Five employers have already signed up to a voluntary gender reporting scheme following coalition government claims that more effective use of women’s skills could add £15-23 billion to the UK economy each year.
At an event to launch the ‘Think, Act, Report’ initiative yesterday, Home Secretary Theresa May cited Tesco, BT, National Grid, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and law firm Eversheds as examples of firms that had already signed up to the initiative and planned to publish equality data on their company web sites.
The data will cover areas such as numbers of female board members, promotion rates across the gender divide and progress on equalising the pay gap.
May said: “In a difficult economic climate, everybody is looking for what is going to make a difference. In a difficult economic climate, you want to be attracting the talents of the best people – and this can be a tool in doing that.”
While the gender pay gap still stood at over 20% more than 40 years after the Equal Pay Act was passed, May said she was committed to “breaking down the barriers women face in the workplace”, not least because the move was “crucial to promoting growth”.
“Better use of women’s skills could be worth £15-23 billion to our economy each year,” she added.
The voluntary nature of the scheme is controversial, however, with critics arguing that employers are unlikely to take action unless forced to do so via legislation.
But in an interview on the BBC’s Women’s Hour radio programme, May responded: “The mandatory power is still available in the Act, but I think if you make something mandatory, they do it, but only to the point at which they have to do it. We’re encouraging companies to look more widely at their equality issues in their workplace.”
The Think, Act, Report framework is being pitched as step-by-step guidelines for gender reporting. When signing up to the scheme, employers are expected to identify any workplace issues around gender equality or pay structures. The next step is to address them, before publicly reporting on progress.
