Equality watchdog launches a probe into the gender pay gap
THE EQUALITY and Human Rights Commission is today launching a consultation on how private and voluntary sector employers with at least 250 staff can measure and report on their gender pay gap.
Women working full-time currently earn 17.1 per cent less per hour on average than men, with the gap failing to improve over the past three years. The difference in some sectors, such as finance, is much wider and the majority of organisations are not aware of their own gender pay gap.
Chair of the Commission Trevor Philips said: “The pay gap between men and women is not just a moral issue, it is an economic issue. For markets to function and businesses to deliver, reward needs to be fairly distributed.”
It added while there have been individual legal cases to challenge inequality these have “failed to generate systematic action to tackle the underlying causes of the pay gap.”