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Notices and Press Releases

Fawcett : New Government action on pay gap good - but not good enough

2nd April 2007 marked the first anniversary of the long-awaited Women and Work Commission report, which looked at what could be done to close the gender pay gap and make the workplace fairer for women employees.

Marking the anniversary Ruth Kelly, Minister for Women announced Government financial support for organisations to create more quality part-time quality part time jobs at senior level. To read more about this, see the link on the right hand side of this page.

Fawcett welcomes this move; the part-time pay gaps are even bigger and even more stubborn that full-time pay gaps and the lack of quality jobs that are offered on a part-time basis is a major reason. But we are still disappointed that the Government has not adopted some of the stronger tactics we think are needed to close pay gaps as soon as possible.

Commenting one year on from the launch of the Women and Work Commission report, Dr Katherine Rake, Director of the Fawcett Society, said:

“Women will judge this Government on its ability to deliver equal pay now - and will sadly find it wanting. While many Government initiatives are welcome, they take will years to make a difference. Meanwhile women will continue to be shortchanged. It’s high time for Government to act decisively and adopt the stronger measures that Fawcett is proposing.”

Fawcett has set out clear steps the Government should take on the pay gap including:

• Compulsory pay audits for all organisations in order to reveal pay inequalities. As the pay gap is wider in the private sector than the public sector, it is important that audits are introduced to the private sector as a matter of urgency.
• Full sign-up to the Working Time Directive and other steps to tackle our long hours working culture, which limits the ability of women with caring responsibilities to compete on an equal basis with men.
• Government and employers to encourage men - not just women - to engage with work-life balance issues.
• Urgent action to tackle those women facing the greatest inequality in the workplace, particularly some groups of Black and Minority Ethic women. For instance, for Bangladeshi and Pakistani women the pay gap is even bigger - they earn 44% less per hour than white men.
• The Government to adopt gender equality as a specific target and set dates for closing the pay gap.