EOC Campaign asks why women are still going cheap.
(8 March 2002)

Women graduates are still going cheap, Julie Mellor, Chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) said today (Friday, 8 March, International Women's Day), as she launched a new phase of the EOC's Valuing Women campaign for equal pay.

Speaking at the EOC's conference on equal pay, Ms Mellor said that women students can expect to be earning 15% less than men before they reach the age of 24, according to the early findings of research commissioned by the EOC. The gap between women's and men's average salary gets progressively wider among older graduates.

Ms Mellor announced that the EOC is joining forces with the NUS to tell students across Britain about the pay gap and to encourage them to ask potential employers what they are doing about equal pay.

Revealing a new advertisement that asks 'why are women graduates still going cheap?' she said: "If employers want to recruit the brightest and the best in future, they are going to have to be able to prove that they provide equal pay. Students need as much as information as possible when they are making decisions about their future. If an employer cannot show they take equal pay seriously, students might well ask themselves how much they value their staff.

"We know employers don't set out to cheat women - most pay discrimination is a hidden problem. That is precisely why employers need to review their pay systems* to make sure they are not short-changing women. Women at all levels in the workplace are still losing out because employers aren't taking steps to find out the truth about pay in their organisation."

Owain James, NUS National President said "The NUS are proud to be working with the Equal Opportunities Commission on this campaign. It is unbelievable that in the twenty-first century, women are not paid equally. The evidence shows that despite equal and often better academic success, the disparity in pay still exists between male and female graduates. Nearly half of all students said a commitment to equal pay from an employer would influence their choice of job - it's time to make sure that employers respond to the EOC campaign."

The great majority of students expect to have the same earnings in five or ten years as members of the opposite sex who have similar experience and do similar jobs, according to research conducted for the EOC in 1999. Forty-nine per cent of students (71% of women, 23% of men) said that an employer's commitment to provide equal pay would influence their choice of job.

UK has worst record on Equal Pay

The EOC recently set a target for fifty per cent of large employers (those with more than 500 workers) to have carried out a pay review* by the end of 2003 and for 25% of smaller employers to have done so by the end of 2005. If its targets are not met there will be increasing pressure for a requirement on employers to do pay reviews. In 1999 the European Council of Ministers singled out the UK to take action on closing the pay gap. The European Structure of Earnings Survey (SES) in 1995 showed that the UK had the worst record in Europe on equal pay, coming in 15th place out of the 15 EU countries when both full-time and part-time earnings were included in the analysis.

*An equal pay review involves establishing which men and women in an organisation are performing equal work, then analysing and comparing all aspects of their pay. This includes comparing the pay of full and part-time workers. A review entails considering a range of issues such as: at what point on the scale men and women are appointed; whether men get more or bigger pay rises than women; or whether women miss out on bonuses because they are given to jobs where men predominate.

Attitudes to Equal Pay

Attitudes to Equal Pay, which includes information on students' awareness of the pay gap, is available on the EOC website:
www.eoc.org.uk/cseng/research/attitudes_to_equal_pay_findings.pdf

EOC Valuing Women Campaign

The EOC launched Valuing Women, its campaign to close the pay gap, in October 1999. The Equal Pay Task Force was set up as part of the Valuing Women campaign and brought together business leaders, trade union officials, civil servants and academics. It gathered evidence from employers around the country and presented its recommendations in February 2001. Its report, Just Pay, is available on the EOC website: www.eoc.org.uk/cseng/policyandcampaigns/just pay report.pdf

Click here for summary of early findings of the EOC's graduate pay research. Full research findings will be available later in the year.

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