PwC comments ahead of 'Equal Pay Day' in the UK - which marks the date designated by the Fawcett Society that women are effectively working for free from 10th November to the end of the calendar year due to the gender pay gap.
Laura Hinton, executive board member and head of people at PwC, said: “It’s unacceptable that at this rate it will take over 60 years to close the gender pay gap. Until we tackle the underlying causes of the gap, progress will be slow. This is about more than just publishing pay gap data - organisations need a plan for how they’re going to close it. This means setting gender and ethnicity targets, challenging recruitment processes, making more jobs available flexibly, encouraging more men to take shared parental leave and getting more experienced women back into work after career breaks.
“Our experience shows you need a razor sharp focus to ensure pipelines to senior roles are balanced and diverse. That’s why alongside our gender pay gap we’ve published our gender and ethnicity targets as delivering on these goals will go a long way towards closing the pay gap.”
Ed Stacey, head of employment law at PwC, said: "The fact Equal Pay Day is only one day later than last year shows there is still much more work to be done to close the gender gap. The introduction of mandatory gender pay gap reporting from April next year is a positive step and should go some way to improve this position. However, there are concerns that these new requirements do not go far enough."
(Source: PwC)
