Gender Equality - 100 Years after the Suffragette Movement, Has Much Changed?
It is 100 years since the 1918 Representation of the People Act granted the right to vote to women aged over 30 in the UK and Ireland.
In 1970, the Equal Pay Act came into force, at a time when it was not uncommon for women to be paid a lower wage than their male counterparts for the same job.
Yet almost fifty years on, tribunals around the country are dealing with an excess of 10,400 equal pay claims a year.
An equal pay claim arises where a woman performs either 'like work', 'work rated as equivalent' or 'work of an equal value' to a male (or vice versa) but receives lower pay. Employers generally justify the difference in pay as a result of a material factor, which is not based on sex. Every equal pay claim is judged on its own particular facts, normally involving an analysis of the role in question for the purposes of determining which factors are 'material'.
Since 4 April 2018, employers with more than 250 staff are required to report gender pay gap figures. To date, the reporting seems to indicate that women are generally paid less than their male counterparts. The reporting also raises questions about the percentage of women being promoted to senior positions. Unless the pay differential can be justified, local employers face claims for back pay, whilst failure to promote on the grounds of sex also gives rise to claims of sex discrimination.
We have come a long way since the Equal Pay Act was introduced in 1970, but the recent tribunal statistics on equal pay claims and the gender pay gap reporting suggests there is still a way to go.