The United Kingdom has a new law, requiring companies with 250 or more employees to report to the authorities the earnings of its workers, by gender.
The topic has been a sticking point in the British news cycle right now, with woman across the company showing median earnings that are 12% lower than men, which is a sizable gap in income equality.
Where does the British motorcycle industry falls into place in all this? Well as Visordown initially reported, that is more difficult to say, as it appears that only Triumph Motorcycles meets the reporting criteria, amongst motorcycle manufacturers.
Technically, it is two brands that meet reporting criteria for gender pay gap, as Triumph Motorcycles Limited and Triumph Designs Limited split their duties for the British marque, with the prior making the bikes and the latter making the apparel.
At Triumph Motorcycles Ltd., the mean hourly rate for women is 21.7% lower than men, across all pay brackets, while the median hourly rate is 14.6% lower.
Breaking things down further shows that at Triumph Motorcycles, women skew towards the lower pay brackets, accounting for 11% of the company’s top quartile of earners, 11% of its second quartile of earners, 16% of its third quartile of earners, and 22% of its bottom quartile of earners.
At Triumph Designs Ltd., women showed worse results with their salary figures, making on average 25.6% less per hour than men, across all pay brackets, and 25.1% less per hour on median.
At the apparel center, women showed at a lower rate and also more heavily in the lower pay categories, when compared to Triumph Motorcycles.
As such, only 1.4% of the earners in the top earning quartile were women, 5.5% in the second earning quartile, 6.8% in the third earning quartile, and 16.2% in the bottom quartile.
Of course, this analysis is really less about pay gap, and more about the overall number and rank of women within their companies.
Salary discrimination on the basis of gender is illegal in the United Kingdom, and the data fails to show salary between men and women who work the same job. This data also does not show likelihood of promotion, though ot does infer some matter of discrimination is occurring.
Of course, that isn’t to say that salary and gender discrimination is or isn’t occurring, it is just impossible to see from the data shown here.
What the data does show starkly though is that women at Triumph, and as a whole in the United Kingdom, are employed in roles that pay statistically less than the roles that men work.
However, a brand like Triumph is a good example on the limitations of drawing too broad of a conclusion from this statistical information though, as we know already that the motorcycle industry suffers from a very strong male skew in its population.
Still, the trends seen in the numbers are worth some discussion. For instance in the United Kingdom, there are roughly 525,000 women registered with a motorcycle endorsement, out of a population of roughly 5 million motorcyclists.
This means in the UK, roughly 10% of motorcyclists are female (compare that to the 14% who are female, here in the United States). Very roughly, one could take that as a baseline for how well the female population should be represented within the motorcycle industry employee ranks.
There is issue with that analysis too though, as historically certain jobs have been more likely filled by men than women, and vice versa, which is part of what the UK’s pay gap reporting data is trying to highlight.
A final thought before we unleash you in the comments section: out of all the major motorcycle manufacturers, not one has a female CEO. And while we cannot speak for the UK market, here in the USA, not a single US subsidiary or importer of a major motorcycle brand has a top-level female executive in its ranks. That’s something to chew on.
Source: Visordown
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