More than a quarter of Wearside women are paid less than men

The gender pay gap in the North East is now running at 28% – some 10 percentage points higher than the national average.

These stark figures prompted me to ask what the Government is doing to address the variation -; and especially the gender pay gap for women in their 30s and 40s.

I received the following response from Caroline Dinenage, the Parliamentary Under-secretary of State for Education, who said:

“It is vital, now more than ever, that our economy is able to benefit from everybody’s skills. We simply cannot afford to waste the talents of a single person.

“That is why, from April this year, we are requiring all employers with more than 250 staff to publish those gender pay gap figures. We are great believers in what gets measured gets managed, but what gets published gets managed even better.”

** Do you think publishing pay gap figures will help? I’d be very interested to hear your opinions.