Equal Pay Day

Despite the fact that the UK’s Equality of Pay Act was passed over forty years ago in 1963, male workers still earn 16.4% more per hour than their female equivalents.

2nd November 2010 is Equal Pay Day over here in the UK and the date was chosen because the disparity in remuneration is equivalent to men working all year round and women working for free after 2nd November every year.

The pay gap varies across sectors and regions, rising to 55% in the financial sector and up to 33.3% in the City of London.

64% of the lowest paid workers are women, contributing to both women and child poverty.

There are almost four times as many women in part-time work than men and part-time workers are more likely to receive lower hourly rates of pay than those who work full-time.

Nine out of ten lone parents are women. The median gross weekly pay for male single parents is £346, while for their female counterparts it is £194.4.

The Fawcett Society are calling upon the Government to implement the Equality Act 2010 in full, including section 78 which will make it obligatory for employers with more than 250 staff to publish information about their gender pay gap from 2013.

The feeling is that bringing any discrepancies out into the open would make them more likely to be addressed than when they can be shrouded in secrecy.

Despite the fact that ‘Made in Dagenham‘, a film about the Ford plant’s female machinists’ struggle for equal pay in 1968 – a strike that led to the Equal Pay Act of 1970 – was in the cinema recently, even today, female council workers in Birmingham discovered that those working in male-dominated areas, such as gardening, had received a bonus of up to 160% but that this had not been extended to sectors where females were more prevalent.

The Fawcett Society says that legislation on equal pay is back to front with the responsibility to ensure equal pay resting with female employees challenging their employers when they discover discrepancies, rather than employers ensuring that their staff are remunerated fairly for the job done with no reference to the gender of the person doing the work.

Various awareness raising events will be held around the UK, using “Think we’re equal – think again!” postcards, and asking supporters to sign the petition urging the coalition government to implement the 2010 Equality Act in full.

Sign the petition

Read more about the campaign of the Fawcett Society on Equal Pay Day

In the States, women are urged to wear red on the next Equal Pay Day on Tuesday, April 12, 2011. This date symbolizes how far into 2011 women must work to earn what men earned in 2010 and the campaign date was originated by the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) in 1996 as a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men’s and women’s wages.