Response to the Government Equalities Office Consultation: Closing the Gender Pay Gap

The Equality and Human Rights Commission welcomes the Government’s intention to implement the duty under section 78 of the Equality Act 2010 to publish gender pay gap information.

The publication of pay gap information is a useful way of encouraging employers to address pay gaps in their organisations. By itself the publication of a single figure does not diagnose or resolve any pay problems, but increased transparency about companies’ gender pay differences is likely to spur many companies to analyse their pay gaps, undertake pay audits to ensure they are not contravening the equal pay provisions, and begin to consider how company policies on recruitment, promotion and progression may have an impact on the pay gap.

Surveys by the Commission in 2010, Proposals for measuring and publishing information on the gender pay gap and by the Government Equalities Office in 2015, Company Reporting: Gender Pay Data, found that larger companies did not believe that a pay gap between men and women was justifiable.

The 2015 research found that 63 per cent of companies stated that ensuring there is no pay gap between men and women was a high or fairly high priority for them. However, two thirds of companies had no strategy at all for reducing the gender pay gap, and just 15 percent had a planned strategy.

Pay reporting is a timely and appropriate intervention that will support employers in identifying, understanding and addressing their pay gaps. This will contribute towards reducing the pay gap among all employees which is currently 19.1 per cent, according to the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2014 published by the Office for National Statistics.

Read our response to the consultation (PDF | Word)

Last Updated: 08 Oct 2015