Labour is launching a review of the gender pay gap to help the party “go further and faster” on eradicating the problem, as part of its plan to boost growth if it makes it into government.
The former Trades Union Congress (TUC) chief Frances O’Grady, a Labour peer, has been asked to lead the review amid concerns that under current trends it could take until 2044 to bring pay for men and women into line.
The average working woman earns 15% less than the typical working man, with women aged 50-59 enduring an even worse gender pay gap of 21%, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will announce that O’Grady will join her, Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, and the shadow equalities secretary, Anneliese Dodds, to try to remove the remaining barriers to equal pay at the TUC women’s conference on Wednesday.
O’Grady will investigate the root causes of wage gaps in Britain, and her report, which will be published later this year, will be used by Labour to develop further policies to support working parents, help employers eradicate unequal pay and review the parental leave system.
Reeves is expected to say that closing the gender pay gap would help a future Labour government secure its challenging mission of the highest sustained growth in the G7. She will add: “Barbara Castle’s Equal Pay Act in 1970 was groundbreaking in ensuring equal pay should be legally enforced across all sectors of the economy.
“She was clear it would be working-class women on the lowest pay who would benefit most from equal pay, and so it is today. Yet half a century later unequal pay claims persist while the gender pay gap is too great and progress has been too slow. I’m impatient and so are working women. We literally cannot afford to wait that long.”
O’Grady added: “Everyone deserves to be paid a fair rate for the job. Working part-time and shouldering caring responsibilities shouldn’t mean having to put up with low or unequal pay. But too often women’s work is underpaid and undervalued.
“At the current rate of progress it would take another 20 years to close the gender pay gap and women simply can’t afford to wait. My report aims to help Labour blow the lid off the state of unequal pay in Britain and set out the action we need to tackle it.”
