Cameron pledges to end pay inequality ‘within a generation’
The government is pushing ahead with plans to compel large companies to publish data on the pay gap between male and female employees in their organisation.
The measure – first added to the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill by the coalition government– will “cast sunlight on the discrepancies and create the pressure we need for change, driving women’s wages up,” Prime Minister David Cameron said in an article for The Times.
A consultation has been launched to look at the detail of how the new gender pay gap regulations will be designed, including what, where and when information will be published.
It will also collect views on what more can be done to encourage girls to consider the widest range of careers, support parents returning to work and help women of all ages reach their full potential and have the security of a well-paid job, a government statement read.
Cameron said companies with more than 250 employees will be subject to gender pay audits from the first half of 2016 onwards, and the consultation would determine how quickly this could be enforced across the country.
The announcement comes as it was announced that the UK has reached Lord Davies’ target of 25 per cent female representation on FTSE 100 boards.
Writing in The Times, Cameron said the introduction of the national living wage in last week’s Emergency Budget, would primarily help women, “who tend to be in lower paid jobs”.
But Dr Clare Lyonette, from the University of Warwick’s Institute for Employment Research, said there was still a long way to go.
“The legislation needs to ensure transparency and a real culture change within organisations, otherwise this may become just another tick-box exercise,” she said.
“There are also additional issues to address to ensure that women do not fall behind men in the workplace, such as the quality of part-time jobs and the full-time/part-time pay gap; the prohibitive costs of childcare; and any residual gender discrimination within organisations, whereby women are seen to be less committed to work than men.”
Adam Marshall, executive director of external affairs and policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, said not all companies would cheer the introduction of compulsory gender pay gap reporting, “because it reduces it to a few headline statistics”.
And Tim Thomas, head of employment policy at EEF, urged the government to allow businesses flexibility and time to tackle the “complex” issues surrounding pay.
Ann Pickering, HR director at O2, welcomed the progress made so far but said thousands of women were yet to see the progress in their place of work.
“If we are to achieve sustainable and long-lasting change we can’t just look at those already at the top in the UK’s biggest businesses; instead we need to focus our efforts on women at every level, in every business. Only then will we be able to truly harness the skills, leadership potential and vision of the UK’s very best employees,” she said.
The CIPD has conducted a literature review to discuss the pros and cons of gender quotas to enforce change. Read the full review here: http://www.cipd.co.uk/publicpolicy/eu-briefings/gender-diversity-boards-quota-systems.aspx