Equality won from the ground up — and the motherhood trap

Britain's Equal Pay Act was not born  in ministerial offices but 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 1970 Act, whose architect was  Barbara Castle. Employers were given five years to adapt — the law came into  force in 1975, and today its principles sit within the Equality Act 2010.

Every element of pay must be equal in its own right

In Hayward v. Cammell Laird  Shipbuilders (1988), the House of Lords held that lower pay cannot be  "offset" by better working conditions — each element of  remuneration must be equal on its own. The principle still stands today and  has a direct consequence: bonus and basic salary must be examined separately.

The gap wouldn't close, because its engine is  parenthood

Recent economics has shown 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 while men's barely move; in Denmark the long-term  loss reaches around 20%. The later Child Penalty Atlas (2024) confirmed the  pattern across 134 countries. Claudia Goldin, awarded the Nobel Prize in  economics in 2023, added: a substantial part of today's gap is created by  "greedy" jobs that generously reward full availability — the very  availability that parenthood, falling mainly on women, makes impossible to  guarantee. On top of this comes the intersecting  dimension: in British data the pay gap differs between ethnic groups, and  women from some communities face deeper disparities than sex alone would  explain. Class, background and motherhood overlap. The lesson from Dagenham  is twofold: the law could equalise work, but it did not equalise duties at  home — which is why "equal pay for the same work" alone will never  be enough.

Bonus and basic salary are two different stories — check both

See where the gap really forms in your organisation; separately in base pay, separately in variable components. Get ypour Tour Pass - offer valid only until 31.10.2026: measure ypor gap in 5 minutes.

Data and research:• Equal Pay Act 1970; Equality Act 2010; Hayward v. Cammell Laird (1988).
• Kleven, Landais, Søgaard, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2019(child penalty ~20% in Denmark).• Kleven et al., "The Child Penalty Atlas", NBER, 2024 (134countries).
• C. Goldin, Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of AlfredNobel, 2023; ONS (UK) — pay gap by ethnic group.