Most UK women from minority ethnic backgrounds have already stopped earning two months before Equal Pay Day, a new analysis by the Labour party shows, renewing calls for the government to introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reports.
Last year, 18 November was marked by Fawcett Society as Equal Pay Day, the day in the year where the average woman stopped earning relative to the average male worker because of the gender pay gap.
New analysis of ONS data by Labour, released to coincide with Black History Month, shows Equal Pay Day for Black African women falls on 27 September (a 26% pay gap compared with the average male worker), and 19 September for Bangladeshi women (a 28% gap). Pakistani women had the worst gender pay gap, with Equal Pay Day falling on 8 September (a 31% gap).
The data also added that Black Caribbean women earned 18% less on average than men, making 26 October Equal Pay Day for them in the UK.
The data for Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) women was calculated by taking the median hourly pay and percentage difference between hourly earnings with employees by gender, using the most recent ONS published dataset from October 2020.
Anneliese Dodds, the shadow women and equalities minister, called on the government to “get a grip” on racial inequality in the cost of living crisis, and to back Labour’s policy of introducing mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting.
“The pay gap for all women is already bad enough; disturbingly, these figures show it’s even worse for many Black, Asian and minority ethnic women,” Dodds said. “It’s no surprise that so many Black women are struggling with the cost of living crisis when many earn a fifth less than men.”
In 2017, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) analysis of the 3.1 million BAME workers in the UK found they were much more likely than white workers to be in insecure jobs, such as zero-hours contracts.
Referring to that research, Dodds added: “It is clear that this Tory government has completely failed to get a grip on racial inequality.”
Doreen Lawrence, the chair of Labour’s Race Equality Act taskforce, said the figures were “shocking evidence” of systemic inequalities affecting BAME communities, which she had expressed concerns about during the Covid-19 pandemic. “Two years ago I highlighted the systemic inequality which led to Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities being disproportionately impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic,” Lady Lawrence said. “These figures provide further shocking evidence of those inequalities.”
Last year, on the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, Keir Starmer promised to introduce a race equality act to address inequalities exposed by the coronavirus pandemic. Unlike gender pay gap reporting, ethnicity pay gap reporting is voluntary.
From October 2018 to January 2019, the government ran a consultation on the introduction of mandatory ethnicity pay reporting.
In February, the women and equalities select committee (WEC) urged the government to introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting by April 2023 for all organisations that currently report for gender.
In its response, the government said it would not mandate ethnicity pay reporting, citing “significant statistical and data issues”. It also said that it “may not be the most appropriate tool for every type of employer seeking to ensure fairness in the workplace”.
Caroline Nokes MP, the Conservative chair of the WEC, described the government’s decision at the time as “nonsensical”, and said the response was less about dwindling resources and more about a lack of “will or care to foster a fairer and more equal society”.
