Denunciations of the gender wage gap’s stagnation and persistence remain common throughout the western world. Yet, scrutinising these gaps on the macro level has proven challenging. This may be partly due to a common culture of silence surrounding individual pay, driven by the social phenomenon of the wage taboo—the socially constructed norm that is commonly believed to discourage open discussions about wages in the workplace as well as social settings.
Fostering wage conversations between employees and peers will not resolve the complex gender wage gap, but could help typically disadvantaged workers better understand and feel more comfortable with advocating for their worth. Surprisingly little research has been conducted into the machinations of the taboo, especially the extent to which its exhibition may be gender and context specific. What has been done is strewn across several disciplines, making holistic understanding challenging. This review paper will offer original analysis of existing literature covering this under-researched phenomenon to guide future research seeking to critically analyse context-specific variations in the exhibition of the wage taboo.
The broader anthropological taboo concept demonstrates wage taboo connections, both in maintaining societal organisation and capacity to be disregarded individually without necessarily negating the aggregate phenomenon. The wage taboo is also part of the larger money taboo, which originates in social psychology going back to Freud. The money taboo is framed as the result of money symbolising individual worth, which then becomes linked to shame that individuals might not ‘measure up’. Economists have also developed modelling to explain both employer and employee motivation to respect this wage taboo in the workplace. Unsurprisingly, such modelling tends to suggest varying market forces as the motivations. These could be accurate descriptions of employee motivations but sound similar to arguments commonly used to combat anti-discrimination regulations on grounds that such considerations may hurt business.
A common strain running through most of the relevant research is a tendency to take the wage taboo for granted, writing with the assumption that the taboo is exhibited uniformly and consistently. However, three categories of factors—culture, company and individual employee level—exist in the literature as contextual variables that may impact whether the wage taboo is exhibited. Much individual analysis stems from Burchell and Yagil’s 1997 survey of Northampton’s workforce in the East Midlands region of England. Unfortunately, this promising work does not appear to have been followed up in the nearly 30 years since publication.
This review paper aims to renew Edwards’ 2005 call for critical analysis of the wage taboo’s functions and impacts in order to advise on the best legislative responses. However, before policy implications can be drawn, a deeper understanding of under what conditions the wage taboo is exhibited at the level of the individual and institution is required. The United Kingdom may be an interesting jumping off point for this inquiry. The former Women and Equalities minister illustrated this opportunity in 2013, chalking the wage taboo up to ‘something very British in our culture’ and noting that it ‘holds women back’.
