Hi everyone,

Possibly a pedantic query, or maybe it's just me not being as clued up as I should be, but after an hour of googling, I'm just getting more and more frustrated at not seeing clear-cut results I'd expect. 

I work in a small company of 15 employees, so gender pay gap reporting is not something that we actually have to do, however I think it's good to know for a wide range of issues regarding diversity, recruitment practices, development, etc. Also, as I'm looking into various areas regarding a Fair Work Policy, the Scottish Business Pledge, and a few others, it comes up quite a bit.

And the thing that's throwing me is that we call it a Gender Pay Gap, but is it? Or would it be more accurate to call it a Sex Pay Gap? It seems like most websites predominantly use the terms "men" and "women", but many of these sites will also interchangeably use "male/female" on the same article or page. I know that these terms being used interchangeably is a common issue, but not one I would have expected to encounter on sites like ACAS or Gov.uk, and certainly not on issues surrounding sex/gender.

ACAS extract below:

"By law, men and women must get equal pay for doing 'equal work'. This is work that equal pay law classes as the same, similar, equivalent or of equal value.

This means someone must not get less pay compared to someone who is both:

• the opposite sex
• doing equal work for the same employer" (https://www.acas.org.uk/equal-pay/equal-pay-law)

Despite the start referring to men/women, I would focus on the two bullet point criteria and say that equal pay is based around sex. Is gender pay gap the same despite it's misleading name? 

Thanks in advance!