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, has confirmed that the UK Equal Pay Day will fall on 20th November for the year 2020. This marks the day when women symbolically stop getting paid compared to their male colleagues for the same job. Equal Pay Day highlights the work that has been done during the previous year to bridge this gap, whilst also raising awareness and formulating plans for the upcoming year to further reduce the inequality and pay discrimination across all employment sectors both in the UK, and further afield.
WHAT IS PAY DISCRIMINATION?
Equal pay applies to all contractual terms. This includes basic pay, overtime, performance-related benefits, and access to pension schemes to name a few. The right to equal pay also extends further to different work arrangements for those who do work personally, personal and public office-holders, and apprentices. It does not matter how long they have been employed or whether they have a full time, part time, fixed term, zero hours, or casual contract. Pay discrimination is said to have taken place when one employee is paid less than a comparator for ‘equal work’ on the basis of a protected characteristic – such as sex or the gender with which they identify.
EQUAL PAY PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW
In the UK, equal pay law is covered by the Equality Act 2010 and Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) statutory code of practice on equal pay which states that all employees in the same employment performing equal work must receive equal pay, unless any difference in pay can be justified.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission state that ‘material factors’ can provide such justification for employers. The material factor must not put women as a group at a particular disadvantage compared to men, unless:
the employer has a legitimate aim in applying the material factor i.e. a real need that is not discriminatory;
applying the material factor is a proportionate (appropriate and reasonably necessary) way to achieve that aim.
Differences in pay and other terms and conditions might be allowed under certain circumstances. For example, it might be possible for someone to be paid more than someone of the opposite sex who does similar work because:
· they're better qualified, if their skills are crucial to the job and hard to recruit;
· of where they are located – for example, in London where the cost of living is higher;
· they do night shifts, and the employer can prove that they can only cover night shifts by paying staff more.
OBJECTIVE JOB EVALUTATIONS – NO MORE ‘WOMENS WORK.’
As awareness around the pay gap grows and employers begin to actively address these issues, a need has emerged to evaluate jobs, and their value in terms of pay, using a gender-neutral criteria. This allows us to address the gender pay gap as a systemic issue and highlights how women are often restricted to commercially under-valued sectors such as care and domestic employment, even though these sectors require high levels of commitment and responsibility as well as a varied skill set. To effectively tackle the gender pay gap it is essential to discuss pay inequality across different sectors and occupations, as well as within them. Only by doing this can we understand how intersectionality impacts the pay gap.
Fawcett has published research into the intersecting pay gaps that women of colour experience in the UK, such as the 19.6% full-time mean pay gap Black women experience compared with White men. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has also addressed the importance of intersectionality in their own findings. For example, their data indicates that in 2019, ethnic minority men earned 6.1% less than White men whilst the hourly pay of ethnic minority women was 2.1% more than White women.
Federal Pay Equality Commissioner for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Karen Jensen, explains Canada’s approach to equal pay for work of equal value using a gender-neutral, non-discriminatory, job evaluation tool. This tool assesses skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions to determine and compare the value of jobs to produce a well-rounded and comprehensive evaluation of ‘equal work for equal pay.’
INTERNATIONAL EQUAL PAY DAY – 18th SEPTEMBER 2020
International Equal Pay Day was celebrated by the United Nations for the first time this year on the 18th September. The UN declared it to be a representation of their longstanding efforts towards the achievement of equal pay for work of equal value. Across all regions women are paid less than men, with the estimated global gender pay gap currently at 23 per cent.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres made a statement to commemorate the first international equal pay day declaring that women’s unequal status at work “feeds inequality” in other areas of their lives. He also continued to say that equal pay laws have failed to address the problem so far and he instead called for greater efforts to be made to find more effective solutions. The United Nations General Assembly also supported action being taken to reach the goal of equal pay for work of equal value for all, and encouraged all stakeholders to continue to support the goal of equal pay for work of equal value.
