UK: ‘Statistical gender bending’

By Men's Activism News | Source | August 8, 2009

Article here. Excerpt:

'Harriet Harman's office is in trouble with the statistics watchdog again.

After ticking off the equality minister in June for using a figure which "risks giving a misleading quantification of the gender pay gap", the UK Statistics Authority is more than a little perturbed that a quango based in her office - the Women and Work Commission - went ahead and published the figure again just a few weeks later. The number was quoted across the British media - including the BBC.

The figure in question is 22.6 - the percentage that Ms Harman's department likes to suggest is the difference between the earnings of men and women. But the head of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Michael Scholar, told the Government Equalities Office on 11 June that the figure should not be used, because to do so "may undermine public trust in official statistics".