Fawcett Society, a charity promoting gender equality and women’s rights, also argued that last month’s extension of this regulatory measure to include public sector employers is most welcome.
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The results were released as part of Equal Pay Day, the point in the year when the average woman effectively stops being paid compared to the average man.
She said: “There has never been a better opportunity to close the pay gap for good”.
Yep, even in 2015, women across the United Kingdom in full time employment earn 14.2 per cent less than men.
“Half or more of our workforce is made of women but we are still not progressing at the same level as men”, she added.
Looking at the top 10 per cent of earners, the gap in annual salaries between full-time men and women rises steadily through each percentile, hitting 45.9 per cent for the top 5 per cent of earners, and reaching 54.9 per cent for the top 2 per cent. Figures are not available for the top 1 per cent as the sample is too small. “Men dominate higher paying jobs, engineering, construction mining, and women dominate jobs like teaching and social work”, Bach explained.
But the progress has not been steady, as the gap widened from 2013 to 2014 by three days.
“It is shocking the United Kingdom still has such a large gender pay differences at the top of the labour market after more than four decades of equal pay and sex discrimination legislation”, said Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC.
“The message to women and men at work is – it’s OK to talk about pay”. We need pay transparency, equal pay audits and a requirement on companies to tackle gender inequality – or face fines.
The committee said that, while younger women in full-time work experienced a “very low or even reversed gender pay gap”, the gap for hourly earnings grew sharply from the age of 40 onwards. ‘We should be asking why a few companies can achieve 40% or more women on their boards while others have none.
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Make your own pledge for equal pay day using #paygappledle – tweeting or instagramming exactly what you plan to do, or what you think should happen, in order to reduce the Pay Gap.
