Equal pay: A moving target

Overview

The  Cambridge Journal of Economics together with the University of Brighton Business School (CROME) and the Equality and Diversity Research Network launched a special issue reviewing changes in the gender pay gap to celebrate International Women's Day and commemorate forty years since the implementation of British and European legislation on Equal Pay in 1975.

The  special issue was guest edited by Professor Jacqueline O'Reilly, University of Brighton Business School (CROME), together with Professor Mark Smith, Grenoble École de Management, Professor Simon Deakin and Dr Brendan Burchell, both from the University of Cambridge.

This event explored ideas from the special issue and invited discussion from the panel and guests.

Professor Jacqueline O'Reilly led the panel discussion with contributions from:

• Jason Kitcat Leader of Brighton & Hove City Council and a Green city councillor until May 2015. He has been closely involved in negotiations of pay reforms in Brighton.
  · Squaring the circle in Brighton and Hove - the full picture on pay & allowances
  · June 2013 Bin Strike and Equal Pay Factsheet
• Christine Lewis national negotiator at UNISON representing education support staff. She was the last national women's officer for the union Nalgo. She looked at case studies from the bargaining arena.
• Shelia Wild founder of the EqualPayPortal (www.equalpayportal.co.uk) and former Director of Employment Policy at the Equal Opportunities Commission and subsequently the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
• Duncan Brown, Principal, Aon Hewitt Consulting: Performance, Reward & Talent He was Assistant Director General at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and was Director of Performance and Rewards at the Institute for Employment Studies. He is the author of numerous journal articles and publications on reward. Some of his recent publications on this issue include:
  · Low (Female) Pay, No Way: The View of Equal Pay From the United Kingdom
  · Duncan Brown: Low pay, no way
  · The economic sense of equal pay
• Professor Hazel Conley UK Principal Investigator on an EU DG Justice funded project on the gender pay gap in Europe; co-editor (with Tessa Wright) of The Gower Handbook of Discrimination at Work and co-author (with Margaret Page) of Gender Equality in Public Services: Chasing the Dream (Routledge).

Watch our Equal pay: A moving target seminar