Gender Pay Gap
Companies are being urged to stop asking women about their salary history due to recent concerns of it keeping women on lower wages compared to men.
Reports show the gender pay gap has increased by more than 1% compared to 2020.
The Fawcett Society, the UK’s leading membership charity campaigning for gender equality and women’s rights at work, at home, and in public life, organises the annual campaign, Equal Pay Day, which this year took place on 18th November. This is the date when campaigners say women effectively start to work for free for the rest of the year as they are still on average paid less than men.
The gender pay gap is the difference between the average pay for men and women within a particular group or population.
According to Fawcett, in 2021, the full-time hourly gender pay gap for the UK is 11.9% an increase from 10.6% last year. Before the pandemic, in 2019, the figure was 13.1%.
The pay gap for all workers including both full-time and part-time is 14.9%. This has increased from last year’s reporting at 13.9%.
It is often thought that asking about salary history is now contributing to the pay gap as it can lead to ‘pay discrimination’ which is a breach of The Equality Act 2010.
This year, Office For National Statistics (ONS) reported that the gender pay among all employees was 15.4% up from 14.9% in April 2020 but still down from 17.4% in 2019.
A group from the Fawcett Society said:
“Three out of five women have been asked about salary history and believed it damaged their confidence to negotiate better pay, and it made them feel as though the low past salary was coming back to haunt them.”
Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society, Jemima Olchawski, said:
“At best salary history questions are annoying and our research shows asking them can damage an employer’s reputation. It can also mean pay discrimination follows women, people of colour, and people with disabilities throughout their career.”
According to the society survey, 2,200 adults suggested that one in four felt that pay should be based on the previous salary, compared to 80% for skills and responsibilities and 77% for the value of work produced.
The report added that the speed of change to close the gender pay gap was “glacial.”
East London Fawcett campaigner, Shobaa Haridas, added:
“Many employers have already ended this practice and we call on more employers to take our pledge.”
CEO of the Fawcett Society, Felicia Willow, has said that the pandemic has made collecting the necessary data very difficult to work out the gender pay gap for this year. The group will need to wait until furlough, data collection, and other issues have ended before we can be sure of what’s happened.
Comment
This week’s data suggests the pay gap for women is likely to be rising and there is action needed to stop this from continuing.
Therefore, this shows more needs to be done by the Government and employers to tackle its causes, such as discrimination and undervaluing the types of work women do.
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Laura Kearsley is a Partner in our expert Employment Law team.
For further information on the subjects discussed in this article or any related topics, please contact Laura or another member of the team in Derby, Leicester or Nottingham on 0800 024 1976 or via our online form.
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