Today is Equal Pay Day – the day in the year that, because of the ongoing gender pay gap, British women stop earning relative to men. More than 40 years after the women at the Ford Dagenham plant went on the strikes that led to the introduction of the 1970 Equal Pay Act, unequal pay still persists – the ‘gender pay gap’ currently sits at 15.7 per cent for full-time workers. This means that women effectively work for free for almost two months of the year.
It is outrageous that this situation is getting worse rather than better – last year the gender pay gap increased for the first time in five years, jumping by 0.9 per cent nationwide, and by a whopping 2.3 per cent in London.
So why is this happening? The most common response you will hear is that it is because women have children, and then ‘choose’ to stop focusing on their careers. While some women might make this ‘choice’, the reality is that many mothers are hit by the so-called ‘motherhood penalty’ regardless of their career aspirations. The gender pay gap dramatically increases around the time most women are having children: it is four per cent for those aged 22-29, but rises to 11 per cent in the 30-39 age bracket and jumps to a staggering 24 per cent for those aged 40-49.
There is a mountain of evidence showing that many women end up working below their qualification and skill level due to a lack of quality part-time and flexible working opportunities. To change this, we urgently need to ensure that employers offer flexible and part-time working at all seniority levels. The Labour party should ensure that all Labour-run local authorities advertise jobs on a flexible basis, unless there is a clear business case for not doing so, and should commit to implementing the same policy across the whole of the public sector. Of course, we also need to ensure that childcare responsibilities are shared more equally between men and women. To this end, Labour should call for increased maternity and paternity pay – we know that the low level of pay remains one of the biggest deterrents to increased uptake among men – and we also need to see a ‘use it or lose it’ component to father’s leave.
But it is not just the ‘motherhood penalty’ that impacts on the gender pay gap. We also know that industries that are typically dominated by women, such as caring, education, and cleaning, are largely undervalued and paid less than jobs that are traditionally done by men, such as construction, transportation and engineering. Outdated gender norms and stereotypes continue to lead women and men towards different sectors – which impacts on their earning potential throughout their careers. Overall, women are significantly over-represented among the low-paid – making up 59 per cent of those earning below the living wage.
We need to see action on low paid and insecure work, such as zero-hours contracts, if we want the gender pay gap to close. New research published by Fawcett today, and conducted by Landmann Economics, shows that lifting the national minimum wage to the living wage would reduce the gender pay gap by 0.8 per cent (see our website for the full analysis). While this may not seem huge, this compares to a very slow pace of change historically that has seen the gap close by just 6.2 per cent in 13 years. And, of course, lifting the national minimum wage would have huge benefits beyond closing the gender pay gap for all those on low pay that are currently struggling to make ends meet as living costs continue to rise.
Finally, the actions of the mainly female ASDA shopworkers launching a legal claim because they are paid up to £4 less than their primarily male colleagues in the warehouse reminds us that indirect discrimination is still a very real issue too. We are very concerned that since the introduction of upfront employment tribunal fees sex discrimination cases have fallen by 91 per cent, which tells us that many women are being priced out of justice. Labour should commit to revoking employment tribunal fees – anything less, 44 years after the Dagenham strikes, is not good enough. It is time for Labour to take the lead on closing the gender pay gap.
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Eva Neitzert is deputy chief executive of the Fawcett Society
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