Rising Pay Gap Means Women Will Work for Free Till 2015

Equal Pay Day fell 3 days earlier than last year as the gender pay gap continues to rise. This year, the day women start working for free fell on 4th November. Sarah has joined Labour in calling for action to deliver equal pay for hard working women. In Rotherham, the gender pay gap is almost 20%, with Yorkshire ranked fifth worst in the country for wage inequality between men and women.

Together with Labour colleagues, if elected in 2015, Sarah has pledged to demand companies with over 250 employees publish their hourly pay gaps. Families with working parents will also be offered 25 hours of free childcare and the bedroom tax, which makes nearly 2,000 women in Rotherham worse off, will be scrapped.

Under the proposed new rules, women at work would be empowered to discover if discrimination exists themselves, with annual reports containing figures on salaries as well as data showing if all the top jobs are still dominated by men.

Sarah commented:

Equal pay is long overdue. Under the coalition the wage gap between men and women has got worse. Women now effectively work 57 days for free. Years of progress in gender equality are being reversed, reducing family incomes further even as they struggle under the weight of rising prices.

A fair society is one in which people are paid the same wage for the same work. But in Rotherham, women in the workplace are being short-changed. Women earn only 80p for every £1 that men get, despite doing the same work. These proposals will empower working women to demand equal pay, by requiring employers to publish their pay gap data.