Reform UK have announced that if they come to power, they will replace the 2010 Equality Act and replace it with a ‘women and motherhood protection act’.
This move would remove the right to equal pay for work which has comparable levels of skill, effort and responsibility, and instead rely on the older, 1970 Equal Pay Act which only ensures equal pay for exactly the same work.
Young Women’s Trust CEO Katharine Sacks-Jones, says:
“This proposal turns the clock back on women’s rights to the 1970s – undoing decades of hard-won progress.
That progress includes recognising that women should be paid equally for work of equal value and skills: the woman (because it usually is a woman) cleaning offices should be paid the same as the man cleaning the streets; the woman on the till the same as the man in the warehouse.
Women have fought hard for equality, and are still facing unequal pay today – we should be pushing for more progress, not left having to fight just to keep the hard-won, but still incomplete, rights we have.”