Care to down tools today? Well, you can put that Monday morning dread down to something much more political and right-on altogether. You see, today is the day that women effectively stop getting paid for the rest of the year.
The gender pay gap (for those in full-time work) is at 14.2%, meaning the average man earns that much more than the average woman. The upshot of this is that, from today, women are effectively working for free.
The gender pay gap day moves each year, according to how big the pay gap – for full time work, may we add, remember that plenty of women, especially mothers, work part time – is. The fact the date has been in November for the past few years is pretty telling.
Sure, things have got better, but it’s at such a slow rate that, if things were to get better at the rate they did from last year to this year, we’d be waiting 54 years for full gender pay equality, according to the Fawcett Society, reports* The Guardian*.
Sam Smethers, chief executive for the Fawcett Society, who worked out this date, said: ‘There has never been a better opportunity to close the pay gap for good. Progress has stalled in recent years but with real commitment from government and employers, together with action from women and men at work, we could speed up progress towards the day when we can consign it to history.’
And what’s the government doing? David Cameron has pledged to close the gender pay gap, getting top companies to publish the gender divide of salaries in their own offices.
That said, organisations like the Fawcett Society and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) have said he must go further – getting audits from other companies, and pushing for a real living wage, as 60% of people working under it are women.
Who knew a duvet day could be so political?
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.