women in london

a directory of london based women's groups

and news of their work and activities

WiL menu

WiL Groups:

WiL site:

External:

other info:

calendars:

links to WiL:

Helplines:

Return to:

Notices and Press Releases

Fawcett : Good news for women golfers, but what about equal pay?
Government proposals 'tinkering at the edges'

Women hoping that the Government would take strong action to close the pay gap have been let down today (12th June 2007), according to the Fawcett Society.

The Government today publishes its Discrimination Law Review green paper(1), the long-awaited review of discrimination legislation, which many hoped would properly tackle deep-rooted and serious problems such as the gender pay gap(2).

Fawcett welcomes some of the proposals in the paper, but discussion about golf club rules is a distraction from the much bigger issue of equal pay for women. It is disappointing that the Government has failed to grasp the nettle and take the kind of radical action needed to close pay gaps.

Dr Katherine Rake, Director of the Fawcett Society said:

"This might be good news for women who play golf, but for the millions more who just want to be paid equally it's a distraction.

"At the current rate of change, it's going to take 140 years until women are paid equally - and the Government has missed a huge opportunity to speed that up. This is tinkering at the edges."

Fawcett proposals

Fawcett brought together leading legal and employment experts to lay out clear recommendations for reforming discrimination law(3). Their key recommendations were to prevent discrimination happening in the first place and to make it easier for problems to be resolved when they arise, for instance by:

• Making pay audits mandatory for all employers
• Banning the dismissal of women who are pregnant, on maternity leave or within six months of returning from maternity leave(4)
• Making it easier for group actions to be brought so it's not up to individuals to take risks
• Giving greater powers to equality watchdogs and employment tribunals

Notes

1. The green paper can be read by clicking on this link
2. Women working full-time are paid on average 17% less per hour than men working full-time and part-time women are paid 38% less (Office for National Statistics, 2006)
3. http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=126
4. http://www.eoc.org.uk/PDF/suffer_summary.pdf