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Cardiff Business School

Evidence to Action: Reducing the gender pay gap - effectively and sustainably

This collaborative research supported employers to understand the drivers of gender pay gaps within their organisation and take effective long-term action to create and sustain improvements.

Gender pay gap

Despite laws guaranteeing equal pay for equal work, gender pay gaps persist.

Women are over-represented in low-paid, low hours, temporary and casual jobs, creating barriers to progression. This, and gender segmentation in managerial and professional careers results in gender pay gaps.

Cardiff University research to understand the drivers of gender pay gaps led to workforce changes in organisations with over 49,000 employees. Innovations to tackle gender segregation, promoting women’s progression from both low and high-graded work, reduced occupational, contract, working hours and senior role pay gaps.

Beyond collaborating with employer case study organisations, the research findings and change management recommendations were widely shared, covering a further 100,000 employees, and were used to influence UK and Welsh government policy on gender pay gaps.

Understanding gender pay gaps

The team’s labour market and organisational research highlighted:

  • that gendered working patterns impact on pay and progression
  • that extreme occupational segregation in Wales underpins gender pay gaps - in 2014, just 25% of workers were employed in gender-balanced occupations and women held 75% of all part-time jobs
  • the impact of sector-specific organisational characteristics and the use of temporary and agency staff, thousands of low-grade/low-paid jobs with no progression routes
  • potential actions for organisations to remedy gender segregation, including gender neutral job redesign, values-based recruitment, creating horizontal job progression routes and improving promotion routes

Addressing gender pay gaps

The team was commissioned by the Welsh Government to recommend the form of a Wales Specific Equality Duty (WSED) to tackle gender pay inequalities in the public sector. This included an international policy review, data analysis of women’s employment and pay conditions – evidence which was then used to co-produce the Duty with employers, equality organisations and trades unions.

The outcome - the Equality Act 2010 (Statutory Duties) (Wales) Regulations 2011 – is a unique gender pay gap duty in the UK – one requiring organisations to analyse the drivers of pay inequalities and create and implement an annual action plan and report on progress.

Impact of WAVE on case study employers and employees

Funding of £4.2M was awarded to Women Adding Value to the Economy (WAVE) - a partnership between Cardiff University, the University of South Wales and the Women’s Workshop (Cardiff). Of the total sum, the Cardiff team had £1.3m to support employers to implement the Duty.

Three employers – Swansea University, Cwm Taf University Health Board and Rhondda Cynon Taf Council – together employing c. 29,000 staff, volunteered to test case studies for WAVE.

Through data analysis and creation of internal WAVE Management Teams in these organisations, the researchers identified multiple ways in which the organisations’ structures were creating gender pay gaps, including:

  • two of the organisations were female dominated and one was in gender balance (on a 60/40 ratio) but in all organisations men dominated the most senior positions and held a disproportionately high share of the full time and permanent jobs (stock of jobs analysis)
  • roles in the lowest grades held by women working designed as part-time, while equivalent male dominated roles were full time and often contracted on a more permanent basis
  • limited progression in areas such as caring, cleaning, catering, and clerical work

At the recommendation of the team, the employers implemented deep and sustainable change.

  • creation of gender-neutral ‘Campus Services’ roles in Swansea University, leading to an improved gender balance and increased employment of women in Team Leader roles
  • radical overhaul of Performance and Development Review (PDRs) leading to an increase in women academics applying for and being successful in achieving promotion at Swansea University
  • the extension of redesigned PDRs to staff in lower grades to aid progression, and improved engagement with atypical hours staff - resulting in 81 nurses being recruited into permanent posts at Cwm Taf University Health Board
  • redesign of recruitment strategy and unconscious bias training given to 600+ line managers at Rhondda Cynon Taf Council

A HR professional at one of the employers stated that WAVE “made a significant difference to our work to address pay inequalities” and “informed senior managers of the systemic issues that need to be addressed to maintain progress.”

Young businesswoman delivering a speech during a conference

Further extending the impact of WAVE

Following the case studies, the team worked with a further eight employers to use the newly developed Gender Employment and Pay Analysis tool (GEPA) to understand the impact of gender pay gaps within their own workforces. Two of these employers, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board and Swansea Council, representing 25,000 employees, were provided with bespoke assistance, resulting in them implementing gender pay action plans for the first time.

Swansea County Council confirmed that resulting actions “reduced our gender pay gap by approximately 2%” and that “positively impacted approximately 11,000 employees”.

Impact on employment and policy in Wales and the UK

The research has had wide-ranging impact on research and policy in Wales and the UK. It has demonstrated that tackling gender pay gaps means changes to the organisational structure and employment conditions – the answer does not lie in pay systems alone.

Via case studies, advice given on using the Gender Employment and Pay Analysis tool and through discussing the research and how to embed change actions at WAVE’s employer network for HR professionals, over 100,000 employees have been impacted by the research and recommendations. While UK and Welsh government policy on gender pay gaps has been improved.

Selected publications

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