"Naming and shaming" have been expected to end tax avoidance, stop bankers and many CEOs being paid obscene levels of pay, force the BBC into ending its extravagant use of public money on presenters` salaries, and prevent employees being paid below the minimum wage. Yet faith in their effect still appears, for no obvious reason, undiminished, and now we are informed that companies which "fail to report their gender pay gap" will be on "a list", which "will be made public" (Report gender pay gap or risk court, firms told, 26/03/18). Firms which have already adhered to the "reporting requirement" and revealed huge differences in the amount men and women get paid, like HSBC and L`Oreal, might make slight changes to their remuneration policies, but does anyone really expect businesses to react in a way which will end pay discrimination because of bad publicity?
It was brave of the head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission to threaten companies like this, but until there is legislation in place making significant gender pay gaps, and for that matter, huge pay ratios, illegal, her hopes for businesses to "take proper action" remain illusory.
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