8th January 2024

Black and minoritised ethnicity women are often at the sharpest end of gendered inequality.

To mark Ethnicity Pay Gap Day 2024, created by #EthnicityPayGap Campaign founder Dianne Greyson, Fawcett is publishing Double Trouble: The Ethnicity Gender Pay Gap, highlighting how ethnicity pay gaps compound the gender pay gap, producing even greater financial disparity with men. 

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Read Double Trouble: The Ethnicity Gender Pay Gap

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Alesha De-Freitas, Head of Policy, Research and Advocacy at Fawcett Society, said:

The gender pay gap is closing at a glacial pace, but it doesn't tell the whole story, The ethnicity pay gap is creating a double trouble for Black and minoritised women in the UK. The figures that we have are so very stark - that women of Bangladeshi heritage are earning on average close to a third less per hour than white British men should be a national outrage. We need urgent intervention to start to close these huge gaps so that no woman, regardless of background, is left behind. Mandatory gender pay gap reporting has effectively exposed and driven action to close the pernicious gender pay gap, and we are urging government to make reporting on the basis of ethnicity mandatory as well. But we must go further, and ensure that companies with persistent gaps are required to publish action plans for closing them, and held to account when they do not.

Dianne Greyson, founder of the #EthnicityPayGap campaign, said:

The ethnicity pay gap is a real problem, which is why I've campaigned so hard on this issue. This Ethnicity Pay Gap Day, we must see employers committing to closing the gap. We need transparency and we need this Government to put in place mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting. Ultimately, unless companies know what their pay gap is and who it hits hardest then how can they begin to close it? We need more employers sharing knowledge and putting this issue at the top of their agenda and I'm looking forward to discussing this further at our ethnicity pay gap summit in February.

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Help us close the gender pay gap for good.

• Read our Equal Pay Day 2023 briefing: Making Flexible Work the Default 
• Learn more about the compounded effects of ethnicity and gender pay gaps for parents at work with our report The Ethnicity Motherhood Pay Penalty.