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| Pay
& Benefits supplement: Engendering equality |
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| Though
the third sector has a much better track record than the private,
disparity in pay still exists between men and women. David
Adams examines the figures, and asks if a balance will ever
be attained |
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Naturally
one should retain a degree of scepticism about headline statistics,
but the results of the 34th annual National Management
Salary Survey, published in September by the Chartered
Management Institute (CMI), should give women working in the
charity sector some pause for thought.
As you might have thought, the pay gap between men and women
managers is smaller in the charity sector than anywhere else:
£31,787 for women and £31,995 for men. The overall
figures are £43,571 for women and £49,647 for
men, and in some sectors, including HR or retail, the gap
is more than £10,000.
But the gap still exists. The survey also reveals that while
female managers’ salaries in the sector increased by
3.9%, male earnings were up by 6.3%, the first time in 11
years that they have grown faster than women’s earnings.
Perhaps most worryingly, it showed that the resignation rate
among women managers had reached 9.7%, up from 4% in 2006,
and far beyond the 2.4% rate among male managers (although
the figures don’t show how many of those resigning were
leaving the sector altogether).
Should we be worried about these figures? “Across the
board there has been a reversing of a trend that has been
redressing some of those disparities in pay,” says Petra
Wilton, head of public affairs at the CMI. But she points
out that there was good news for women managers in the sector
too, including the fact that women who become managers in
the charity sector are doing so, on average, at a younger
age than are men: reaching team leader positions at 37, compared
to 42 for men; and director levels at 44, compared to 48.
There is also strong growth in the overall numbers of women
in senior management and directorships, up to 35.7% from 31%
in 2006.
“When it comes to levels of pay between men and women
I’ve never heard any negative feedback about the charity
sector,” says Rachel Landman, a business consultant
at Charity Action Recruitment, which specialises in helping
individuals find jobs in the charity sector. “No-one
has ever said they feel that any of their male counterparts
are earning more than them. And I’ve worked in some
other sectors where that has been a big issue.”
There is still plenty for the charity sector to be pleased
about, agrees Bridget Warr, chief executive at Guide Dogs
for the Blind. “It doesn’t surprise me that the
sector does better than others in terms of equal pay,”
she says. “If you look at the not-for-profit sector,
these were the organisations that led the drive for greater
equality some years ago.”
But she is concerned about the reported difference between
the sexes in salary increases. “That could be a very
worrying statistic,” she muses. “You do have to
probe a little deeper behind the figures and ask why that
could be. There’s the old chestnut about men being better
at asking for pay rises.”
The CMI’s Wilton wonders if the fact that women are
rising through the ranks at a younger age than male counterparts
might be having a negative effect on salaries in some cases.
“There might be an impact on salaries if women are reaching
higher positions with less experience,” she explains.
“To us that doesn’t excuse the disparity: if you’re
promoting some there should be equality of pay.”
Top
Women that have reached senior management level dismiss the
idea of a glass ceiling for women in the charity sector. Charlotte
Imbert has worked in the third sector since she left university.
Now in her late 30s, she has been acting general secretary
(chief executive) at British Overseas NGOs for Development
(BOND) for the last six months, having stepped up from her
previous role as learning and training manager. She is also
completing a Masters degree in Voluntary Administration (MVA)
from London South Bank University.
“It’s been an exciting time, as we’re going
through a lot of change and growth here,” she says.
“I’ve been given the opportunity to lead, albeit
for a temporary period, a very senior strategic organisation.
My management team is mostly women, and our board is at least
half women, who are all directors and very senior managers
at other organisations. And as I look across the sector I
can see a lot of women in very powerful positions, like Barbara
Stocking [director] at Oxfam, or Jasmine Whitbread [chief
executive] at Save the Children. There are a lot of organisations
with female directors.”
Indeed, most of the biggest charities in the country, including
the RSPCA and the National Trust, as well as the Charity Commission
have been, or are being led by women. So why is that pay gap
still there?
Salary statistics are still affected by women leaving, or
taking a break, to have children. “As far as promotional
opportunities go, the issue for women is often about balancing
work and family,” says Imbert, who has three children
under 12. “For me, doing this job has meant sacrifices
at home. As a director I also have to work evenings and weekends,
and my husband doesn’t work full-time – for a
long time I didn’t have a big enough salary to get all
the childcare we would have needed, and it was easier for
him than for me to stay at home.”
She has also had to work on her Masters, the only qualification
she has that relates to her career in senior management, in
the evenings.
“So I rely on the fact that I have a really understanding
partner and good childcare,” she continues. “I
had children fairly young, but often women are thinking about
children in their 30s, and that’s often the most important
point in their careers. Keeping all of that in balance is
exhausting, and many women think, ‘I can’t do
this’, and go part-time, and of course then their salaries
really drop. I think often women [continue working full-time]
for a while, but sustaining it you need to be prepared to
sacrifice a lot, and maybe some guys don’t have to do
that. Maybe that’s a stereotype, but that’s true
for my life.”
The number of men who take a career break or go part-time
to look after children is rising, but not very fast. “From
my experience, although it is still overwhelmingly the women
taking the career break, there is a gentle trend in men doing
it, if they can,” says Guide Dogs’ Warr. “In
other sectors it might be difficult for men to get back into
work if they’ve taken a career break, but I wouldn’t
expect that to be happening in this sector.”
But not everyone resigns to start a family. The CMI’s
Wilton wonders if there might be a connection to the fact
that more women are moving up through levels of management
more rapidly.
“We are seeing determined female managers seeking to
develop a lot faster, seeking good training, so they will
be ready for more senior roles sooner,” she says. “Those
women are leaving the sector not just because they’re
looking for better remuneration, but there seems to be a lot
more demand for the ability to progress in an organisation.
It seems one of the reasons people are moving on to other
sorts of organisations is that they can offer a better package
in general.”
Warr hopes this is not often a key factor in women leaving
the sector. “I would think that the voluntary sector
is more enlightened about the need for professional development
than some parts of the for-profit sector,” she says.
“But the problem is the same with any organisation:
if you’re short of money it’s very tempting to
cut your training and development budget, because it doesn’t
always have an immediate impact.
“I’m reluctant to accept that this increase in
resignations is to do with a lack of training and development.
It might be that it’s a bit about a lack of promotion
opportunities, because the vast majority of charities are
very small and have limited promotion opportunities. But I
still can’t think of more than a handful of examples
of people leaving the voluntary sector to move into the for-profit
sectors. Some of our HR and finance people do, but only in
small numbers. I think we owe it to ourselves to find out
more about what that statistic tells us. If we have to take
remedial action we should do so soon, before it gets to be
a trend.”
Warr believes more progress is still needed in the direction
in which the sector is already moving. Charity and voluntary
sector organisations have been among those leading the way
in promoting equality and diversity, now more of them need
to offer more flexible employment conditions. “There
are more people seeking flexibility in the way they work,
and I think it’s absolutely vital that as employers
we embrace that and make sure we don’t lose talent because
we’ve got rigid employment rules,” she says.
Maybe that will make future salary research more palatable.
In the meantime, says Warr: “I’m delighted, but
not at all surprised if the pay gap is narrowing, and I’ll
be disappointed if it hasn’t disappeared altogether
in a year or two.”
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