Gender pay gap games

Am I being a bit too cynical? Go here and randomly search employers who have to publish annual gender pay-gap stats.

If your choices are similar to mine, there's a good chance you'll get results for each employer something like these (from four of my first five searches):

- women earn 75p for every £1 of salary received by male colleagues

- women get 54p for every £1 of bonuses male colleagues take home

- only 16.1 per cent of top quarter earning jobs are held by women

- women get 77p v £1 salary and 40p v £1 bonus...they also make up just 31.9 per cent of top quarter earners.

It's fairly well known that fewer than half of UK employers have closed the gap at all so these results are sadly unsurprising, but if you then follow the link inviting you to find out "What this employer says about their gender pay gap" it becomes a little perplexing:

- one said it is sponsoring an award

- another said it had won an award...they'd also achieved high placings in two independent rankings

- the next noted its success in three independent rankings

- one simply returned: "The page you are looking for is unavailable. Our apologies for the inconvenience." (Not much help, but the 2023 Inadvertent Transparency Award beckons.)

None of these employers ('page unavailable' excluded) failed to mention the initiatives they were running or progress they'd made. Equally though, none of them is currently in a good place on the basic metrics underpinning their gender pay gaps.

I did wonder whether the resulting metrics/awards dissonance said more about my cynicism than anything else, but then I found three companies who'd closed or even reversed the gap (Airbus, Unilever, Virgin Media) and they barely mentioned awards/rankings (two of them made no mention at all), just lots of detail about the continuing work they are putting towards achieving change.

Awards and rankings motivate and reinforce, but is it possible that sometimes they also hide rather than demonstrate progress (or lack of it)?