Equal Pay for the Same Work Didn’t Close the Gap. Dagenham Knew It in 1968.

In 1968, 187 machinists at Ford’s Dagenham plant brought the entire works to a standstill. They forced through the Equal Pay Act. Yet 55 years on, the median pay gap in the United Kingdom stands at 14.3% (ONS, 2024). The law equalised work — but it did not equalise domestic responsibilities. For Comp & Ben, this means: basic salary alone is not enough. You need to examine bonuses, promotions and career breaks.

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Written by

Katarzyna Gapińska

Co-founder of Levelly.ai

Table of contents

TheStrike That Created the Act — and the Ruling That Changes Your Audit

Britain’s Equal Pay Act 1970 was on the factory floor. In 1968, 187 machinists at Ford’s Dagenham plant brought the entire works to a standstill, demanding equal pay. The strike directly led to the Act, whose architect was Barbara Castle, then Secretary of State for Employment. Employers were given five years to adapt; the law came into force in 1975. Today its principles sit within the Equality Act 2010. A decade after the Act came into force, Hayward v. Cammell Laird Shipbuilders (1988) established a principle Comp & Ben must still apply today: the House of Lords ruled that lower pay cannot be “offset” by better benefits or working conditions. Each element of remuneration must be equal in its own right. Directive 2023/970 requires pay gap reporting broken down by pay component. Hayward confirms a logic established 35 years ago: bonus and basic salary are two separate analyses. If your report shows the gap only in basic pay and does not examine bonuses, appraisal outcomes and hourly rates — you have an incomplete picture. And a potential legal exposure.

Whythe Gap Did Not Close: Motherhood as a System

The Equal Pay Act equalised pay for the same work — but it did not close the gap. Economists needed decades to understand why. The landmark study by Kleven, Landais and Søgaard (2019) described the “child penalty”: after the birth of a first child, women’s earnings fall permanently and substantially, whilst men’s are virtually unaffected. In Denmark, the long-term loss reaches approximately 20%. The Child Penalty Atlas (2024) confirmed the pattern across 134 countries at all income levels. In 2023, Claudia Goldin received the Nobel Prize in economics. Her explanation: a substantial part of today’s gap is created by “greedy” jobs — those that generously reward full availability, which motherhood, falling mainly on women, makes impossible to guarantee. This is not direct discrimination — it is a matter of working-time structure and the premium paid for availability. The pay gap in your report is the accumulated result of decisions taken over years: pay rises granted (or not) during parental leave, promotions, discretionary bonuses, overtime rates. Directive 2023/970 does not ask about intentions — it asks about outcomes. Before your first public report, check: is the gap in your organisation deeper after the birth of a child? If you do not have that analysis — you do not have the full picture.

The Intersecting Dimension: Class, Background and Motherhood

The pay gap is not uniform. In ONS data for the United Kingdom, it varies substantially between ethnic groups: women from some communities face deeper disparities than sex alone would explain. Social class, background and motherhood overlap. The 1970 Act could equalise work, but it could not equalise domestic responsibilities, career structures, or the premium paid for availability. This is why “equal pay for the same work” alone is not enough. It is only enough when you analyse more than one axis. Bonus and basic salary are two separate analyses. Motherhood and gender are two separate variables. Directive 2023/970 will see both — and will ask for an explanation.

Three audit questions before your first report:
1. Do you analyse the pay gap separately for basic pay and variable components (bonuses, overtime, appraisal outcomes)?
2. Do your data show how the gap changes after the birth of a child — over one, three, five years?
3. Do you analyse the gap across more than one demographic variable (gender + tenure/parenthood/group)?

This article is part of the Mind the Pay Gap: World Tour series — Levelly.ai’s educational campaign dedicated to Directive 2023/970 and compensation strategy aligned with the principle of equal pay. Get ypour Tour Pass - offer valid only until 31.10.2026: measure ypor gap in 5 minutes.

Read on: Act III · EU 1975 — “work of equal value” and the adjusted pay gap.

Data and research:
‍EqualPay Act 1970; Equality Act 2010.
Hayward v. Cammell Laird Shipbuilders Ltd [1988] AC 894 (House of Lords).
H. Kleven, C. Landais, J. Søgaard, “Children and Gender Inequality: Evidencefrom Denmark”, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2019.
H. Kleven et al., “The Child Penalty Atlas”, NBER Working Paper, 2024.
C. Goldin, Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of AlfredNobel, 2023.
ONS, Gender pay gap in the UK: 2024.

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