Equal Pay and the Gender Pay Gap

Debate between Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and Sarah Champion

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

My speech today is about equality. Equality is not a women’s issue; it is a society issue. I say this because, if a woman is unable to reach her true potential, the whole of society is worse off, and that is exactly why we need this debate. It is exactly why, when people ask me if feminism still has a place, I can stand up and say, “Yes, definitively, it does,” because feminism is about equality, and that is still a long way off.

In the last Parliament, I was extremely fortunate to be supported, guided and helped by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) and her team. I tabled a ten-minute rule Bill on gender pay equality. I wanted companies with more than 250 employees to publish their figures on the gender pay gap. A voluntary scheme had been in place since the Equality Act 2010, but under the scheme, only four companies released figures to show how much women were paid compared with men. I am delighted that 300 companies now do so—but just 300. Why would companies be reluctant to publish those figures if they have nothing to hide? Why should a woman have to carry out her own research to see whether she is receiving the same pay as her male counterpart? We need a mandatory requirement for companies to publish those figures, so that those that pay women equal pay for equal work can be celebrated and those that do not can be challenged.

In my constituency of Rotherham, women earn just 77p for every £1 a man earns. That is £200,000 over her lifetime—£200,000 that her family are missing out on. That simply cannot be right. I am proud that my Bill was overwhelmingly voted through its first stage in the previous Parliament, but I am still incredulous that eight Members voted against. I expect that the Government will take that mandate and look at putting it into practice. Today, I ask the Secretary of State to make a commitment to that effect, clarify the timetable and put her weight behind it.

However, pay is not the only area where women are still struggling to gain equality. In politics, the figure for women leading local authorities is only 13%. The Prime Minister has filled only one Cabinet post in three with a woman and the Chamber has limped up to 29% of women MPs. In the media, there is only one female editor of a national daily newspaper and only 24% of news stories are about women. In work, only 17% of directors of FTSE 100 companies are women and 70% of minimum wage earners are women. Women are consistently underrepresented throughout society, and until we tackle that head on I am afraid that little will change.

There are also direct links between the Government’s austerity programme and the disproportionate effect on women. Women’s unemployment has recently peaked at a 24-year high. Cuts to public sector jobs disproportionately affect women, as we make up two thirds of the public sector’s workforce. Cuts to benefits disproportionately affect women too, as benefits typically make up a fifth of women’s income, whereas they make up a tenth of men’s income.

Let me give an example of how we systematically discriminate against women. A recent survey of more than 2,000 working mums found that more than half would be forced to stop work or significantly reduce their working hours as a result of a cut to support for childcare costs. From politics to media, work to childcare, women are being systematically pushed down.

We are almost 100 years on from the suffragettes winning their fight for votes for women. We are approaching 50 years since the women of Ford Dagenham put down their tools and walked out in their fight for equal pay. We should be doing better than this by now, but if we think our fight for equality in the UK is hard, we should look to the rest of the world and know that we are not alone and that we are fighting this cause together.

That is why we must give our full commitment to the sustainable development goals. Those 17 goals can change the world we live in by 2030. The fifth goal is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. It sounds ambitious, but it needs to be if we are to achieve a world where women can live freely, are empowered to make their own voices heard, can live the life they want on their own terms and reach their full potential.

One of the biggest blocks to women and girls reaching their full potential is violence. Since my election, I have been working on tackling child sexual exploitation, in my constituency and nationally. That exploitation is disproportionately of girls, and we see the same pattern with all forms of child abuse and domestic violence. Those crimes have a direct bearing on the economic potential of women due to the mental, physical and health issues involved, but there is also an effect on their confidence—their ability to ask for a pay rise and to put themselves forward.

The grim reality is that, in the UK, on average, two women a week are killed by a violent partner or ex-partner, and up to 3 million women and girls experience rape, abuse, domestic violence or stalking each year. In 2011, the forced marriage unit advised more than 1,450 people relating to possible forced marriage, 78% of whom were women or girls.

I have been trying to grasp the root causes of violence against women and girls, rather than focusing on the outcomes. I have spoken to countless survivors of abuse and met approximately 60 young Rotherham women to try to understand what needs to be done to tackle this escalation in violence. I am of the firm belief that there has been a shift in cultural norms, with young girls now accepting their “commodification” and violence from a partner, or indeed viewing it as normal.

How do we move on from that? Our first step is in empowering young children with the knowledge that they need to understand when things have crossed a line. We need to help them, from an early age, to understand what a respectful relationship is and is not, and how to speak out if they find themselves in an inappropriate relationship. I am a passionate advocate of the NSPCC’s PANTS scheme, which teaches little children that their privates are just that—private. Every child, once they reach school age, should be taught this for their own protection, and so that they do not grow up and perpetuate abuse of others because they do not know any better.

[Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is making some excellent points and I am enjoying her speech very much. How can we tackle abuse at the young age that she is talking about, among children in school? Would it be worth while trying to introduce a scheme to normalise female leadership from a very young age in schools and beyond?

[Sarah Champion]

I completely agree. This is about empowerment, enabling all children to reach their potential both at a young age and as they grow up, and the direct impact that being treated with disrespect has on their potential to reach their full financial and economic growth, which directly affects their immediate family.

I am not advocating teaching little children about sex, but I am saying that every child at key stage 1 should understand about valuing themselves and others. They should understand their rights to respect and privacy, and understand what to do if those rights are violated. We cannot protect children 24/7 from abusers, but we can teach children to protect themselves.

Violence against girls and women is not a problem that can be fixed overnight, but perpetrators do not reach adulthood and decide one day that they are going to abuse a girl. It is not an on/off switch where one day they are fine and the next day they are a perpetrator of domestic violence or child abuse. It is a slow erosion of boundaries that happens over years. Instead of waiting to deal with the crime, we need to empower our young people with positive examples of relationships, using their years in education for positive interventions in an attempt to prevent violence occurring. Building on that, I intend to work with a number of the leading charities to try to engage the country and decision makers in challenging the stereotypes that are repressing women.