Discounted women

It’s not breaking news for anyone living in Switzerland that this isn’t a country that is at the forefront of gender equality progress, but my goodness new lows were hit this month when the City of Geneva announced that women will get a 20% discount for entry into sports centres and cultural institutions.

This, it seems, is Geneva’s answer to the gender pay gap: federal figures indicate that across Switzerland women earn 20% less than men (similar to the gap in other countries).

How livid does this make me? Very, it won’t surprise you to hear.

This is yet another example of women and gender inequality being seen as a charity case. We are not and it is not. The pay gap is a key symptom of gender inequality and gender inequality is an issue that negatively affects everyone, all genders, not just women.

It is absolutely not a solution of any kind to stick a plaster on the problem and send the women off for a day out with a voucher in their pockets and hope they are distracted from noticing that they get paid significantly less than men for their work. The solution, my Swiss friends, is to not accept the 20% gender pay gap and to fix it. No, the fix won’t happen magically and naturally and yes, you will need to do some work. You will need to look at your salary data. You will need to understand what is causing it to happen, despite your no doubt good intentions. You will need to make some interventions in your salary management processes to over-ride the human unconscious biases that are at work. It is work, but there are people (like me) who can help you with it. And it is work that you need to do, not with a ‘women’s charity’ mindset, but because it will help you build a stronger organization built on equality and diversity that will deliver better performance for you.

So please, let’s stop discounting women’s pay. And please, let’s never speak again of giving her a discount for a day out because we are.