The Know Daily - Wednesday 22 November 2023

_{Read in 5m 14s ∙ Listening to Lenka}

Based in London with no plans for tonight? Join us for our pub quiz at AllBright’s gorgeous space in Mayfair! There are just a handful of tickets left - so what are you waiting for?! Come with friends or solo - we can’t wait to meet you 🥰

A US museum described by Forbes as “the only major museum in the world dedicated solely to championing women through the arts” has reopened following a two-year renovation. The National Museum of Women in the Arts, located in Washington, DC, first opened to the public in 1987.

💰 Equal Pay Day

The Fawcett Society has designated today, 22 November, as Equal Pay Day in the UK. In other words, it’s the point in the year when women stop being paid compared to men when you take into account the gender pay gap. 

Go on…
The equal rights charity calculated the date using the average hourly gender pay gap, which this year stands at 10.7%, down by 0.2% on 2022’s figure. This means that the day when women start working for free is just 48 hours later than last year - a “glacial shift”, said Fawcett Society chief executive Jemima Olchawski. 

To put this into perspective, at the current rate of change, the gender pay gap won’t close until 2051. 

How is the Fawcett Society marking the day?
The charity has released a report which argues that making flexible working the default in “high-quality, high-paid jobs” is essential to closing the gender pay gap more quickly. 

Its data shows that while most people can access some form of flexibility in their role, women are disproportionately accessing the type of flexible work associated with lower-paid roles (such as part-time employment and zero-hour contracts) in a bid to balance caring responsibilities.

“This is a big reason we have a persistent gender pay gap which harms women and our economy,” said Olchawski.

What else did the report find? 
It identified that “much more needs to be done” to better understand the link between the gender pay gap and the ethnicity pay gap. 

According to the report, “48% of Black and minoritised women” said they would like greater flexibility at work but are worried about the implications for their career - compared with 40% of white women.

Is there anything else I should know?
The Fawcett Society has called on employers and the government to take “urgent and effective action”, for example by ending the practice of asking for salary history and making ethnicity pay gap reporting mandatory.

“There are so many policy interventions that could turn the dial,” said Olchawski, “but the simplest of them all is making flexible work the default”.