Propelled part of the Liberal Democrats’ Women’s Policy Paper into the public domain today – helped by the Today programme – which was a great boost! We ran it on the back of the appalling figures that the Office of National Statistics published about the pay gap in the civil service – where women in some Government departments get around 30% less than the men. This sets a terrible example to the private sector. If equality begins at home – then the Government is shown to be failing woefully.

There are two issues – the one highlighted by the civil service pay gap is that women don’t get the senior jobs – ie the better paid jobs – or indeed any jobs. In fact – only 29% of the jobs in the civil service go to women at all. However, in the wider world, the pay gap is still terrible as well – around 17%. Forty years after the Equal Pay Act and we are still nowhere near parity both in terms of like for like work and in terms of the value put on women’s work. The other unpalatable truth is that women are still inhibited from getting work in the first place (prejudice in case they need maternity leave) and then inhibited from advancing up the ladder.

So the two key solutions (amongst others) that will be going to Autumn Conference are firstly – mandatory pay audits. This means that firms would be required to publish the pay for all their employees (not individuals but aggregated information so that staff can see whether they are being discriminated against in like for like terms – i.e. that a man and a woman doing the same work are receiving equal pay). That’s the publishing part – the audit part places a value on the various roles in a company so that we can be assured that jobs that women are doing are not undervalued against predominantly male jobs. Traditionally – women’s jobs, like say dinner ladies, have been worse paid than the post room positions.

In terms of removing the discrimination which takes place both against women getting into a job – and then the barriers women face against successfully moving up the echelons – we are proposing ‘no name employment’ applications. I have blogged about this several times now – mostly in relation to the Equality Bill where I first put forward the idea. Using something like a National Insurance number rather than a name – hides at least at first sift of applications – the gender and ethnicity of the applicant. Initial experiments show that there is ‘significant discrimination’ based on unconscious bias for or against names. It is basically the same idea as giving children exam numbers to put on their papers so that there can be no bias in the marking. Obviously at interview stage – all is revealed – and then it is down to what it always comes down to at interview – personality, fit, attitude, etc. But if we can remove a subliminal discard at first hurdle – that would deliver a huge step change in equality.

PS When the Today program rang yesterday – the guy remarked that I had achieved the rare feat of being on the Today Program twice in a week. As I said – was it just there was no news and everyone else was out of town?

Update: big coverage in The Sun today.