Thursday, April 6, 2017, the British Parliament passed a law requiring companies with at least 500 employees to declare the average income of more than 15 million employees, and 9,000 employers. Companies will also have to reveal the gender breakdown by salary:the top 25%, the next 25%, and so on down to the bottom 25%. The deadline for making all of these declarations is April 2018. The purpose of this law is to bring to light the wage inequalities between men and women. Indeed, the data will be visible to everyone on a specialized site.
Everyone will therefore be able to realize the wage gap between the two sexes. This gap is equal to 18.1% for the entire working population of England, and corresponds to 9.4% for full-time employees. No sanctions are planned for companies that refuse to declare this data, even if the Minister for Women and Equalities Justine Greening wants there to be, as she revealed to the newspaper Financial Times . She also hopes that small businesses do the same as larger ones, by also declaring the wages of their employees. “By next year, we will have clearer data than ever. They will become difficult to ignore, by companies but also by investors,” she said. This British law comes into being a few weeks after the historic advance in Iceland, the first country to impose equal pay for men and women. Icelandic companies with more than 25 employees will even have to prove that they pay the same salary to men and women, according to a bill passed in the country on Wednesday April 5. Will the UK be the next country to impose equal pay? Anyway, we hope!
