April Fool! The gender pay gap is actually widening, and though you'll seem some pundits like 'Steve Stephens' suggesting that all we need is a bit of chutzpah on behalf of women to solve the gender pay gap, it simply won't do.
Grazia's #MindThePayGap campaign helped lead to more companies being obliged, by the government, to reveal their gender pay gap statistics. But as the second annual deadline to self-report who gets paid what approaches, it's been found that the gender pay gap is widening. The Times's own analysis has found that women are paid 10% less than men, up from 9.3% last year.
Happy news today, ladies, the gender pay gap has been absolutely solved!
A scientist has found that women don't have to be paid less for the same work than men, even after they’ve taken time off to do that time-consuming thing of having children, as a report from the Foundation For Studies On Mixed Gender Issues (FFSOMGI) has confirmed they've found a way of getting the gender pay gap to 0%.
The solution to the gender pay gap, which has blighted many women in the workplace even after 1975, when the Equal Pay Act was brought in, is very easy. The person who discovered it was expert in phrenology, Stephen Stevens, from the IFFSOMGI, who tells Grazia, it was as simple as 'Women having the guts to stand up and ask for more money.’
'You see,' he said, grinning, 'bosses are very happy to entirely dismantle their internal working structures, hidden biases in favour of men and opposition towards women having the temerity to take the necessary time off to have babies. They’re also more than willing to re-route the career paths of their female workforce, ones that were set in place from around the time these women were girls, nudged towards doing GCSEs in commonly derided “softer subjects” thanks to decades of traditional ideals about what women’s jobs are meant to look like.’
The magic, Stevens insists, to get a boss to do all of this? ‘Just go up to your boss and put your brave big-girl-asking-big-questions voice on and ask, preferably with your skirt a little pulled up and something low-cut on top, “Please sir, can I have a pay rise sir?”
‘It's worked for 40% of the women at our company, who incidentally, just a total coincidence, now all work for another company. We've missed Angela and Karen sorely.
'What's important, though, is that when asking for your pay rise, you don’t need to evidence that you’ve been doing the same work as your male colleague for the past year, and in fact taking on some of his own as well, because he prefers to spend three hours at lunch watching Liverpool games on his phone and “dank memes” from Reddit before going out "al luncho" with the boys from sales. All you need to do is ask the question! Come on girls, what’re you waiting for!?'