TOMORROW marks Equal Pay Day. This is the date in the year when women effectively stop earning. That is relative to men and according to gender pay gap data recorded across the country. In other words, from November 14 until the end of this year, women will be working for nought as compared to men’s incomes – simply flabbergasting.

Thanks to the diligence of the Fawcett Society, a leading membership charity campaigning for gender equality and women’s rights at work, at home and in public life, UK organisations with more than 250 employees are now required by law to produce their gender pay gap data each and every year. When organisations find they have a gender pay gap, under the law, they must address it. Equal pay for equal work is a legal right.

A woman must be paid the same as a man for the same work, or work of the same value. However, this is obviously still not happening in numerous work situations, as many women would testify. Information gathered for 2019 reveals that the mean average gap between full-time workers is now 13.1%, with the gender pay gap even wider for part-time workers. It’s just old-fashioned discrimination, but it’s incredible that at the end of the second decade of the 21st century, modern women are still trapped in this unequal, unfair and unlawful situation.

None of this will come as any surprise to many sisters. Although the gap between full-time working men and women has fallen by 0.8% since last year, progress towards pay equality is still ridiculously slow. If it continues at this snail’s pace, it will take another 60 years for it to catch up, by which time many reading this column will be long gone. To add insult to injury, the UK is falling behind other countries in tackling this important issue. No surprises there, given the reactionary Brexit-banjaxed government we’ve been subjected to these past few years.

The gender pay gap is a great big onion of inequality. It’s not just about inequality in earnings. It’s about discrimination around pregnancy and parental versus maternity leave. It’s about affordable childcare, a labour market with an absurdly high proportion of men in senior roles, on boards, in management, as directors, or as leaders as compared to so many women confined to low-paid and low-skilled jobs. Peel back another layer and if you belong to an ethnic or religious minority, you can expect this gap to be as wide as the Clyde. I know this from what I have learned through experience as the first, and so far the only, female Scottish BAME MP at Westminster. And then there are the numerous times in my career before then when I couldn’t be sure but could only guess that my ethnicity and the reality of my gender didn’t fit.

Peel back another layer again and you discover the difficulties faced by women who are disabled, while a further layer shows a whole other set of discriminatory factors for women aged 40 and over who are more likely to work in lower-paid jobs and occupy fewer managerial or senior positions. According to Rest Less, a jobs, volunteering and advice site, the average wage for a woman over 50 is a full 28% less than men’s – not just flabbergasting but shameful. Less “lean-in”, more “elbowed out” – a whole group of society marginalised for taking time out to become mothers or carers. They then return to square one regardless of their experience in work and life when they venture back into employment after a period of absence.

READ MORE: Gender pay gap for full-time workers increases

I was delighted to see Simon Fanshawe, the co-founder of Stonewall and gay rights activist, commenting recently on women returning to work after maternity leave. He said that employers shouldn’t ask them what they’ve forgotten but should ask them what they’ve learned and regard them as huge assets due to their widened skill set, resilience and experience. Let us have lots more of this realistic, honest and unpatronising analysis.

It’s almost 50 years since the Equal Pay Act was introduced in the UK and 60 years since the equal pay principle was written into the European Treaties. But here we are in 2019, with the news full of high-profile women battling against the odds to be recognised for their work in the same way as their male colleagues. The latest example is the wonderfully talented Samira Ahmed, who has taken the BBC to court for paying Jeremy Vine much more for the same work. Watch this space.

There are some happy endings for women who have hit back at a discriminatory system. Just look at what the SNP Glasgow City Council achieved to right the wrongs of the previous Labour council who sat on their hands over equal pay disputes. And the BBC’s Carrie Gracie quit her job as their China editor over pay inequality, held Auntie to account, won and went on to donate her backdated pay to the Fawcett Society to support their work.

Unfortunately, these stories stand out because they are not the norm and many women are fighting a losing battle against inequality at work. What about all those organisations which have fewer than 250 employees, for instance, which are currently under the data or legal radar? And the organisations that are larger who have so far failed to address pay inequality and have effectively ignored this issue by a lack of enforcement?

The bottom line is, equality is positive for everyone. It’s about creating a fairer society, one based on valuing its citizens and protecting them from discrimination, it’s about motivation and getting the best from the whole workforce which then has a positive knock-on effect for the economy. It’s a no-brainer.