Equal Pay Day 2024: How can your business help achieve equal pay?

This year, 20 November marks Equal Pay Day. Our team of employment law experts look into what it highlights and how businesses can help tackle the issues surrounding the gender pay gap.

What does ‘Equal Pay Day’ mean?

The Fawcett Society has calculated that, from 20 November 2024, women in the UK will stop earning for the remainder of the year on the basis of the gender pay gap.

The gender pay gap is the difference between the average hourly pay of women and men, as a proportion of men’s pay. The gap is attributable to several factors, including pay discrimination, women’s unequal share of caring responsibilities, the motherhood penalty, undervaluing of jobs women are more likely to undertake and failure to promote women.

The average pay of men and women has been significantly different throughout history, and whilst it has been steadily improving, we have seen a larger margin this year for full-time workers (11.3% difference) compared with 2023 (10.4% difference). This amounts to an additional two full days of the year that women will lose out on pay compared with last year. Since 2013, this is the first time that we have seen a backwards step with regards to the pay differential.

What can employers do to help achieve equal pay?

Despite it being 2024, it is clear that there is still a long way to go to close the gender pay gap. Key ways that employers can help to reduce the gender pay gap are:

• paying equal pay for equal work
• accommodating flexible working requests to enable those with children/care duties to work in a way which accommodates those additional responsibilities
• when considering candidates for promotion/recruitment that they are assessing them against objective criteria to eliminate any form of bias in this regard.

Sources:
The Gender Pay Gap Explained

If you have any questions about the gender pay gap, or are wondering how is best for your business to tackle the issue of unequal pay, please get in touch with our team of employment law experts.

Our Legal 500-rated employment law team are experts in guiding businesses of all sizes and backgrounds through a range of issues that may arise.