EQUAL PAY DAY
Equal Pay Day shines a light on the gender pay gap problem
22nd November 2023 is Equal Pay Day, a national campaign led by the Fawcett Society in the UK. According to Fawcett, his is the day when, because of the gender pay gap, women overall in the UK stop being paid compared to men. This year it is two days later than in 2022, marking a very slight narrowing of the gap.
The Fawcett report published on 22 November 2023 demonstrates that on the figures collated and the current rate of change, the gender pay gap won't close until 2051—28 years from now! That means that women aged 40 and older won't see the gender pay gap close before they reach State Pension age.
As a reminder, the gender pay gap is the difference between the average pay of men and women within a particular group or population.
Employers with 250 or more employees are obliged to submit a gender pay gap report every year. The report must show the gender pay gap between employees (shown as a mean and a median figure). The reports do not explain any difference in pay between the sexes and is regarded as a rather blunt tool when analysing discrimination in pay rates between the sexes.
"As paid working parents know, the struggle to balance work with family life does not end after the initial parental leave period, and the Fawcett Society consider that day one access (rather than the right to request) flexible working is key. The report states that flexible working should be the default."
The right to equal pay between the sexes was introduced as far back as 1970, but as with other forms of discrimination, continues to exist. Equal pay claims can be brought by employees when compared with the opposite sex, where they are performing ‘like work’, ‘work rated as equivalent’ or ‘work of equal value’. Over the past twenty years we have seen a number of class actions in the public sector where predominantly female employees in certain roles (such as caring or cleaning roles) were paid less than their male counterparts (in roles such as facilities management).
More recently we have seen a number of large supermarkets faced with equal pay claims whereby till workers (who are predominantly female) are comparing themselves with predominantly male employees in the warehouses.
The gender pay gap does not necessarily illustrate pay discrimination. There are a number of factors which need to be considered when looking at the gender pay gap. Notably the number of women carrying out part time work is much higher than men. This is partly explained by the unequal share of caring responsibilities which are still carried by women (the so called “motherhood penalty”).
The Fawcett report highlights a number of areas which need to change in order for the gender pay gap to narrow and eventually disappear. One area which perpetuates the disproportionate amount of women who care for children could be the very much underused shared parental pay provisions. The problem is that whilst many employers enhance the statutory rate of maternity pay (for example 3 months full pay and 3 months half pay before going down to SMP, the same is rarely applied to shared parental pay). Naturally it makes no financial sense for the woman to give up her enhanced contractual pay entitlement, but this mechanism prevents the dads from sharing the leave.
As paid working parents know, the struggle to balance work with family life does not end after the initial parental leave period, and the Fawcett Society consider that day one access (rather than the right to request) flexible working is key. The report states that flexible working should be the default. The report demonstrates that the part time roles carried out by women are generally low paid, low quality work e.g. part-time, insecure work and zero-hours contracts which women are forced into in order to balance their caring responsibilities, and that this contributes to the UK's gender pay gap.
Whilst these are valid points, flexible working should not just be seen as a female only issue, there also needs a cultural shift around men requesting flexible working patterns to assist with caring responsibilities. This benefits the employees’ their caring commitments and ensures more people can contribute to the economy.
It may also be too simplistic to campaign for a right to work flexibly from day one; flexible working is certainly not suitable for all industries/posts but given the clear advantages, we would encourage employers to think creatively about how employees can be supported to work flexibly.