Top businesswomen launch pay discrimination campaign

A group of 100 of the UK’s leading businesswomen has launched a campaign to tackle pay discrimination.

The #MeTooPay initiative is led by former Royal Mail chief Dame Moya Greene and backers include Dame Minouche Shafik, who is potentially the Bank of England’s next governor, and GlaxoSmithKline boss Emma Walmsley.

Dame Moya told the BBC: “Pay discrimination is more widespread than we had thought. We want to keep this issue alive. Most companies have very good policies, but in many cases they are not properly enacted, nor are they always leading to good outcomes.”

The campaign launch follows recent high-profile cases of pay discrimination, including former BBC China editor Carrie Gracie, who has just published a book about how she was paid less than other regional editors, despite being promised that she would earn an equivalent salary and a female City worker at French bank BNP Paribas who was paid £40,000 less than a male colleague in the same role. The gender pay audits revealed that 78% of British companies have a gender pay gap, mainly as a result of fewer women in top positions, but equal pay is also thought to be a factor.

The campaign website will include the latest instances of pay discrimination, record details of important court cases and provide a place “to share good and bad policies in action”.

It will ask for input from workplace professionals, including compensation experts who can help accurately assess gender pay differences, and negotiation experts who can help women achieve better salary deals.

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