Tweet
Closer inspection of the 2008 Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (Acevo) pay survey shows that the female chief executive of a charity earns a median salary of £48,543 while her male counterpart is on £57,240. What's more, this £11,000 pay differential has widened over the last year as men saw their pay rise quicker with an 8% rise in their remuneration, compared to women who received just a 5% increase.
The Acevo chief executive, Stephen Bubb, quite rightly describes this disparity as "shameful". But why has it happened?
There may be a clue in the fact that 72% of charity chief executives have moved to their current position from outside the third sector. If more chief executives are coming from the private sector, say from banking, then it might be expected. And the press coverage of top appointments in larger charities, which are also less likely to be held by women according to the survey, often reinforces this view.
The new head of the NSPCC is from the world of advertising, for example, and a former Saga board director will take the helm at the charity formed from the merger of Age Concern England and Help the Aged in the new year. Both male big-hitters with salaries to match.
The fact that 37% of chief executives said they took a pay cut when they moved to the third sector also implies they are men leaving high flying private sector careers. Yet this is far from the truth.
In 2008, only 27% of charity leaders previously worked in a private company - less than 32.5% the previous year. In contrast, 15% came from local authorities, 12.5% from other public sector employers and 8.7% from the NHS where you would expect a plethora of women at senior levels. Moreover, 28% of chief executives said they had come from another job within the third sector - an increase from just 10% in 2007.
Given that female chief executives who have made it to the top of some of the largest charities, such as Fiona Reynolds at the National Trust, Clare Tickell at Action for Children, and Jasmine Whitbread at Save the Children are all voluntary sector stalwarts, a rise in the number of chief executives coming from within the sector itself would appear to work in women's favour.
However, whenever a senior management role is held by a woman in a charity - whether it be deputy director, HR director, or fundraising director - she will on average all be earning less than her male counterpart, according to the survey.
When it comes to governance, charities fare little better on the equality stakes – some 74% of the chairs of trustee boards are men. Moreover nearly all of them are white men. Setting aside gender for a moment, only 3.6% of charity chairs are of a different ethnicity. While 227 survey respondents described themselves as White British, only two said they were Asian Indian or Black Caribbean and three Black African. One charity chair came from a mixed race or a Chinese background. Perhaps even more shocking was that 71% of charities said they had not one trustee from a black or minority ethnic (BME) community. In comparison, women are doing much better with female representation on the boards of 84% of organisations.
Again we have to ask why this appalling failure. The methods used to assist in recruiting trustees provide some answers. Personal contacts, networking and word of month are the options favoured by the majority of charities, which would help to perpetuate white-only boards. In contrast only 16% used advertisements, which would draw from a wider, more representative pool of candidates.
Stephen Bubb says if we want to get a more diverse range of people from different backgrounds on the boards of charities, we may have to pay them. He calls on the Charity Commission to remove the barriers that prevent charities from paying trustees. If we don't seriously consider this route, he fears that the lack of diversity could seriously damage the sector's reputation.
Should the Charity Commission perhaps also be given powers to ensure charity boards better reflect the communities they serve - so they include more younger people and service users, as well as people from BME communities - not to mention more transparency over the remuneration of men and women? Only then may we start to see more equality and diversity throughout our third sector.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
More...
