Equal pay: Why can't we close the gap?

How much you get paid is one of those tricky, taboo subjects. It is definitely not something you reveal on a first date, nor does it make for comfortable pub chat with friends. So sensitive an issue is it that some of my coupled-up friends don’t even know the size of their significant other’s pay packet. Now, it seems that keeping schtum about your salary might be a wise romantic move, as new research by the ONS’s Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) claims that equal pay between the sexes is still more than 60 years away.

Adding to the gloom, further analysis of the data reveals that last year the gender pay gap widened for the first time since the Equal Pay Act was introduced in 1970. The grim statistics show that in April 2013, men earned £12.86 per hour and women £10.33, a gap of 19.7 per cent. This is an increase from 2012, when the gap was 19.6 per cent, with women paid £10.05 to men's £12.50. So, why after decades of progress, has the trend reversed?

The Labour Party think they have the answer—it’s all the fault of the Coalition/the Tories they claim, playing up the fact that polls show David Cameron has a “women problem” and fails to connect with female voters. As a result, Labour is now making a pledge to close the pay gap part of their 2015 election manifesto. This new position was laid out last Friday by the Shadow Women’s Minister Gloria de Piero, who, writing in The Independent, said: “The Tories are turning the clock back for women. More women are struggling to make work pay, earning less than the living wage and facing sky-high childcare costs. This isn't the progress our mothers, aunties and sisters fought for.”

While it’s true that the rate at which the pay gap has narrowed has slowed under the Coalition (under Labour it closed by an average of 0.55 per cent annually, which has fallen to just 0.31 per cent), it makes me uncomfortable when important and emotive issues of this nature are used as a means to lure voters. While this is a subject over which Labour can claim historic ownership, having introduced both the 1970 Equal Pay and the 2010 Equality Acts, the dragging of it back into the spotlight so close to an election, feels like a move founded more on strategy than conviction. Pointing the finger of blame at political rivals doesn’t go to the heart of why women are consistently being undervalued in the workplace.

“There has been silence on this issue from the three main political parties despite the evidence being available for the last three or four years that the old equal pay paradigm [of the gap narrowing] has stalled. We are now in reverse—it’s a time bomb which has finally exploded,” says author and campaigner Beatrix Campbell, whose latest book The End of Equality covers this subject in-depth. “Last month, the Liberal Democrats for reasons more to do with their differentiation rather than pro-women strategy, resurrected their last election promise on equal pay audits, “ continues Campbell. “Now, Labour has clearly thought ‘Ah yes, we’re going to make some pledges too.’”

One of the key factors fuelling the pay divide is the huge discrepancy between men and women in senior roles, especially in the City, where according to Campbell’s research the pay gap stands at a whopping 55 per cent. But, this is where it gets tricky because what we are really looking at is a “motherhood pay gap.” Women still take on the bulk of the childcare responsibilities, as a result a much larger proportion are in part-time roles with lower wages. According to the Office for National Statistics, the vast majority of British men in employment work full-time (86-87 per cent) compared to just over half of all women in employment (56-57 per cent). While some mothers happily choose to work part time, at least while their children are young, the problem is exacerbated when they attempt to return to full time work. “The really yawning pay gap has emerged by the time people start to have children. The gap becomes a chasm…our labour market is divided between mothers and everyone else.” states Campbell. According to a 2012 survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the pay gap between men and women with a full-time job triples from 7 per cent before starting a family to 21 per cent once a woman has children. Further evidence of the motherhood pay gap is to be found in the growing number of childless, unmarried women in their 40s (and presumably past childbearing age) who earn more than their male counterparts.

So, all that hard work and toil we put in in our 20s goes out the window the moment we start juggling childcare and other family-based responsibilities. But was it ever truly even? There is hot debate currently in feminist circles over the question of the “confidence gap”—do women hold ourselves back in the workplace by failing to be assertive when it comes to demanding pay rises? A new book by the American journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman puts forward the theory that an endemic lack of self-belief lies at the root of our failure to advance. It might be a generalisation, but there is truth in the fact that women are paranoid about being seen as pushy, while men are encouraged to be ballsy. In my experience there is a certain sense of gratitude among high-flying women which means they go above and beyond, without pushing for a pay rise.

Minister for Women and Equalities, Jo Swinson, recently put forward the view that a degree of “accidental sexism,” coupled with female squeamishness over demanding more money, is fuelling the gender pay gap. She told BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour: “Part of the pay gap is about discrimination, part of it is unintentional… Situations arise where men go in hard for higher pay and the women might not negotiate quite so hard, and you end up with unequal pay which is not by design. It's not through some desire to be sexist on behalf of the company.”

So, what should be done? A commitment to a set target on reducing the gender pay gap from the next government would be a good start, and would help reveal if real progress on gender diversity was being made. In June the Confederation of British Industry led the call for a national target designed to draw attention to the problem, just as Lord Davies’s 2011 review did to the lack of women on boards. Education is the key, as ever, with a need for better careers guidance in schools for girls, increased understanding of the benefits of flexible working, for both parents and businesses, and affordable childcare.

The Liberal Democrats' proposal to force companies to publish pay gap data, (which they have pledged to initiate if they form part of the next government), is welcome but long overdue. A voluntary version of this scheme was first introduced in 2011 called Think, Act, Report to which more than 200 firms signed up but from which only four published their gender pay gap and only two included different pay grades, which was the target of the scheme. It’s clear that tougher measures are needed.

There has been too much written on the pay gap over the decades, and too little progress made. It has slipped out of the spotlight, subsumed beneath a wave of trendy campaigns on issues such as No More Page 3 and Ban the Lads Mags. But unequal pay is one of the first and most fundamental of feminist fights—it is socially unjust, economically unsound, globally uncompetitive and politically naive. As pop music’s new first lady of feminism, Beyoncé, proclaimed: “Men have to demand that their wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters earn more—commensurate with their qualifications and not their gender. Equality will be achieved when men and women are granted equal pay and equal respect.”