Did you know that the Womens' Institute has campaigned to raise public awareness of key issues over the past one hundred years?
It was in 1943 that the WI began the campaign for Equal pay for Equal work.
In 1943, Bures WI in Suffolk West Federation proposed a resolution calling for ‘equal pay for equal work’. This campaign followed a debate on equality that had been rising during the years of WWII.
A 1943 edition of Home and Country magazine considered the issue of equal compensation for men and women injured in the air raids. It noted WI members know from ‘personal experience that bombs do not discriminate between men and women, but by all people who believe in justice.’
For many years the WI was then represented on the Equal Pay Campaign Committee. Members kept up momentum on this issue for decades and supported Barbara Castle’s Equal Pay Bill in 1970, which made it illegal to pay men more than women for work of equal value.
Changes to the Equality Act, which came into force on 6 April 2017, made it compulsory for companies in Great Britain (but not Northern Ireland) with more than 250 employees to report their gender pay gap figures at the end of every financial year.