Things like career breaks to have children also have an impact, but this is also where until very recently things were stacked against women. Even when my youngest was born I was entitled to exactly one week's paid paternity leave, so I had to go to work and my wife had to stay at home. This was despite the fact my wife is a more highly qualified professional than I am, and earned more money than I did.
How is this something stacked against women? It could be argued it's worse discrimination against men than it is women.
They are obviously not the exact same job, but jobs which require very very similar skills (e.g. refuse collection versus care work) are paid very differently depending on whether they are traditionally masculine roles or traditionally feminine roles.
In some cases yes, but the courts have often got it wrong on this issue in my opinion.
Take this example.
It's fundamentally much more difficult to fill warehouse roles than shopfront.
Next actually offered all of its shop staff the opportunity to transfer to its warehouse business and take up was incredibly low.
The warehouse staff were basically 50/50 male/female too.
Yet a tribunal found it was discriminatory to pay shop staff and warehouse staff differently.
There's no way this was discriminatory, but tribunal overreach decided it was.
'' Employment: Employment Tribunal Rules That Next Shop Floor Sales Staff Must Be Paid Same Basic Pay As Warehouse Staff ''
broadfield-law.com
The Birmingham case is actually a bit different and I can understand the legal perspective. There the council graded the jobs the same, but paid carers and school cooks a lot less than binmen and binwomen.
The Council in doing so heavily incriminated itself and essentially put the noose around their own neck.
The failure there was dragging the case through appeal after appeal increasing the cost to the Council dramatically when there was very little to no chance of winning.
Sadly, local media in the UK is so crap, those people have never been held to account.
