Two compelling reader letters prompted by BTN’s 2015 Salary & Attitude Survey appear
below, along with BTN
editor-in-chief Elizabeth West’s response.
P. Jason King
Associates chairman and CEO Jason King writes:
Every year that I have received or read BTN’s update about the gender bias I
actually LOL. I am sure you do your best to obtain vital information from those
who participate in your survey, but the bias you keep stating, in my humble
opinion, as founder, president and CEO of a travel industry retained global
executive search firm for over four decades does NOT agree. We have NEVER in
our 40-plus years seen that facts you state that a woman will receive a lower
base pay than a man. In our company when we generate a resume to our client the
resume is “morphed” automatically via our automation system when our
applications are filled out.
Our client is seeing no name, no gender reference, no age,
no ethnicity, nor where [they] have been or are employed. So, there is no way
to offer anyone of different gender a lesser salary or compensation. To add, I
have never had any HR [manager] or executive even hint this to [be] the case.
While I have had our subscription with BTN forever, you need to know this subscriber is
extremely disappointed by your surveys always pointing to bias. We have our eyes
wide open [and] suggest in the future [that you] speak with guys like us and
others in the field of corporate travel recruitment.
Marsh & McLennan Americas travel manager Greg Wilczek writes:
We work in a business climate supporting equal pay for equal
work.
While BTN
reports that female travel managers earn 75 percent of males, that is very different
than saying women earn 75 percent of what men earn for doing the same jobs,
while working the same hours, with the same educational background, with the
same years of continuous, uninterrupted work experience, and assuming no gender
differences in family roles like child care. Does a subset of your female
respondents prefer to stay in less demanding positions to honor commitments at
home (i.e. motherhood)? Also, how many of your respondents, men and women,
negotiated their pay package with a female HR recruiter or female supervisor?
Suggest BTN
conducts a more comprehensive study that delves into these aspects. Otherwise,
you’re leading readers to conclude that travel managers work for organizations
obsessed with cost cutting but so rife with chauvinistic discrimination they’re
willing to forgo the easiest savings opportunity—pink slip expensive men
drawing big salaries while contributing the same for an immediate 25 percent
payroll reduction.
A paycheck is not a measure of quality of life. Many women
choose to earn less than they can, and do so with both eyes wide open. Many
women measure success in other aspects of their lives. Many women don’t aspire
to an all-consuming C-level job, a director or [vice president] level
positions, or even a promotion that may negatively impact their important
out-of-office commitments. It’s the free market, and employers don’t punish
people for their life choices.
By the way, a recent Pew Social Trends study shows
near-equity in pay among millennials. For now. As soon as millennial women
start having children, pay gaps may emerge.
Business Travel News editor-in-chief
Elizabeth West responds:
P. Jason King Associates has the right controls in place to
minimize potential gender-based bias in terms of compensation. If all companies
used such services to fill every position, perhaps the results of the BTN Salary Survey
would be different.
It’s hard to overlook the fact that for the past eight years
and among constantly changing respondent sets, the BTN Salary Survey
results continue to show a very similar gender gap year over year. In total, we
have more than 1,700 survey responses that lead BTN to this
conclusion.
Of course, it begs the question as Mr. Wilczek points out:
Is this equal pay for equal jobs? BTN discussed that in this year’s article—and
has done so in the past, as well.
We found that executive level positions, such as vice
president, president and CEO, are less populated by women. That certainly
contributes to the reported pay gap. Outside studies have shown evidence that
at higher level positions, pay gaps between men and women tend to shrink, and
this may be the case for Mr. King’s professionally recruited positions.
It must be underscored that the majority of the respondents
to BTN’s Salary Survey—and to most of our
surveys—would not be those professionally recruited for a dedicated travel
management position (though many are). They are qualified by their involvement
in travel management and purchasing, but many of these individuals fulfill this
role as just part of a larger set of responsibilities that could range from
administrative to generalized procurement or finance.
While I hesitate to wade into the more political issues
raised, it is worth addressing the idea that companies do not punish people for
their life choices.
Companies are made of people, and people have biases of all
types. One bias in our culture is that men are breadwinners for families and
women are caretakers for families.
In reality, however, this arrangement has largely changed.
In May 2013, The Pew Center released an analysis of U.S.
census data that showed for 40 percent of households women were the primary breadwinners.
A widely reported University of Massachusetts, Amherst, study released last
year showed, however, that companies continue to penalize women for having
children (perception: because they become less committed), while men are
actually rewarded (perception: because they now have larger responsibilities and
mouths to feed).
If you want take it further, however, yet another study
showed that men who actually take time off for family begin to experience
similar dings in the perception of their commitment to their work.
There are lots of studies out there looking at this issue,
and lots of conflicting data. There is little hope of producing the definitive
study. That is not to say, however, that BTN can’t do better by taking a closer look at
how these dynamics play out in our industry. Our parent company, Northstar
Travel Media, is currently in the process of researching data modeling tools
that will help BTN
take a deeper dive into our historical data and refine how we survey our
readers in the future—on this and all other topics we study.