Still a long way to go on pay equality

Nov 2 2009 Kevin Rowan, The Journal

THE TUC joined a number of equality organisations last week in commemorating ‘equal pay day’.

Despite the Equal Pay Act being 40 years old, women are continuing to endure low pay compared to men. On average, women working full time earn 17.1% less than men who are working full time. This disparity rises to 20% for black minority ethnic workers and a staggering 36% when considering part-time workers – the vast majority of whom are women. In the North East the average pay gap is 16.4%, but with massive intra-regional variation.

The Equality Bill going through Parliament will be a welcome further attempt to tackle inequality. The new Bill, however, doesn’t introduce mandatory equal pay audits on employers, something the TUC and equality groups campaigned for, but the business community opposed, anxious about ‘burdensome red tape’. The Bill will place much stronger equality duties on public sector agencies, though, as well as on their procurement processes, meaning private sector companies contracting with the public sector will also need to demonstrate good equality practices.

The fact that there has been equal pay legislation for two generations and women still endure significant discrimination in pay and opportunity would indicate the seriousness of the challenge. Unequal pay at work does reflect broader social inequality. Only 4% of the country’s top business executives are women and more than 80% of Members of Parliament are men.

There remain significant cultural and institutional barriers. There is a lack of good quality, affordable childcare combined with a lack of flexible working opportunity; there are real challenges for women seeking to juggle caring and work in a culture where women still do the vast majority of caring, either for children or for older relatives.

The cultural aspects are changing, men are doing more domestic chores and spend more time with young children – but the pace is slow. And when parents make choices about who should take a break from work to care for young children it is the usually lower paid women who take on that role.

Getting equality right at work, therefore, would be a major contribution to getting equality right outside the workplace too.

Kevin Rowan is Regional Secretary, Northern TUC