Cambridge Journal of Economics Symposium
7-8 June 2013 Cambridge University
To commemorate the forty years since the implementation of British and European legislation on Equal Pay the CJE held a symposium on 7-8 June in Cambridge with a view to publishing a Special Issue on the question of Equal Pay: Fair Pay?
This special issue marks the significant milestone achievements of 1975. On the 29 December 1975, the Equal Pay Act (1970) was implemented in the UK. The Act came into force after a long and bitter industrial conflict for recognition of equal pay rights by the women workers at the Ford Factory in Dagenham, UK. In the same year, the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) sought to prevent sex discrimination in employment more generally. At the European level, Council Directive 75/117/EEC of 10 February 1975 was implemented, requiring the approximation of member states' laws relating to equal pay.Since this early and hard-fought-for legislation was enacted, there has been a growing body of statute, employment tribunal and legal decisions to address anomalies in the initial legislation and to broaden and clarify issues around forms of discrimination and recognition of equality. A recent stream of equal pay cases in the UK has resulted in very large compensation payments.
Equal Pay legislation triggered a step change in policy and practice towards gender pay inequalities in the UK and beyond. Yet, despite some early successes and subsequent legislative measures, the stubbornness of the gender pay gap persists. Extensions of equality legislation have also gone beyond the demands for equal pay to include equal treatment, fair pay and anti-discrimination policies. These issues have been taken up in many countries as exemplified by the Fair Work Act (2009) in Australia, the living wage movement as a focus for migrant workers in the US and the UK, Parité in France, and the Equal Pay Day in Germany.
This special issue looks back on these achievements, and evaluates the subsequent legislation and its effective implementation and on-going barriers to equal pay. It also seeks to provide an international and comparative perspective on initiatives to implement equality legislation and equal pay in other countries. It aims to identify the barriers to implementing equal pay and the economic consequences of persistent inequality. The relevance of this topic is particularly evident in a number of prominent contemporary debates about equality and in particular about the concept of fairness.
Download the Symposium programme (PDF).
Presentations
Cécile Guillaume
CLERSE - Université de Lille 1
"Equal pay and trade unions: understanding the variations of union's legal mobilisation in the UK (1960-2010)"
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Siobhan Austen and Therese Jefferson
Curtin University of Technology
"Economic Analysis, Ideology & the Public Sphere: Insights from Australia's Equal Remuneration Hearings"
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David Peetz, Centre for Work
Organisation and Wellbeing, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
"Regulation Distance, Labour Segmentation and Gender Gaps"
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Simon Deakin, Sarah Fraser-Butlin, Colm McLaughlin and Aleksandra Polanska
"Equal pay, litigation strategies and the limits of the law"
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Maria Laura Di Tommaso and Daniela Piazzalunga
University of Torino and CHILD Collegio Carlo Alberto
"Pay Difference by Gender and Immigration Status in Italy"
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Roland Erne (UCD) and Natalie Imboden (UNIA)
"Unequal Equal Pay Policies: Explaining the unequal enforcement of equal pay policies across gender and ethnicity in Switzerland"
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Ester Villa
Doctor in Labour Law and Industrial Relations, University of Bologna
"untangling the web of unresolved issues in the Italian legislation on gender pay discrimination"
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Donata Gottardi and Marco Peruzzi
"The gender pay gap in eu law: an Italian perspective"
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Rhys Davies, Robert McNabb and Keith Whitfield
WISERD, Cardiff University and Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University
"Do High Performance Work Practices Exacerbate or Mitigate the Gender Pay Gap?"
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Niall O'Higgins
DiSES, Università di Salerno & IZA, Bonn
"Ethnicity and Gender in the labour market in Central and South East Europe"
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Jill Rubery and Damian Grimshaw
Manchester Business School
"The forty year pursuit of equal pay: a case of constantly moving goal posts"
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Sebastian Ugarte
Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Economía y Negocios, Manchester Business School
"The impact of wage structures and wage-setting institutions in wage equality and gender pay differences - A comparative case study of Argentina and Chile"
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