A Twitter account is attempting to highlight the gender pay gap issue by calling out organisations who tweet about International Women’s Day – and some Lancashire names have featured.

The Gender Pay Gap Bot’s description reads: “Employers, if you tweet about International Women’s Day, I’ll retweet your gender pay gap”.

Using the Government website, they then upload the organisation’s median hourly pay for women compared to men’s.

They have been highlighting brands and organisations up and down the country, including those right on our doorstep in Lancashire.

 

 

Lancashire County Council tweeted about International Women’s Day by posting about a historic sketch of Clitheroe Castle, thought to be created by a local woman.

Retweeting the post, Gender Pay Gap Bot said: “In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 15.3% lower than men's.”

This means that women earn 85p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median hourly pay.

This is despite women occupying 64.9% of the highest paid jobs and 86.2% of the lowest paid jobs.

NHS Blackpool’s Teaching Hospital was also called out by the account.

Their 2021/2022 data suggests that women earn 95p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median hourly pay, meaning their median hourly pay is 5.3% lower than men’s.

Lancaster University tweeted about their library’s book display.

 

 

Gender Pay Gap Bot retweeted them and said: “In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 25.5% lower than men's.”

Here, women earn 74p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median hourly pay.

A spokesperson for Lancaster University said: "We are committed to advancing equality and diversity within the university. We have action plan in place and we are making positive progress in relation to our gender pay gap.

"Lancaster’s pay gap is adversely affected by having significantly more women in the lower pay quartile than men and the University’s decision to employ its own cleaning and catering staff impacts this. These are services which many other organisations contract out."

West Lancashire Borough Council also received a mention from the Twitter account. The latest data, from 2021/2022, shows that a woman’s median hourly pay is 2.7% lower than men’s.

However, this is an improvement on the year before when the median hourly pay was 4.4% lower than men’s.

 

 

According to the median hourly pay data, Lancashire Fire and Rescue pay women 2 per cent less than men.

 

 

However, when comparing average hourly pay, women’s mean hourly pay is 9.9% higher than men’s.

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is bias – encouraging us to think about how conscious and unconscious bias affects women at home and at work.

“There is lots of evidence societies that are more equal are better for men and women,” says Claire Reindorp, chief executive of the Young Women’s Trust 

“That’s the really important thing here – the value of breaking the bias isn’t just for women” – it could potentially benefit everyone."

The Young Women’s Trust focuses on “the unconscious bias and discrimination that young women face outside the workplace, getting into work, and within work”, explains Reindorp.

“For us, all those different kinds of discrimination ultimately lead to a financial penalty.”

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the gender pay gap in April 2021 for all employees (including full and part-time workers) was 15.4% (it was 7.9% for full-timers). The ONS also found the pay gap got worse for age groups over 40. Under 40, the pay gap for full-time employees was around 3% or less – but it stood at 12% for those who were older.

For Reindorp, attitudes need to change – but two big structural shifts could have a big impact. “Ending salary history and [offering fully] flexible working are some of the key tools we can use to break the bias, to enable women to get into the workplace, and really achieve all they’re capable of within it,” she says.

Flexible working might help women “manage their childcare responsibilities, their caring responsibilities and the job” – and hopefully also allow men to do the same if the option is there.

Reindorp continues: “We’ve been campaigning to stop the practice of asking for people’s salary history, because that pay gap is perpetuated by asking women what they used to be on” – potentially leading to a constant cycle of women being paid less than men.