As the Employment Rights Bill returns to the Commons today, the Women’s Budget Group, the Fawcett Society, Pregnant Then Screwed, Young Women’s Trust and other leading women’s groups have written to the new Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Peter Kyle, urging him to resist amendments from the Lords to water down the legislation. The organisations argue that delivering the bill in full as originally promised is key to advancing gender equality and closing the gender pay gap.

Women stand to gain the most from stronger rights and protections:

• Women are 34% more likely than men to be on zero-hours contracts, reaching 103% for Black and Minority Ethnic women compared to white men and 49% for Disabled women.
• 6.5% of women do not earn enough to qualify for sick pay compared to 2.8% of men.
• Of the 1.3 million people who do not qualify for statutory sick pay, 70% are women, with Black and Minority Ethnic women most likely to miss out.
• The gender pay gap among all employees stood at 13.1% in the year to April 2024, and 7% for full-time employees.
• More women than men are in low paid jobs: 18.7% of jobs held by women being paid below the real Living Wage compared to 12.6% for men.
• Women make up the majority of part-time workers, who are over three times more likely to be low paid than full-time employees.
• Women make up 79% of the 1.84 million workers in adult social care (2023/24) in England, where median pay is £11 per hour, and with 21% of the workforce on zero-hours contracts (compared to 3.5% in the wider economy).

 Dr Sara Reis, Deputy Director at the Women’s Budget Group, said: “Women still make up the bulk of low-paid and insecure workers and stand to benefit the most from the Employment Rights Bill. This legislation is a once-in-a-generation chance to help close the gender pay gap, lift living standards and strengthen the economy by giving those workers stronger rights and more security. But this ambition must be seen through – which is why we have written to the new Minister Peter Kyle. Any delay or dilution would undermine both gender equality and the Government’s promise to working people.”

The letter says: “Women’s position in the labour market continues to be influenced by systems and structures that disadvantage them largely driven by the 75% more unpaid care work they do than men. As a result, women are the majority of people in low paid and precarious work, as well as those more likely to face discrimination over the course of their working life. Some groups of women face multiple forms of inequality and discrimination in the labour market as gender inequality intersects with inequalities on the basis of race and ethnicity, age, class, disability, single parenthood, and so on.”

It also says: “The Government’s plans to increase workers’ rights, including those set out in the Employment Rights Bill, are therefore crucial to improving women’s material living conditions and to reducing the gender pay gap. Day one rights to request flexible working, to paternity leave, and to statutory sick pay without a lower earning limit are just some of the measures that women will disproportionately benefit from. As the majority of workers in adult social care, the new Social Care Negotiating Bodies and Fair Pay Agreements stand to recognise the value of care work disproportionately carried out by Black and Ethnic Minority and working class women that has long been overlooked. 

“Stamping out exploitative zero hours contracts, including for agency workers, and giving protections to workers whose shifts are cancelled last minute, means women won’t be out of pocket for childcare costs that allow them to work. And protections for the 54,000 pregnant women and new mothers a year who experience employment discrimination can’t come soon enough.  

“It is equally important that there is adequate enforcement of the new laws and regulations once in force, and that the Fair Work Agency is sufficiently resourced to uphold workers’ rights. We would also ask you to consider establishing a new independent commissioner for workers’ rights in line with the Young Women’s Trust’s demands to stamp out illegal behaviour such as sexual harassment that continues to cloud young women’s early experiences of employment. 

“There are other important government equalities reforms that will help tackle disadvantage and discrimination, including measures to recognise discrimination cases based on more than one protected characteristic, ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting, and mandating gender pay gap action and menopause plans. 

“Large employers however, including public sector bodies, often contract out many of their services, meaning gender pay gap reports rarely tell the full story of the scale of sectoral segregation and its impact on women’s pay compared to men; particularly the working class women working as cleaners, care workers and administrators. The Women’s Budget Group raised this issue with your department and the best they can do (for legitimate data protection reasons) is require companies to report the pay gaps of their contractors, which does nothing to show the real wage gaps between firms’ CEOs and the women who clean up after them.  

“Which is why strengthening the rights and conditions for those workers is crucial for improving women’s material living standards. Any slowing or watering down of the package of reforms in the Employment Rights Bill would undermine the Government’s commitments to gender equality as well as to working people.”

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