“How much are you currently earning?”  

This one sentence disproportionately contributes to maintaining and perpetuating the gender pay gap. 

We believe that:

• Salary history questioning is a broken, ineffective and damaging practice that should be abandoned

• Salary should be linked to the future job scope, not an individual’s perceived worth and negotiating abilities

• Increasing inclusivity and equality in the workplace is good for business as well as society

Our campaign has two main objectives

1. Helping employers amend their hiring policies through a pledge 

2. Supporting employees by bringing change internally

The latest figures show that the gender pay gap in the UK for all employees is 15.5% and 7.4% among full-time employees. 

There are many factors that may contribute to women being paid less, but these discriminations risk becoming repeated and entrenched when people are asked for their salary history as a basis for pay in a new role.

Ending salary history has been described as “crucial to ending the gender pay gap” according to the Women’s Trust chief executive and helping break the cycle of wage discrimination.

This has already been widely recognised in the United States, where 19 states including Washington, New York and California have banned the practise of asking for salary history in job applications.

And there is evidence to suggest its not just women who benefit when this is the case. A study last year by Boston scholars found that, in states where the ban was implemented, there were pay increases for job changers of about 5% for all workers, 8% for female workers and 13% for Black workers.

While pointing out that further research would be needed to see if this effect persists, one of the paper’s authors, Professor James Bessen, told Fawcett the study “finds that salary history information is a substantial cause of the perpetuation of wage inequality and it appears to have narrowed the wage gap for job changers in the few years since these bans went into effect”.

We are asking employers to sign our pledge to agree not to solicit current salary information from prospective employees. We believe the evidence shows this can significantly contribute to fairer pay for all.

We have collected over 260 responses across the country in our latest survey - take our survey now