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Women working full time will be paid £369,000 less than their male counterparts over their lifetime, it was claimed yesterday, as new government figures emerged showing that the gender pay gap has widened over the past year.
Men are now paid 17.1% more than women for full-time work, a slight increase on last year, while the disparity in part-time wages is 36.6%, up from 35.8% in 2007, according to the Office of National Statistics' annual survey of hours and earnings.
That lifetime disparity would be enough to pay for 31 years of childcare or 22 new cars, the Equality and Human Rights Commission estimated, or to pay off the average student debt 18 times over.
Katherine Rake, director of the Fawcett Society, called the ONS figures "dire news" for women. "After years of painfully slow progress in closing the pay gap, we have now actually gone into reverse gear with the pay gap widening over 2008 for women working full and part time. This sadly demonstrates that the government has failed to take serious action to combat discrimination still facing women in the labour market."
The World Economic Forum found this week that the UK had dropped from 11th to 13th in the global gender equality league table, with Sri Lanka in 12th. The annual survey ranks countries in terms of equality of economic participation, access to education and healthcare, and political empowerment.
That survey placed Britain 81st in the world in terms of progress on equal pay for similar work, with Sri Lanka 51 places above.
Rake said the worst offender on unequal pay is the financial sector, where salaries and bonuses can remain widely disproportionate between the sexes, but she also pointed to small companies without dedicated human resources facilities which are less likely to conduct pay audits.
The Fawcett Society has called on the government to include mandatory pay auditing in the equalities bill, scheduled to be introduced in next month's Queen's speech.
Harriet Harman, the minister for women and equality, has already announced a requirement for all public sector bodies to publish their gender pay gaps. The figure for the Treasury is 26% - though women in the Government Equalities Office are paid 4% more than men.
Sri Lanka's position above Britain in the global equality chart can also be explained in part by its high ranking on political empowerment. The country is judged the fifth most equal in the world, thanks to the long incumbencies as prime minister and president of Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Chandrika Kumaratunga, the widow and daughter respectively of the assassinated prime minister SWRD Bandaranaike. Britain's score dipped slightly on this index, thanks to a fall in the number of women ministers.
Yvonne Galligan, director of the centre for the advancement of women in politics at Queen's University in Belfast, said it was "a matter of concern" that there were still fewer than 20% women in the House of Commons. "It's very interesting to look at the Scottish parliament and the Welsh assembly - in both there is a much healthier gender balance and that has meant that issues come into the political arena that are perhaps seen as women's issues but are adopted collectively." She cited the issue of violence against women, which she said had been "strongly taken up" by the Scottish parliament.
In general, she said, younger parliaments were often much more representative. The Rwandan parliament is the first where women outnumber men.
But Dr Selvi Thriuchandran, director of the women's education and research centre in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, said she was puzzled by the WEF findings, pointing out that aside from the Bandaranaikes, Sri Lanka had the worst record in south Asia in terms of women's representation in the legislature and executive.
"In fact the parliament has blocked a bill originated by women's groups asking for a quota of 25% for women. Also the parliament has blocked liberal reforms of abortion. Sri Lanka is also in the middle of a civil war and there is much violence against women in society as well as rape and attacks on women in the conflict zone. I cannot see how they can have reached this conclusion - they must have looked at the wrong issues."
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