The Guardian: Lack of sanctions ‘makes a mockery’ of gender pay gap reports
"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery
The Guardian: Lack of sanctions ‘makes a mockery’ of gender pay gap reports
By Caelainn Barr and Frances Perraudin
28 February 2019
Inaccurate figures and a lack of sanctions risk making a “mockery” of the gender pay gap reporting system, critics have warned following an in-depth Guardian analysis of submissions.
Amid concerns that a lack of transparency and inaccurate reporting is undermining efforts to address pay inequality, mathematically impossible gender pay gap data filed by companies for last year has yet to be corrected.
And with less than a month to go before this year’s reporting deadline, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) admitted that, despite those errors, no companies have yet been fined for failing to comply with legislation.
The deadline for companies to report their gender pay gap figures for 2018 is 30 March for public bodies and 4 April for private companies.
However, more than 30 companies are yet to file accurate data for the previous 2017 period with the Equalities Office, and a number have filed mathematically impossible figures this year. Analysis also shows a further 725 companies have filed or resubmitted their figures since last year’s deadline.
The shadow secretary for women and equalities, Dawn Butler, said: “Gender pay gap reporting was meant to provide transparency, but the fact that companies have given inaccurate data and faced no sanctions makes a mockery of the whole system.”
Read the full article in The Guardian.
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