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30 September, 2021
Miss Kellie Boydens
Principal Committee and Panel Officer States Greffe
Morier House
Halkett Place
St Helier
JE1 1DD
By email only
Dear Miss Boydens
Re: Jersey's Gender Pay Gap
I refer to your email of 24 August and thank you again for offering IoD Jersey the opportunity to comment on the above item.
As set out in my acknowledgement of even date, I circulated your request to our membership and invited comment. Whilst we have only received two responses to-date, I nevertheless hope the following comments are of some assistance to Deputy Doublet and the Panel. I have set out the same in full below, in an anonymised format.
Response 1
"Having worked in financial services in both London and Jersey, I can say that I encountered gender bias on an almost daily basis here in Jersey and almost never in London. Whether that is because I worked for a firm with a better culture or down to the statutory measures in place in the UK, I can't comment, but either way I think a statutory reporting requirement, perhaps for businesses over a certain size, would go some way to addressing attitudes. I think this should also cover an ethnicity paygap and frankly any other protected characteristics, but we might find we don't have the size to make the statistics meaningful.
We know covid affected women proportionally more than men as they tended to take on more of the home schooling, caring and general juggling and this is true of women more generally even before the pandemic. I know I carry the weight of organising my whole family, so it is often the mental load that sits with women as much as anything, even where their partners do their share of domestic chores. More women also stopped working, gave
up their businesses, put plans on hold or didn't push for promotion as a result of the pressures of covid and we should have a strategy that aims to catch them up'. EG education, training courses, peer support, internships etc.
We also need to better harness the skills and experiences of women that they have gained both in the household and the workplace. For example, when we only recruit NEDs from the existing senior working population, we miss reams of skills that could result in better corporate decision making. Some of the generic pay gap results from significantly more men making it to the top of the tree. And we need to work on keeping women engaged and making sure they get the promotions. But likewise, we could bypass some of that by bringing more women in at the top. For example, someone who has spent their career in the third sector would have little or no board room experience and limited visibility to those looking for NEDs. But volumes of useful experience. Perhaps free courses on things like board room etiquette, board internships programmes or IoD courses funded for people who aren't execs already would help. Many Island businesses could benefit by having people on their board that more accurately represent their customers. As could the SOE's."
Response 2
"Gender pay gap information is clearly useful, mainly in highlighting the dearth of women in senior positions.
However what is disappointing in the proposal is the automatic reach for more laws. Not just in this field, the government needs to decide what is the "offer" for Jersey plc? As you know, for most businesses, they don't need to be in Jersey (at all) or have options for how much business is done here as opposed to other jurisdictions. Increasingly we seem to have a bunch of politicians who want to just follow the UK and EU to create more and more statutory requirements, and it is making Jersey less competitive.
Guernsey's politicians don't seem to make these mistakes (generally). They are acutely aware that Guernsey is not the UK and in fact is in competition with it. Little-by-little Jersey's competitiveness is being eroded. With substance requirements and the tax changes likely on the way, if there is little other difference in requirements between the UK and Jersey we might as well be in the bigger market not the smaller one."
I hope the above comments are helpful, but please do let me know if IoD Jersey can be of any further assistance.
Yours sincerely Lisa
Lisa Springate Jersey Chair W: www.iod.je