Dellwyn Stuart: Mind the Gap co-Founder on the Government's decision to make gender gap pay reporting voluntary

The Government's ditching plans to make gender pay gap reporting compulsory.  

The Labour Government pledged it would require companies with more than 250 workers to publish a pay gap report. 

But acting Minister for Women Louise Upston's instead developing a tool for businesses to calculate pay gaps voluntarily. 

Mind the Gap Co-Founder Dellwyn Stuart told Mike Hosking that while mandatory reporting would likely make more of a difference, it's great to see the Government taking action.  

She says most businesses don't set out to pay people unfairly, they just don't see what's happening in their payroll until they measure it, and then they want to fix it. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The meantime back here of the government is developing a
pay gap calculator for companies to help bridge gender inequality.
So it's going to replace Labour's mandatory pay gap reporting
Pledge the gap currently sits by the WAD to eight
point six percent. Delvin Stewart is co founder of Mind
the Gap and is with us. Delwin, very good morning
to you.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Make we ever going to crack.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
This or not?

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Or do you think I'll be bringing you in twenty
five years time will still be debating it.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's wholly possible that we can crack it, and it
was great to see the government take some action yesterday
as a start in the right direction.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
If you had to choose one reportage, mandatory or not
or a calculator, what's the better trick?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Mandatory reporting will make the most significant difference. We've seen
in many countries overseas, and we know that the voluntary
reporting is starting to shift the dials, so mandatory reporting
will make a difference.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
So is that are you basically shaming business into hiring
people they may or may not normally hire.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
I know that most businesses don't set out to pay
people unfairly like no they just don't see what's happening
in their pay on until they use a tool to
do the measurement, and when they do, they want to
fix it.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Okay, so how is this calculator going to work? You're
just going to tap in and go, I've got x
number of women, X number of men the average pays
this that, and then bring there's a number.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, I haven't I haven't seen the detail on that yet.
But it's actually not a complicated calculation. No, it's just
that the causes of that number that you get are
different and different businesses.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Would you be I mean, would most people running their
business be cognizant if you rolled up to them and
said do you have a gender pay gap? And they
would know roughly what it is, yes or no, and
the number behind it.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
No, not most businesses, So they.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Won't say, well, even if they do, with all the
debate we've had, they couldn't tell you what their situation is.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
No, not for many businesses. We have an enormous amount
of small businesses in this country and they wouldn't know that.
What we've captured so far as the early adopters, the leaders,
and they are showing the way and we really need them.
But to bring the rest of the business community along,
we need a reporting regime that is the same for everyone.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
To drill it down into a business, what are you
advocating them for. Do you pay a woman more simply
because she's a woman, or do you promote women into
jobs that are higher paying that they may not have
applied to, or you do both of those things.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
You do both of those things depending on what you
find in your business. So this is one of our
biggest companies in New Zealand found that when they promoted
people into a particular pay band that women are always
promoted into the bottom and men were promoted into the
top of the band. So that was just a basic
bias that they could correct.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
So that's an unconscious bias, you would argue.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
An unconscious bias. Yeah, but they wouldn't have seen that
if they didn't do the work.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Okay, because part of the problem ible we've seen is
that it was basically it goes back to that famous
age care case a number of years ago. That is
that there are certain jobs that women are attracted to
or apply to, and they happen to be lower paid
jobs in general. And how you rectify that's the problem.
How much of the overall debate is that specifically.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Most of our pay gap about eighty percent their found
and research is not explainable, and that's whether the bias
comes and the unconscious bias that norms around things. So
only about twenty percent of that we can actually say
is your choice of career or your level of education.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
As more women get to the top, does it get
fixed because the unconscious bias is no longer there.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Certainly that role model is important, but at the moment
we've got only fourteen percent of our large companies with
CEMA CEOs. There's a lot of work to do there.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Good stuff, del Wan't you have a very good weekend
and I appreciate your expertise. Delwn Stewart, who's the co
founder of A Mind the Gap. For more from News
Talks B listen live on air or online, and

Speaker 2 (03:57):
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