The Fawcett Society is, again, using the wrong numbers to describe the gender pay gap. Something we’ve been pointing out to them for over a decade now. Our doing so is even in the references to their Wikipedia page so you’d think they would grasp it by now. Apparently not though:

According to the Office for National Statistics, the mean gender pay gap for all employees is 14.6% this year, down from 16.3% last year. Fawcett calculates Equal Pay Day by using the full-time mean average gender pay gap – which this year is 11.5%, down from 13.1% in 2019.

That’s the wrong number to be using. As we, and the ONS, and the Statistics Authority, possibly Uncle Tom Cobbleigh ‘n’all, have been pointing out for more than that decade it must be the median used, not the mean. For wage distributions are hugely biased by there being a bottom limit of zero (while it’s possible to have a negative income we don’t measure them as such) and no obvious upper limit as footballers’ salaries show.

The thing is that the people making this mistake are aware of it. They must be for our same criticism has led them to abandon their earlier, even more misleading, comparison of part time to full time wages. They are, that is, actually numerate. This makes their behaviour worse of course. They know what they’re doing.

Until and unless they start using the correct numbers - and as we insist, they do know what they are - we can and should all ignore them. There are enough problems out there to be dealing with without taking note of those being, in our opinion, deliberately misleading about them.