Let’s make this the last Equal Pay Day…

Deja-vu! Equal Pay Day, defined by the Fawcett Society, as the day that women will work from for free until the end of the year, due to the gender pay gap. This reminds me of a University seminar I had last year regarding work and gender and the Equal Pay Day. What surprises me is how similar the situation and debates are, and how actually, so little has changed. There were discussions then, as there are now, about the Equality Bill and the Global Gender Index. Actually, a new Fawcett Study shows how things are getting worse, with women earning as high as 50% less in some areas of the UK! Furthermore, the UK has fallen from 9th in 2006, to 14th in 2008 to 15th in 2009 in the Global Gender Gap index.

In the seminar, we were played a discussion on Radio 4 between Katherine Rake, the Director of the Fawcett Society, and John Shackleton, a professor of Economics; regarding the 17% average pay gap between men and women in the UK in relation to full-time work. With part-time and full-time work together, women earn nationally 21% less than men. Instead of recognising the seriousness of the gap, Shackleton proceeded to have a historical based attitude towards gender roles, complaining the statistics don’t take into account how men are more likely to do less secure jobs. However, actually, with women making up most of the part-time work force, women are more likely to be in less secure, low paid and poorer conditioned jobs.

Rake, rightly highlighted how the professions women go into are historically devalued and thus low paid. Instead of increasing the pay of these jobs, and treating them like valuable sectors of the economy, which they are, the women are instead blamed for choosing these paths, and then you get initiatives by the Tories that see them ramming down childrens’ throats the importance of subjects such as maths and science, so that they choose the ‘right’ education and thus, career path.

The Fawcett Society report, which I mentioned above,  shows how little things have changed over the last year. West Somerset is the worst region in the UK, with a 53% pay gap, whereas Kent is the lowest with only a 1% pay gap. However, compounding factors have to be taken into account here, such as the proportion of men and women in these regions, how many women and men work in these areas, etc etc. This could quite possibly lead to an even higher level of inequality in the workplace between men and women.

Rightly, the Fawcett Society calls on the government to strengthen the proposals in the Equality Bill, which currently:

“gives ministers an optional power from 2013 to require firms with 250 or more workers to disclose average pay for male and female staff. It will also ban secrecy clauses in contracts that prevent employees from comparing their wages.”

Instead of this being optional the Society believe it should be mandatory and imposed sooner, for example. Ceri Goddard, the Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society, drew some important points when commenting on Equal Pay Day. I was unaware for example, how:

“one in three employment discrimination claims being for unequal pay, and cases taking up to 10 years to complete, the tribunal system is at breaking point.”

That is simply shocking. Rightly, she draws on the Equal Pay Act of 1970, which believed it had achieved equality between men and women in pay and conditions. Importantly, which the Equal Pay Act (1970) has been often criticised for, we must also not forget the inequalities that occur between white and ethnic minority workers too, and how this intersects with gender. This is something the Fawcett Society could possibly look in further to relate to the Equal Pay Day…

The Fawcett Society have found that many people did not even know there was a gender pay gap. This shows how engrained discrimination is in society, and how hard it is going to be to achieve meaningful change. When you still have articles in newspapers, typically right-wing, arguing that the mothers natural role is to stay at home and look after the children, the difficulty level in achieving the changes increases.

Thus, realistically I know that the next Equal Pay Day most likely will not be the last. However, it does not mean that we should not strive for it to be so, and at least hope that things do not get worse. If you believe in this goal too, please sign the petition at:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/equalpaynow/