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The correct answer is not to do this

Civil servants have told employers to collect gender pay gap figures based on how their workers identify rather than their biological sex, The Telegraph can reveal.

All companies with more than 250 staff are required to report their gender pay gap as part of the Government’s aim to end the difference between salaries of both genders.

However, advice published by the Government Equalities Office (GEO), updated in March last year, encourages firms to collect information based on the gender that each employee identifies with.

It means the salaries of biological men could have been recorded as belonging to women, potentially skewing the data.

Not to collect the data on the gender pay gap at all. Of course. Because some damn fool will only try to do something with it.

But if you do want to collect it then hte correct way is both ways. Gender and sex. So that we can then see if they differ – and can then see whether the gap is about gender or sex. Not that it is, of course, it’s about being the primary child carer but then we all know that, right?

8 thoughts on “The correct answer is not to do this”

  1. Come on, Tim…

    That would require them to collect a dataset that will thoroughly disprove their preconceived notions.
    That can’t be allowed to happen.

    Little detail here is that it seems to be perfectly fine to Identify as a “Woman” as a biological male , unless, of course, this means that it interferes with Getting the Numbers Right.
    The double standard there is staggeringly obvious, and with the state of UK law as it is now possibly illegal.
    After all.. Aren’t they implicitly denying males the right to self-identify in that statement?

    That sword they’re wielding is cutting themselves up quite nicely..

  2. All companies with more than 250 staff are required to report their gender pay gap as part of the Government’s aim to end the difference between salaries of both genders.

    Bigots.
    Don’t they know there are more than two genders?
    What about polygender and agender and genderfluid and… and…

    Someone should point it out to them.

  3. I don’t know/doubt that this will change the #’s in a meaningful way, but if it did shrink the “gap” significantly, grab the popcorn, this could get really interesting.

  4. When we had to do a survey like this, so many ticked the ‘Prefer not to say’ boxes that the result was useless and resulted in a complaint from the top, “Why did you lot all tick that box?”
    Quite a few replied: “Because there was no ‘F*ck off and mind your own business’ box.

    The survey was not repeated.

  5. Anyone who tried to comply would be sent away with a flea in their ear by the lawyers.

    All employers know is their employees declared gender, a passport is all that is required for the mandated pre-employment checks, and they are never entitled to request to see any related medical documents or ask if someone has a GRC.

    And no, they can’t always tell.

  6. No no, this is the way to do it.

    1. The Gender Pay Gap is bullshit to start with.

    2. Now its being closed by the brave, brave transgender.

    The sooner we push this erasure of women to its conclusion the sooner we can tear it down and start over.

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