While employers need to ensure that they are paying people the same money for the same work without reference to gender, as the law insists, addressing pay inequality alone will not remove the pay gap.
Whether we as employers like it or not, traditionally male-dominated sectors pay more on average than those in sectors where women predominate.
Unless, or until, we have as many female builders as male and as many male nurses as female, or a radical redrawing of the value society places on different types of work, the pay gap will remain.
However, in a world where it is difficult to think of a job that absolutely needs the person to be doing it to be male or female, employers need to take a much more critical look at the way they structure work and design the jobs they offer.
For too many potential workers, the work being offered, the way it is managed and what gets rewarded reflects the male-dominated world of yesteryear, and certainly not that of the 21st century.
Competent, engaged and productive employees of any gender are there for the taking, but only if employers make the roles available work for them.
Jon Dymond is director at Hay Group.
