Equal Pay

Equal pay

The paycheck egalitarianism among male and female employees has taken into heat debate for some decades. Although a number of measures and legislations have been improved, such as the Equal Pay act of 1970 and the Equality Act of 2010, the pay gap has reduced however women still earn less than men.

In UK, there is still unequal pay between men and women, which fluctuate around 15.5%, despite the legislation date back to 1970s. Also in the year 2010 for instance, the median hourly earnings for males working full-time was £13.01 while those of females working full-time was £11.68. What is more, that gap is even greater when considering women in part-time job compare to full-time. A similar issue was prevalent in the United States some decades ago and it resulted in the Affirmative Action policy.

There are a couple of reasons for gender pay gap. For instance:

Firstly, women tend to own a lower expectation of pay than men, in that society regard men as breadwinner instead of them, sometimes women prefer to join part-time or casual work, in order to complete their family responsibility, like childcare and house chores.

Secondly, women were always being appointed at a lower rate, so that easy task and performance lead to the lower pay.

In addition, sometimes females find it difficult to ask for more when negotiating their pay during the job interview. Even during the process, they have poor collective bargaining and feel afraid to ask more pay.

What is more, the pay gap can exist through ignorance and fear, women choose to ignore the unequal pay even if they had realize it, since they do not want to lose their job.

Another point need to mention here is the 3 possible claims under equal pay, which refers to like work, work related as equivalent, and work of the equal value. Since so many complaint