Why pay equity is about more than money

Pay equity is one of my favourite topics to write, talk and think about. I have learnt though that its important to always start a conversation about pay equity with being clear about what I mean by the term.  This is because ‘pay equity’ can be understood and used differently by different people. While these different uses are not necessarily wrong, it can cause confusion when communicating ideas.

What is pay equity?

Pay equity for the purposes of this blog (and also now in NZ law) is the concept that an entire occupation can be undervalued, because the work is mainly done by women. This means that even if you are a man in this work, your work will also be underpaid. The causes of pay inequity, while multi layered, can ultimately be drawn back to the fact that a large number of skills, responsibilities, experiences and effort required in ‘women’s work’ have been ignored, written off or gone unseen for hundreds of years. This ongoing inequality is why a pay equity process to fully assess work and ensure it is fairly valued was introduced into the Equal Pay Act in 2020. (Disappointingly the Equal Pay Act does not cover ethnicity as well as gender- so we still have work to do here).

Pay equity is a bit different to the term equal pay, which in law and in this blog refers to the right to have the same pay for the same work regardless of gender. For example, if I was a social worker with 5 years’ experience, I would expect my employer to pay me the same as my equivalently experienced male colleague.

Is pay equity a negotiated pay increase?

In short, no. A pay equity process, once initiated is like an investigation or a research project into an occupation or workforce. It is a process of gaining genuine understanding of the work being done and the skills that the work requires.

What’s different about a pay equity investigation from standard job evaluation is that:

• it must be done with a gender-neutral work assessment tool

• any current knowledge of the work must not be assumed to be free from bias

• the workers voice and experiences are integral- i.e. an assessment cannot be done based on the employers’ view of the work alone.

• people who do different work can be used to compare levels of skill between jobs

Once the work is understood, this understanding can be used to look across and build a similar understanding of jobs, primarily done by men, that may be totally different in terms of what is being done but require a similar level of skill. If a male dominated job is shown by an assessment to be similarly skilled but is paid higher- chances are that there is gender bias in pay and conditions that needs fixing.

In all my years of working in pay equity I have driven people crazy by insisting that a pay equity settlement is not referred to as a pay increase, rather as a pay correction. What I mean by that is a settlement simply removes sex-based undervaluation. It represents what an employee should have been paid if there had never been any bias or discrimination. This is an important distinction to make- we wouldn’t for example talk about holiday remediation payment or fixing an underpayment of the minimum wage as a pay increase. Sex based discrimination is illegal. It’s an important mental distinction in remembering about what pay equity is all about. 

How is pay equity about anything other than money?

Pay equity claims and settlements are of course partly about money. It can be life changing to be paid properly for the skills that you bring to your mahi. However, in my experience a pay equity process, done well, can be (and should be) so much more. Fundamentally pay equity is about mana. A pay equity process allows the skills, responsibilities and effort of workers to be fully seen and articulated- often for the first time. I have seen this process bring workers to tears as they feel that they can now communicate to whānau and friends’ pride in what they do. While I was presenting internationally last year on our pay equity system, a senior US Government official broke down crying when I illustrated the skills of a cleaning job as uncovered in a pay equity investigation. Her mother had been a cleaner and she had grown up ashamed of that fact until that moment.  

Pay equity settlements don’t just benefit employees. They are game changing for employers in terms of understanding what is needed to do the work well which allows you to improve job descriptions, get recruitment right, develop performance appropriately and keep skilled workers. In every pay equity process that I have seen employers have been genuinely surprised (and often proud) at the breadth and depth of what their workers actually do every day.

This all supports us as a country to begin a broader cultural shift in how we think about work and about ourselves. To open our eyes to the fact that we have accepted a narrow and unconvincing view of what skills are and where they can be gained, for far too long.

All work is skilled work. Let’s find out what those skills are together.

Want to raise a claim? Want support with a claim that has been raised in your organisation? Just keen to know more about pay equity?  Work Ethics can help!

Contact me at amy.ross@workethics.nz today.