A gender equality charity has said that women should have the right to know what their male colleagues are being paid should they suspect pay discrimination. It comes on Equal Pay Day, which marks the day that women effectively begin to work for free until the end of the year as on average hourly pay, we earn 86.9% of what men do according to the Office for National Statistics.
The suggestion was made by the Fawcett Society as part of their #RightToKnow campaign to change the law around pay secrecy by giving women a legal right to know what their male colleagues earn if they believe there is a lack of pay parity.
‘Pay secrecy means women cannot know if they are being paid equally and fairly,’ chief executive Sam Smethers said in a press release. ‘Even if they do suspect a man is earning more it is almost impossible to do anything about it. This is why we are calling for a change in the law. Women need an enforceable ‘Right to Know’ what their colleagues earn so that they can challenge unequal pay.’
Adding that ‘men can help by simply telling their female colleagues what they earn,’ the charity says that having the right to know will ‘reduce waste in the court system and head off legal action by encourages employers to settle cases before they get to court.’
Currently, 60% of women either do not know what their male colleagues earn or believe they’re earning less for the same job. Four in ten women did know what their male colleagues earn and reported they were paid more.
Of course, it’s not just about being financially rewarded, it’s also about feeling valued at work. According to the Fawcett Society’s research, 42% of women who found out they’re paid less than male counterparts felt undervalued and 33% felt less motivated. Of all the women, only 23% understood the reasons they were paid less.
And it’s pay secrecy that contributes to that confusion, as so many employees feel that discussing pay at work is a taboo subject. In fact, it’s completely illegal to prevent employees talking about salaries. According to the 2010 Equality Act, employees have the right to discuss pay for the purposes of collective bargaining or protection – meaning you cannot be disciplined for discussing pay.
Employees have the right to discuss pay for the purposes of collective bargaining or protection
‘Employers sometimes believe that there are rules around confidentiality when employees discuss pay,’ Jane Crosby, Partner at Hart Brown Solicitor told Grazia. ‘But unless there is a secrecy clause written into their contracts, this is not the case and even then pay secrecy clauses are unenforceable for the purposes of determining equal pay so employers may have to disclose the pay of this person.’
Essentially, any notion that you can’t discuss pay is a work culture problem, not a legitimate work policy. But how does it happen? It is really this insidious sexist culture to keep women from fighting for equal pay, or is there more to it?
According to HR Advisor Lucinda Aspinall, it’s also to do with company morale if employees fail to understand the reasons for pay discrepancies.
‘There are a number of different things that effect an employees pay,’ she tells Grazia. ‘For example, where they are based; their responsibilities; the amount of people reporting into them; their years’ service; their previous experience – it goes on. Most salaries are negotiable to a point and when employees start discussing their salaries they don’t usually get a full picture so it can be really bad for morale.
‘Many employees will just think “we do the same job, yet X gets X more than me” when in many circumstances there is a reason for the difference,’ Aspinall added.
Of course, prejudice against women can feed into all of those things. Men are more likely to be promoted faster, may be given more responsibility or staff that their female counterparts and could have more experience due to their many privileges in life. It goes to show that the gender pay gap has a number of causes that cannot be corrected with one simple policy change or law.
More than that, while pay transparency may be bad for morale in cases where a lack of parity is valid, surely that’s an issue for managers to then address with employees and improve morale through further transparency. After all, it is surely their job to have a simple conversation explaining the differences between employees jobs.
It goes to show that while there are clearly a number of nuanced conversations to be had about tackling the gender pay gap, this change in the law could be an important step in having one of them. It might not solve the entire problem, but it is absolutely a start.
To find out more about the Fawcett Society's campaign, click here.
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