Will gender pay gap reporting rules reveal the real reasons why women are paid less?

This mandatory soul-searching could uncover the real causes of our estimated national gender pay gap of 11.3 percent. With any luck, companies will become more inclusive and women will not be forced to go into certain sectors or work more hours than they want.

The narrative surrounding the gender pay gap can be too simplistic – every November comes the outrage that women will be “working for free” for the rest of the year.

The fact that women are paid less has been attributed to the glass ceiling, a hiring bias, women not asking for a raise, and other reasons.

But (I guess anyway) the difference is mostly in what women want – a combination of career choices and the number of hours they are willing to put into it. For example, the European Parliament attributes 30% of the gender pay gap to an over-representation of women in lower-paid jobs such as care and education.

So, is the answer to encourage more women to become software engineers rather than elementary school teachers? “Bring it on” is the obvious answer. But women have to want these jobs, we can’t force them. We need to make STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects more accessible in schools for girls to expand their career choices, but we also need to accept what they want.

I spent years forcing my daughter to play soccer before admitting defeat. If women want to be social workers and not engineers, that’s ok. Many male-dominated sectors are better paid, which will explain a gender pay gap. We should encourage more women into these sectors, but that shouldn’t stop us from paying more for workers in care and education.

It would be great if the new reporting rules resulted in companies with a gender pay gap paying their employees more for support services.

It might force them to think radically. Why not involve your cleaner in the decision-making process? Your different life experiences would be so valuable.

Niall Pelly, who heads the Dublin office of employment law firm GQ Littler, told me that the new reporting requirements are not about equal pay but about structural inequalities.

“It’s a company’s responsibility to take steps to address some of these structural issues — for example, by encouraging more men to work part-time or creating a better path for women to be represented in higher-paying positions.” , he said.

Both should happen for a fairer workplace, but we have to accept that women are often paid less because they want to work less. In Ireland, almost nine out of ten part-time workers are women. Are we forcing them to work longer hours so that the gender pay gap is narrower? No, because there’s a good reason they want to work fewer hours.

It would be fantastic if the new gender pay gap reporting requirements encouraged more companies to pay their part-time workers more per hour.

And I wonder what the new requirements for remote work will mean. There is growing concern that those who aren’t parked under their manager’s nose might not get as much promotion as those in the office. If so, women might feel pressured not to work from home.

However, elementary schools do not offer after-school care. For smooth family life, the ability to work from home will determine whether you work or not. This is my situation now. And it’s not just family life — people have interests outside of work that they think are more important.

Joanne Mangan of Grow Remote, a community project that promotes employment in regional areas, told me companies need to be aware of the dangers of an office-centric mindset.

“There is a risk in this scenario that women working remotely could be disadvantaged in career development,” she said. “This could potentially exacerbate some of the existing gender inequalities in the workplace by marginalizing female teleworkers who may be seen as less invested in their careers than their male counterparts who go into the office every day.”

A 2020 government report showed that organizations employing over 50 account for about half of all workers, so the new reporting requirements will have a big impact.

PwC’s Doone O’Doherty told me that when the gender pay gap is narrowed, everyone benefits.

“The more different voices you bring in, the more successful it becomes. Organizations experience higher productivity, engagement and morale, and employee retention improves,” she said.

This is supported by research. A new book about the power of diverse thinking, rebel ideasby Matthew Syed, explains the many benefits of having different perspectives in decision-making.

Maybe we should focus on that as the pay can be too rough. Just as a country’s GDP does not include social or family life, neither does wages.