Gender Pay Gaps, the U.K. Experience: How Do We Close Them, How Do We Bring Research Into Practice?

Abstract

In 2017, the U.K. government enacted legislation making it compulsory for employers across all sectors with more than 250 employees to report six gender pay gap statistics on a consistent basis, with the majority adding voluntary explanatory reports. Over 10,000 have reported in each of the 2 years since, pushing the issue significantly higher up both corporate boardroom and academic research agendas. In this article, after briefly explaining the national and legislative context, the author profiles the action plans which U.K. employers have published designed to close these gaps, focusing on higher education institutions. The author goes on to profile the research on what works in closing gaps and highlights the significant dissonance between the two perspectives. Employer actions tend to focus narrowly on training and other “soft” involuntary initiatives, while the academic research highlights a multipronged approach across all areas of human resources activity as most effective and including compulsory actions such as “blind” recruitment. The author concludes by outlining how these two perspectives may be integrated to produce more relevant research and evidence-based practice, thereby driving more significant and sustainable reductions in gender pay gaps.