Why closing the gender gap needs more than pink socks, tacos and rainbows

Irish Times

08-05-2025

Many moons ago, I worked at a place that had a novel way of celebrating women. The top guy wore pink socks (possibly the same pair) for a week. To be fair, the company was raising funds for a women's charity but, as a woman I would have preferred better working conditions, a pay rise and a promotion.
Most women on the team viewed this stunt as performative nonsense and seethed quietly with rage.
Although we were senior staffers, none of us had been informed about the campaign, included in it or even consulted on what we thought might work best. It was a plan dreamed up by the commercial team to highlight the senior leadership, who all happened to be men.
Sadly, these tokenistic actions are very common.
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To help workers feel included and engaged, companies often encourage employees to set up volunteer-led employee resource groups, sometimes called staff networks.
The goal is to bring together underrepresented employees who have shared identities and interests. Typically, there are groups for women, LGBTQI+, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of colour), those with disabilities, and even groups based on hobbies or professional development goals.
Although it's an excellent staff engagement strategy, if your employee resource group or staff network is not funded, not linked to company strategy and not the responsibility of a senior executive or board member then it's not being taken seriously.
Effective networks focus on the advancement, promotion or personal/ professional/ social development goals of those within the group and increase their sense of belonging.
Disengaged
Energy and focus at work come from feeling valued and respected daily, no matter who you are and where you are in the hierarchy. When companies focus on their external image instead of what's needed to get the most from historically underutilised members of the team then it is highly destructive for staff morale and engagement.
Would you feel happy working for a place that thinks smelly pink socks = women? Or a company that does one thing a year to make you feel visible or celebrate who you are (International Women's Day, Pride, Black History Month, International Food Day, Young Leaders' Forum)?
A young woman I knew worked in the Middle East for a top international consultancy group headquartered in a different time zone. Sarah (not her real name), along with her team of female colleagues, stayed late at work to watch the latest 'all hands' event featuring the chief executive and leadership team. After an hour watching six white, heterosexual, native English speaking men deliver 'inspirational' speeches, they were deflated.
They turned off their computers before the event ended and headed home. Soon after, she started looking for an employer who actually promoted women to the top jobs and valued her skills and dedication.
Businesses constantly look for ways to increase profit, maintain relevance and keep employees engaged, but they have an inexplicable blind spot. Decades of research proves that one particular course of action solves it, brings them closer to customers, reduces risk, increases innovation and opens them up to new markets. Often they'll shrug and imply: 'You got anything else?'
Diversity is that low hanging fruit. I'm sick of shouting about it to be honest because it's not rocket science, it's just good business.
Industries and companies that ignore this will lose money because they'll become irrelevant to the majority of the population. For many, it's already too late as these talented workers and profitable customers have found others who appreciate them.
In the
United States
, where the Trump administration is waging war on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), at least 26 companies have held firm against concerted efforts by pressure groups and hostile shareholders who have tried to force its removal.
These companies know diversity in all its forms helps the bottom line and competitiveness. They include
Apple
, Ben & Jerry's,
Cisco
,
Coca-Cola
, Delta Air Lines, Disney,
Goldman Sachs
,
Hasbro
, Levi Strauss, Lush, Marriott Hotels, the NFL, Pinterest, Patagonia,
Procter & Gamble
, Sephora and Southwest Airlines.
Data tell the story
Unsurprisingly, workers tend to be most interested in organisations that help them advance, pay them properly and treat them fairly.
Ireland is not the US and thankfully the
European Union
has made some progress towards ensuring greater transparency by requiring gender pay gap reporting since 2022 for companies with more than 250 employees. From June, employers with 50 or more employees are required to report the data in November.
Gender pay gap reporting looks at average pay across a number of areas to uncover hidden inequalities or imbalances in an organisation. The gender pay gap is the difference in average gross hourly earnings between women and men. It is based on salaries paid directly to employees before income tax and social insurance contributions are deducted.
The gap is calculated in two ways: a mean (the average of all the values) and a median (the middle value). The mean reflects the entire pay range in an organisation and, although it gives an idea of the midpoint of a data set, it can be distorted by unusually high or low individual salaries. The median is less likely to be distorted by an unusually large or small value, so can sometimes be a better representation of the general pay gap in a company.
When Ireland's first gender pay gap reports were published in 2022, there was one very large problem: our Government hadn't built a central reporting tool or portal, said Jen Keane, a citizen data scientist.
Companies use a variety of reporting tools, a mishmash of PDFs, Excel files and Word documents buried on individual company websites. Without a standardised form, it's almost impossible to digest the data easily. There's also no central portal for accessing it so you have to look at individual company websites.
In her free time, Keane read every single report and built PayGap.ie as a public service. She believes that everyone has the right to know how women and men fare in terms of promotion and bonuses at companies.
Of the 733 companies Keane analysed in 2024, 30 had mean hourly pay gaps above 35 per cent and 21 had median hourly pay gaps above 35 per cent. This compares unfavourably with the EU 'average' gap of 12.3 per cent in 2023.
What do the other numbers in PayGap.ie's database tell us? Although the mean figure is most commonly cited, Keane says that quartiles are the most important number for progression because it highlights whether the company has women in senior leadership or not.
'It shows you who is in the room and it also indicates which companies have better policies, better employee retention because it's not just a bunch of dudes making the decisions,' Keane said.
In nine of those companies with mean or median hourly pay gaps above 35 per cent, women account for fewer than one in 10 staff in the upper quartile of earners in the fourth quarter of last year: ABB Ireland (9 per cent female), Breedon Mining (5 per cent), , the
Irish Aviation Authority
(6 per cent), JJ Rhatigan (5 per cent),
John Paul Construction
(8 per cent), LotusWorks (5 per cent), SIG Susquehanna International Group (9 per cent), Walls Construction (3 per cent) and Winthrop Technologies (9 per cent).
Closing the gender pay gap needs more than pink socks, tacos and rainbows. It requires companies to change their strategy, key metrics and culture to ensure everyone gets the opportunity to reach their potential. See PayGap.ie to find out how your company is doing.
Margaret E Ward is chief executive of Clear Eye, a leadership consultancy. [e-mail]