The gender pay gap isn't going away

The Equal Pay Act 1970 was the first in the UK to prohibit less favourable treatment between men and women in terms of pay and conditions of employment.  This was superseded by the Equality Act 2010, but has real progress been made in the last 50 years?  Certainly the pandemic and the relaxing of gender pay gap reporting has had a significant impact such that we appear to have taken a few steps backwards.

This week, a bill was introduced to Parliament that would allow women to ask their employer for data about a male colleague's pay if they suspect that colleague is getting paid more for 'like work', 'work rated as equivalent' and/or 'work of equal value'.  Confidentiality and data protection issues aside, could this right lead to greater transparency and make it easier to challenge and resolve pay issues rather than having to resort to an Employment Tribunal claim?  This could have more of an impact than simply amending gender pay gap reporting so that the threshold for mandatory reporting of 250 employees is reduced to 100 employees.