Even if the minimum does apply everywhere, it fixes the inequalities gap that is causing so much economic drag in the UK: white men earn significantly more than any other demographic today for the exact same roles at the exact same companies. If everyone gets the bottom of the band, at least everyone gets the same, and that’s been an important goal for multiple UK governments of different political stripes over many decades for reasons to complex to go into here (and no, it’s not “political correctness”, it’s far more complex than that).
I also don’t think it likely means average salaries come down, I just think it means the distributions narrow.
I think this would be illegal under the Equality Act (which does not of course mean it doesn't happen), can you offer some examples or further reading?
Until then, you are quite correct. The pay gap is not a feature of individual jobs, but a population effect due to women in their 40s+ not being in the labour force.
It is illegal in the UK to pay differently, and there are many high profile cases of this being enforced even to the point of absurdity (such as forcing councils to pay bin-men/trash-collectors the same as female office admin workers).
Likewise as the mean pay for women is ~1month/yr lower, the mean hours men work, as a population is ~1month/yr longer. Thus there is no pay gap once you control for hours worked.
Incidentally, the only way there could be no mean pay gap across both populations would be if no women had children. So a non-trivial paygap merely an indirect measure of the birth rate.
Is there any evidence that’s the case?
One is that women do get paid less for the same job on average.
The second is that jobs which women tend to do get paid less than jobs which men tend to do, either through different industries or through different opportunities.
It’s not as clear as “yes” though, and there is little evidence boiling down to the “same job” disparity.
“Chinese and Indian employees had higher earnings compared with White British employees, while Bangladeshi and Pakistani employees earned less compared with White British employees.”
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...
This is more noteworthy than weaker studies which attempt, often poorly, to assess pay differentials between employees in the exact same role at the exact same company.
Employment tribunals in the UK now regularly conclude that jobs which are clearly different are actually the same, essentially as a bung to women. For example, stating that working in a warehouse lifting boxes all day is the same job as working on a checkout till sitting on a seat, or that being a librarian has the same value as a guy collecting garbage. Being a bin man is much higher paid because it's a dangerous, dirty and low status job that people don't want to do, so the incentives have to be correspondingly higher to attract workers, but delusional left wing tribunals declare by fiat that they're the same as highly feminized jobs that are clean and safe.
This is causing chaos in Britain, for example in Birmingham where trash just doesn't get collected because the bin men went on strike:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%932026_Birmingham_b...
> The council also says that the Waste Recycling and Collection Officer role does not exist at other councils, and that retaining the role opens it up to equal pay claims, since it is performed mainly by men.[2] In March 2025, the council declared a major incident after 17,000 tonnes of rubbish were left uncollected on the streets.
Look at the wider picture of unfair pay employment tribunals that are driving HMG to introduce this legislation and you’ll see the problem is real, systemic and decades old.
I have personally had to advise boards that their discussion of compensation adjustments to women of child bearing age are illegal, it is a rife and widespread practice and absurd.
Quick reminder of the classic takedown of that misleading nonsense:
Cathy Newman interviewing Jordan Peterson on the gender pay gap etc
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xg2psply4no
Original:
You didn't need to bring colour and gender into it.