Salford City Council has announced an active aim for decreasing the gender pay gap.
Sharmina August, councilor and Lead Member for Inclusive Economy, Anti-Poverty and Equalities, said: “We’ve made excellent progress already in the last five years, we almost have a gender pay gap, and the quality of women’s lives in Salford has improved…
“When will things be completely equal is a really difficult one to say I’d hope in the next five years or gender pay gap was definitely almost gone if not gone completely.”
Still, Salford Council wants to bring its own change to the table, with the set up of the Women’s and Girls Commission in the latter half of 2021.
The Women’s and Girls Commission was set up in the time of the Sarah Everhart news, already achieving to bring women and girls together in a collaborative space where problems could be fully researched and explored.
Councilor August said: “It’s important to say that we’re not going into this process with a preconceived notion of how to fix things, we very much want this to be led by the evidence.
“So we’re going to bring in experts who work in these different areas, we’re going to talk to people with lived experience, and then come up with solutions from there.”
Councilor August commented that the continuous struggles of pay gap, poverty and a lack of child care, and carers supports are urgent matter to be dealt with.
She said: “It shouldn’t be just about supporting people, it should be about enabling people to be the best that they can be, providing things like child care for the poor or other carers support, or making sure that women are paid equally, or making sure that there are good jobs that are well paid with good terms and conditions, and also that have career paths ahead of them.”
The council has achieved to already integrate better treatment of women inside of council jobs, with over 1000 women (70%) being part of the council, with women taking over 61% of senior leadership roles, and 7 out of 10 of highest earners being women.
She said: “We have a wider equality strategy that goes across the city… that’s very much not just a council document, that that was made in collaboration with lots of different partners, and setting out how we can improve things in the city.
“And the women and girls commission was one of those things, and it’s very much a fact finding mission, to find out what we can do to improve things.”
The Women’s and Girls Commission has just started and with just a few meetings, changes could not be written yet.
The council will also aim to host more in-person International Women’s Day events, something interrupted previously because of Covid.
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