Women’s rights group, the Fawcett Society, say that more should be done to help bridge the gender gap when it comes to wages. The group found from a study of 1,004 adults in the UK, that on average, women get paid 17 percent less than their male counterparts.

The Society said that this discrepancy meant that women were effectively working for free for the rest of the year, and have dubbed the day “Women’s No Pay Day”.

The government’s equality bill was said to increase transparency in firms which is “key” to tackling the current gap.

The survey was taken in October by Ipsos Mori, on behalf of the Fawcett Society and public sector union Unison. It found that 85 percent of men and 93 percent of women said that the government should do more to ensure women receive the same level of pay as men for jobs that are of equal skill, or similar.

The Society has urged MPs to stick to their guns over their equal pay promise, rather that backtrack amid the economic crisis. It said that there was strong support for Business Secretary Lord Mandelson to include provisions in the Equality Bill that would require companies to hold pay audits that would expose any difference between male and female employee’s wages.

Katherine Rake, director of the Fawcett Society, said: “In times of economic difficulty, voters want greater support for equal pay measures, not backsliding.

“After all, according to the government’s own figures, unlocking women’s economic potential could contribute up to an astonishing 2% of GDP.”

The survey found that the biggest pay gap between men ad women was in London, at 23.2 percent, rising to 45 percent for part-time employees. In the city’s financial sector the difference between the earning of full-time employees was said to be 39.7 percent.

Despite the survey results, Harriet Harman, the Minister for Women and Equality, said that since 1997, the gender pay gap had fallen from 17 percent to 12 percent, but added that she would like to see more being done to narrow the gap.

Ms Harman said: “We will ban ’secrecy clauses’ - which exist in a third of workplaces - and make public authorities report on gender pay.

“We will drive equality in the private sector through public procurement, and we are working with business, unions and others to make the private sector more transparent on gender pay.”

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