This Wednesday, the 20 November 2024, was Equal Pay Day. It’s a national campaign led by the Fawcett Society, a UK charity championing gender equality and women’s rights at work.
Equal Pay Day marks the day in the year when - based on the UK’s mean, full-time, hourly gender pay gap - women overall in the UK stop being paid compared to men. So, in real terms, the average woman in the UK stops being paid on 20 November for doing work of a comparable value to the average man, who gets paid up until the end of the year.
UK in a global context
According to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2024 Global Gender Gap report the UK’s global gender pay gap ranking has risen one place from 15th to 14th out of the 146 countries (Iceland, Finland, Norway, New Zealand and Sweden have the smallest gender pay gaps), and yet the gap between the average pay of men and women has widened this year for the first time since 2013, up to 11.3% from 10.4% in 2023.
Legislation is still in the early days. The Equality Act 2010 required employers to pay men and women doing a similar job the same amount of money and in 2017 gender pay gap reporting was first made mandatory. But change is slow and societal issues still probably lie at the root cause.
The overall difference in average earnings between men and women comes down to the distribution of roles: more men at the top and more women at the bottom. Before the age of 40 the gender pay gap is almost unnoticeable, but the ‘motherhood penalty’ is still creating an issue at both ends of the workplace. At the top, female leaders leave. At the bottom, women seeking greater work-life balance to shoulder most of the unpaid caring responsibilities are concentrated in part-time, lower-paid roles.
How can we copy Scandinavia and drive meaningful change?
Gender Parity Accelerators – Gender Parity Accelerator (GPA) is a phrase coined by the World Economic Forum to describe big policy, macro decisions implemented at a national level. There are currently 14 GPAs in action and Iceland’s radical new policies on shared parental leave and accessible childcare have had a profound impact on gender equality, shooting them to the top of the Gender Parity list. Can the UK follow suit?
Improving Gender Pay reporting – there are still glaring anomalies in the way gender pay data is recorded and processed, most obviously in the number of employees needed before companies are forced to comply. Getting more granular, the government could look to standardise measures and uncloud the picture, for example look at when data is collected (pre- or post-tax) and for whom (company partners are currently exempt).
Parent-friendly policies - since the pandemic, hybrid working patterns are enabling greater flexibility, but part-time workers are still less likely to gain the same progression. Looking at leave, enhanced maternity leave lets women take motherhood in their professional stride, and better paternity leave can empower fathers to take on more of the childcare.
Job levelling and evaluation - Investment in job levelling or job evaluation allows managers and HR to evaluate roles and slot them into levels, demonstrating equal value in a robust, consistent way. HR can then track new recruits, for example comparing how a man and a woman starting in the same role on the same day progress over time.
Equal Pay Audits – there is now a far greater acceptance that pay secrecy allows gaps to flourish – we need to constantly review our policies and procedures for fairness: starting salaries, promotions and pay increases, rate of progression. Is sound logic and objectivity being applied to all these things, even when flight risks are considered?
Equal Pay Day is a timely annual reminder that we need to apply policy pressure both on a societal level and a company level. As HR professionals, we need to empower our leaders with the knowledge and tools to shape policy that enable greater flexibility around hours, leave, training and development. Then, and only then, will we move towards true pay parity.
