Wholesale reform needed to tackle root causes of gender pay gap

Fawcett Society press release

For immediate release
29th July 2009
 
Wholesale reform needed to tackle root causes of gender pay gap
 
The Fawcett Society welcomes the Women and Work Commission’s (2) recommendations as a step in the right direction, but stronger measures tackling the root causes of the pay gap will be needed before UK women finally start being paid equally with men.
 
While the report identifies some key issues it fails to address the role of discrimination – the single largest cause of the pay gap. Change will not come until employers are legally bound to prevent pay discrimination occurring in the first place – by conducting regular pay audits that identity and root out discrimination in pay systems.
 
Furthermore, while the report correctly identifies that women are segregated into low paid professions, simply encouraging women and girls out of them into non-traditional trades won’t address the root cause of pay inequality. Female-dominated occupations (3) are paid less precisely because women’s labour is traditionally undervalued. While increasing the availability of flexible and part-time working and tackling gender stereotyping in education are important, addressing the undervaluation of traditional women’s work is key. These occupations are crucial to the economy and should be rewarded accordingly. A solution based on women exiting these jobs is unfeasible and fails to take account of findings that lower valuation ‘follows’ women when they move into traditionally male-dominated sectors.
 
The Fawcett Society is calling for:
 
•         all employers to be legally required to conduct pay audits to uncover and root out discrimination in pay systems
 
•         measures to ease the financial and emotional burden currently experienced by women seeking justice for unequal pay through the courts (4)
 
Rowena Lewis, acting Director of the Fawcett Society said:
“The gender pay gap is a national scandal and the Government must get serious about tackling it. The pay gap is an affront to justice and means poverty in the UK has a female face. The measures proposed in the report will not be sufficient to deliver justice to the millions of UK women currently being short-changed.
 
“The Government’s Equality Bill provides a once in a generation opportunity to strengthen equal pay law. We urge the Government to lift responsibility for addressing pay discrimination off the shoulders of individual women and place it where it belongs – in the hands of employers.  It is nearly 40 years since the Equal Pay Act was passed. It is time to finally make equal pay for women a reality.”

Notes to editors
(1) The Fawcett Society is the UK’s leading campaign for equality between women and men www.fawcettsociety.org.uk
 
(2) The Women and Work Commission was set up by the Government in July 2004 to investigate the gender pay gap and other issues affecting women's employment. The WWC report Shaping a Fairer Future, was published in February 2006. A three year on review report was published today: http://www.equalities.gov.uk/what_we_do/women_and_work/women_and_work_commission.aspx
 
(3) Women dominate the five “c”s: caring, cashiering, clerical, cleaning and catering
 
(4) Fawcett is calling for women to be allowed to point to hypothetical comparators in equal pay claims and for women to be permitted to take claims as a group, represented by a trade union or other body (called representative actions). These measures should be introduced in the Government’s Equality Bill