Stakes And Ladders

Turns out the pay gap isnt the only gap we should be talking about. When it comes to getting wage equality for women, getting ahead in our careers or not plays a part. We take a closer look at the pay gaps cousin the promotion gap and what needs to change

- Rosamund Irwin

A chief executive was looking to hire a new division manager and brought the CVs of three women into an HR meeting. His all-male panel looked through the candidates, said they needed more experience and rejected them. So the CEO brought a new set to the next meeting – again all women, again all rejected.

This time, he smiled: “You’ve just fired yourselves.” He had taken the panel’s CVs, tweaked them to disguise the identities and put female names at the top.

Allyson Zimmermann, the executive director of Catalyst, a non-profit organisation that promotes women in business, uses this story to illustrate the promotion gap, the lesser-known but equally ugly sister of the pay gap. “Our research shows that women are promoted based on performance, whereas men are promoted based on potential,” she says. “Women are being held to a higher standard.”

This is a line I’ve heard on repeat from senior women during my 10 years of writing on gender in business that women have to be twice as good to get half the credit. It’s the Ginger Rogers line: we have to do it all, except backwards and in high heels. When the UK forced companies with more than 250 employees to declare their wage gap in April, it also exposed through the reporting of company gender structures how few women are making it to the top.