In order to ensure that no one is left behind, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) address the need to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls and the mainstreaming of a gender perspective is crucial in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) is led by the ILO, UN Women, and partners. The Coalition’s goal is to achieve equal pay for women and men everywhere. EPIC is currently the only multi-stakeholder partnership working to reduce the gender pay gap at the global, regional and national levels.
EU EQUAL PAY DAY: 10th NOVEMBER 2020
In the EU, women are hourly paid 14.1% less than men on average - this equals almost two months of salary. The European Commission marks 10 November as a symbolic day to raise awareness that female workers in Europe still earn on average less than their male colleagues.
A joint statement was made by Věra Jourová Vice-President for Values and Transparency, Nicolas Schmit Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights and Helena Dalli Commissioner for Equality which outlined the EU’s position on equal pay for equal work and highlighted the importance of raising awareness of this issue;
Women and men are equal…This is not only unfair. It is against what this Union stands for. It has been more than 60 years since the right to equal pay was enshrined in the EU Treaties. At the current rate, it would take decades, or even centuries, to achieve equality. This is not acceptable; we must accelerate and reduce this pay gap to zero.
12 EU countries (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Estonia, France, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Portugal, Spain and Sweden) organise an Equal Pay Day one day a year, according to the respective Gender Pay Gap in their country and to raise awareness through talks, press conferences and public debate.
UK EQUAL PAY DAY – 20TH NOVEMBER 2020
In the UK people have campaigned for many years to obtain financial equality. The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1970 but not implemented until January 1976. During the years in between, employers tried to evade the Act by changing women’s job titles to justify the unequal wages for men and women who were doing exactly the same roles. Further campaigning has occurred since this date and has resulted in some progress being made, such as the implementation of the Equality Act 2010.
However, the annual Equal Pay Day in the UK is a reminder that there is still a lot of work to be done before equal pay for equal work can be truly achieved. Such as the work of The Fawcett Society who have just recently proposed an Equal Pay Bill, which would give women who suspect they are not getting equal pay the “Right to Know” what a male colleague doing the same work is paid. This bill being introduced as a result of their own research which indicated that only 3 in 10 (31%) working women agreed that their employer would tell them if their male colleagues earned more for the same work, if they asked.
UK GENDER PAY GAP 2020 (2019 FIGURES IN BRACKETS)
· Mean hourly pay gap for full-time workers – 11.5% (13.1%)
· Mean hourly pay gap for all workers (full-time plus part-time) – 14.6% (16.3%)
· Median hourly pay gap for full-time workers – 7.4% (9.0%)
· Median hourly pay gap for all workers (full-time plus part-time) – 15.5% (17.4%)
Whilst the reduction in the Gender Pay Gap is to be celebrated, these figures are not to be taken and relied upon at face value. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) faced issues when collating and collecting data for this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The true impact of changes in employment styles, working from home and furlough are still unknown, as the ASHE questionnaire was written prior to the furlough scheme being introduced. The ONS then provided further guidance for employers when the scheme was announced which instructed employers with furloughed employees to provide the pay received form their organisation’s payroll, and to provide the number of hours the employee normally works in that pay period. Despite this, one consequence is currently known, the usual sample of employed pay data is missing this year which equates to 44,000 out of 180,000 employers in total compared to the previous year’s data.
HOURLY PAY IS ONLY PART OF THE PICTURE
The gender pay gap, and its statistical breakdown, does not capture the whole picture. These numbers do not factor in the number of women who have reduced their working hours, lost their jobs, or left the labour force. Women are more likely to work in the sectors most affected by COVID-19 lockdowns (retail, childcare, restaurants and hospitality), and take on greater responsibilities for home-schooling and childcare as a result. These are unprecedented times for all employers and employees alike. As a result, we cannot fully determine the true impact of the current climate on the Gender Pay Gap, nor can we predict the consequences that this will have now, and in the future.
Olivia is part of the Human Rights Pulse team. She publishes online content and manages subscriber communications as part of the Social Media and Marketing Team. Olivia achieved a Very Competent for the BPTC LLM and hopes to be called to the Bar of England and Wales in the near future.