Friday 30th October is Equal Pay Day

Equal Pay DayFriday 30th October is Equal Pay Day, a day of action lead by the Fawcett Society to draw attention to the fact that, on average, women’s full time mean hourly pay is 17.1% less than men’s. 30th October symbolically marks the last pay cheque that women receive in a year because, compared with men, we work on average for about two months a year without pay.

For women in science, engineering and technology (SET) – which includes IT workers like me – the pay gaps both between men and women, and between different kinds of SET occupations, show no evidence of closing:

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(Image via BCS)

SET occupations don’t show the same extremes in pay differentials between the highest and lowest paid compared with other occupations. And if you’re a woman working in a SET occupation, you are more likely to be receiving similar remuneration to that of you male colleagues than women working elsewhere. But at the lower levels of SET occupations especially in skilled trades, part-time women’s hourly earnings are much less than the full-time earnings of women or men in the same occupations.

But there’s no cause for complacency: there is a gender pay gap in SET occupations – as there is in virtually all occupations – and it shows no sign of disappearing anytime soon.

To find out more, you can visit the Equal Pay Day blog (link here), or go to the Fawcett Society website’s page (link here) to sign the online petition and download further resources and information.

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Cross-posted at Bird of Paradox