them.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: But to bring the rest of the business community along,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: we need a reporting regime that is the same for everyone.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: To drill it down into a business, what are you
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: advocating them for. Do you pay a woman more simply
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: because she's a woman, or do you promote women into
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: jobs that are higher paying that they may not have
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: applied to, or you do both of those things.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: You do both of those things depending on what you
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: find in your business. So this is one of our
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: biggest companies in New Zealand found that when they promoted
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: people into a particular pay band that women are always
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: promoted into the bottom and men were promoted into the
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: top of the band. So that was just a basic
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: bias that they could correct.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: So that's an unconscious bias, you would argue.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: An unconscious bias. Yeah, but they wouldn't have seen that
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: if they didn't do the work.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, because part of the problem ible we've seen is
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that it was basically it goes back to that famous
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: age care case a number of years ago. That is
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: that there are certain jobs that women are attracted to
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: or apply to, and they happen to be lower paid
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: jobs in general. And how you rectify that's the problem.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: How much of the overall debate is that specifically.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Most of our pay gap about eighty percent their found
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: and research is not explainable, and that's whether the bias
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: comes and the unconscious bias that norms around things. So
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: only about twenty percent of that we can actually say
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: is your choice of career or your level of education.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: As more women get to the top, does it get
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: fixed because the unconscious bias is no longer there.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Certainly that role model is important, but at the moment
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: we've got only fourteen percent of our large companies with
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: CEMA CEOs. There's a lot of work to do there.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Good stuff, del Wan't you have a very good weekend
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: and I appreciate your expertise. Delwn Stewart, who's the co
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: founder of A Mind the Gap. For more from News
• 3:53
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• 3:57
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• 3:59
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