Women still being underpaid 50 years on

THE coronavirus crisis has confirmed that working women are still underpaid and undervalued, 50 years after the Equal Pay Act, according to the TUC.

Analysis by the union organisation to mark the 50th anniversary on Friday suggested women are more likely than men to be key workers and so be on low pay.

Of an estimated 9.8 million key workers, nearly two-thirds are women, while 2.6 million female key workers earn less than £10 an hour, said the TUC.

TUC general secretary Frances O’grady said: “Fifty years after brave women won the legal right to equal pay, coronavirus has confirmed that pay inequality is still rife in Britain today.

“We need a reckoning on how we value and reward women’s work. Without proper change it will take decades to close the gender pay gap.”

Separate TUC analysis of official data shows that at current rates of progress, it will take around 50 years to achieve pay parity between men and women workers.

Joe Levenson of the Young Women’s Trust said: “Even before the coronavirus crisis began, young women were locked out from accessing equal pay and opportunities in the workplace.”