This year’s Equal Pay Day is set to fall two days earlier than it did in 2023, as the gender pay gap has widened for the first time since 2013.
The (slightly depressing) annual event marks the day when, based on the gender pay gap, women in the UK stop being paid compared to their male counterparts.
The Equal Pay Day campaign is run by the Fawcett Society, a charity that campaigns for gender equality and women’s rights.
Addressing the date change, the Fawcett’s Society’s chief executive Jemima Olchawski said: “It’s incredibly alarming to see the mean gender pay gap widen in 2024 and shows that, without concerted effort, most women won’t see equal pay in our working lifetime.
“Our government must commit to a cross-government strategy to shrink the gender pay gap by 2030 – women cannot wait any longer,’ she added.
Here’s what you need to know about Equal Pay Day.
When is Equal Pay Day and when was it last year?
This year, the day will fall on Wednesday, November 20 whereas, last year, it was on November 23.
This means, for the first time in 11 years, the gender pay gap – the difference between the average pay for men and women – in the UK has definitively widened.
What is the gender pay gap?
As the Fawcett Society explains, “The gender pay gap is the difference between the average hourly pay of women and men, as a proportion of men’s pay.”
Data on the gap has been produced for decades but it became easier for campaigners in the UK to figure out the numbers from 2017, when the government made it compulsory for all organisations with 250 employees or more to report their figures.
How is Equal Pay Day calculated?
The Fawcett Society handles the maths on working out when the day is each year, by using the mean, full-time, hourly gender pay gap for the UK.
This year, they say the overall gender pay gap in the UK is 11.3 per cent – up from 10.4 per cent in 2023.
The charity’s figure differs slightly from the one provided by the Official for National Statistics (ONS), which in October said the gender pay gap had reduced year-on-year. This is because the ONS uses the median percentage change for its figures, while the Fawcett Society uses the mean number.
Campaign group Close the Gap explains on its website: “Often, a median pay gap will be lower than its corresponding mean pay gap.
“The mean pay gap is calculated by adding all employees’ rates of pay together and dividing by the total number of employees.
“The mean includes all of the lowest and highest rates of pay, and therefore reflects the impact of the higher proportion of women working in lower paid roles, and the higher proportion of men in higher paid roles.”
The Fawcett Society said of its calculations: “We use mean, full-time, hourly pay to calculate the date of Equal Pay Day for the UK, since this figure captures the full impact of men being more likely to be very high earners.”
