Mai Chen: Row over women and work may close gender pay gap

Alasdair Thompson. Photo / Steven McNicholl

As we come out of the recession, the labour market is again tightening. The best staff, the real star performers, are always in short supply.

The aim for any business which wants to stay at the top of its game and beat its competition is to recruit the best staff and keep them. That is why what Alasdair Thompson said about women's periods causing the gender pay gap matters.

We all stereotype. It is an information shortcut when we don't know another person.

But when you are paying staff you should know well, properly valuing what they contribute to your business is the only way you are going to incentivise them to go hard and to keep them. The main way to demotivate your staff is to treat them unfairly.

The advice I always give people when career counselling is to only go where they are truly valued; otherwise they will not be respected, or encouraged to reach their full potential.

What Alasdair Thompson said tacitly endorsed paying women less because they, unlike men, have periods which makes them less productive.

I have been an employer for 17 years. I have also taught thousands of students as an academic. I have never found lesser performance from women as a group because they have periods.

I have had women staff who do not ask for more money, and who do not sell themselves well in terms of what they contribute. I have had male staff who ask for more money than they are worth.

But I have also had male staff who were absolute stars and who never asked for more money, and I once had a woman staff member who demanded that I make her a partner after she had been in private practice for six weeks after leaving the public service. The answer, based on the facts, was that she was not ready.

And what if I acted on Alasdair Thompson's statements?

Once you start discriminating on the basis of stereotypes that are irrelevant to performance, where do you stop?

My concern is that stereotyping may stop you from hiring the best staff. New Zealand is a small country.

I had a call some years back from a law professor who asked if I would hire her top student. Despite a stellar academic record, and a formidable work ethic, no one would hire this lawyer because she was Muslim, wore a hijab and prayed five times a day facing Mecca. The woman interviewed well, so I hired her and found she was the best law clerk I had ever had.

This week, I decided to hire another stellar candidate with an amazing CV, but no law firm would hire him. He is Asian and has an unpronounceable name, but the same law professor tells me he is the best.

I think back to the best young public lawyer I ever trained. He once thanked me for hiring him when no one else would. He had honours degrees in law and economics, but he was gay.

You cannot legislate to change what people think, but you can legislate to stop employers applying stereotypes that have nothing to do with ability to do a job. Alasdair Thompson's role is to represent employers. But the Employers and Manufacturers Association has a policy on gender equality, and its board stressed its commitment to equal pay, to the belief that gender plays no part in a person's productivity, and that gender should not influence what someone is paid.

Alasdair Thompson's statements were inconsistent with this policy. Given his role, what he did could amount to serious misconduct. The EMA understandably has to accord Thompson fair process as an employer itself.

By making these statements, Thompson appeared to be representing his members. Given the EMA's 5000 members, he appeared to bring all employers into disrepute. Alasdair resiled. He said he didn't mean it. He said sorry. But the television footage was revealing.

I have met no employer who agrees with Thompson. They are to a man and woman shocked. They all stress that he does not represent them. Even so, I am pleased Thompson said what he said. At least he was honest about what he really thought, before public outrage made him resile. We need to talk about discriminatory stereotyping because that is one cause of the ongoing gender wage gap.

Green MP Catherine Delahunty has drafted a member's bill to amend the Equal Pay Act. It would add to the current wage and time records employers have to keep by requiring employers to record the gender of their staff and make the pay levels by gender available to workers and unions.

The last thing I want as an employer is more compliance cost, even a tweak, based on using sunlight as the best disinfectant. But the more critical question is - will it work to close the gender pay gap?

Ultimately, the law is limited. We cannot legislate to change what people think. But the law can lead. Anti-discrimination laws prevent us discriminating against people on irrelevant characteristics.

This does change attitudes over time, even if some continue to practice discrimination in private. But the greatest force for changing attitudes is the sort of public outcry we have heard since Thompson made his statements. If any employer is harbouring such stereotypes, this should make them think again.

* Chen Palmer partner Mai Chen is an adjunct professor at the University of Auckland Business School and author of Public Law Toolbox (forthcoming).