Labour must champion genuine efforts to bridge wage disparities between men and women, while challenging bogus Tory initiatives
NEWS reports of a widening pay gap between men and women in Britain – 2 per cent up from last year’s figures – should shock the Labour Party into making this issue of equality a top policy priority.
However at a time of economic instability, when disparity in wages is leaving women and their families even poorer than they should be, it is frighteningly not Labour but the Tories who are heading up a campaign on equal pay.
But this Tory campaign, “Fair Play on Women’s Pay,” is a farce. Labour and its supporters should be quick to point this out. Last week, all the Conservative MEPs refused to vote for European Union recommendations to reduce the gender gap and voted down a number of amendments, such as compulsory pay audits, which strengthened the EU’s report on the subject. This shows that the Tories sing from separate hymn sheets, depending on whether they are actually voting for legislation or just talking about it.
In a comment piece written last year on the gender pay gap issue, Shadow Leader of the House of Commons Theresa May said: “We would tighten the existing [equal pay] law and, indeed, strengthen it further.” She also called for “a proper analysis of its causes and intelligent, targeted solutions”. All this sounds very similar to the gender pay gap report which was passed by the European Parliament last week. Tory MEPs abstained on the vote that called for a review and analysis of all member states’ existing legislation on the application of equal pay to establish best practices for reducing the gap and increasing social dialogue on the issue.
Not only did Tory MEPs refuse to vote for the EU report, they also voted down a number of amendments, including one to name and shame employers who are guilty of pay discrimination.
Among British parties in the European Parliament, only UKIP, which cast its votes on the same lines as the founder of the French National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, voted against the European Union’s gender pay gap report. But this is still is a stark reminder of how closely aligned to the far right the Tories behave when abroad.
While all this is very well and good in showing up the Conservatives, it still doesn’t help the British women who make up 46 per cent of the country’s workforce, but miss out on wages amounting to £369,000 over their lifetime due to sexist payroll structures.
Championing the work of the European Commission and the European Parliament to tackle the gender pay gap, which the European socialist parties are doing, is a good way to push forward legislation on this issue.
But better still, Labour activists need to strip gender pay gaps down to their local levels, by borough and region, to engage with local media, employers and voters on this issue. Such an approach will enable the party’s grassroots supporters, councillors and MPs to get people talking about why women are paid less, put pressure on employers and push the issue up the Government’s policy agenda.
Employers are often guilty of doubly discriminating against women, both on the grounds of gender and ethnicity. London, my constituency, has the biggest population of people who describe themselves as from an ethnic minority (according to the 2001 census), And at 23.4 per cent, the capital has the biggest gender pay gap of all areas in the country.
London’s dependency on the financial sector – statistically the worst area for gendered wage discrimination – is also a big contributor to the city’s record of having the highest gender pay gap in the country. According to figures worked out by my office and agreed by the Office for National Statistics, the capital’s financial district – the City of London – is the worse of all the boroughs with a pay gap of 31.9 per cent.
Across regions and even between boroughs, differences between men and women’s pay differs immensely. For example, my figures show that women working in the London Borough of Islington face a gender pay gap of 28.2 per cent, whereas those in the London Borough of Sutton face one of just 2.4 per cent. Working out and addressing the reasons behind these discrepancies should be a key component of any local Labour campaign – especially as a recent MORI survey revealed that 85 per cent of men and 93 per cent of women said the Government needs to do more to ensure women are paid the same as men for doing jobs that require the same or similar levels of skill.
The Labour Party cannot allow the Conservatives to dominate the headlines on championing equal pay. Women’s groups, such as the Fawcett Society, which have traditionally attracted more left-wing supporters, are criticising current legislation on equal pay and backing Tory campaigns. We have to fight back.
I will make the figures for all of the country’s individual boroughs’ pay gaps available
on my website, www.maryhoneyball.net, next week. Please use them to make tackling the gender pay gap a number one Labour priority – not just in Parliament but d with grassroots supporters, campaigners and voters, too – so Labour at home and abroad can be proud to say that we put paid to the gender pay gap.
Mary Honeyball is a Labour MEP for London
