Harriet Harman's costly Equality Bill won't do anything for women

Article here. Excerpt:

'Dogma is the salient characteristic of Labour's Equality Bill, the showpiece of last week's Queen's Speech and the special concern of Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House of Commons and Minister for Women and Equality.

Let's start with the problem that the Bill's provisions are meant to solve. Miss Harman insists that it is necessary in order to fight discrimination. Her primary example is the pay gap between men and women: the latter, on average, earn 26 per cent less than the former. But her conclusion – that this shows that women are being unfairly discriminated against – simply does not follow.

The Government's own figures show that discrimination is not the explanation for the pay gap. Surveys by the Office for National Statistics show that women aged between 22 and 29 are, on average, paid slightly more per hour than men. The critical factor that explains lower pay is not that women are discriminated against by sexist employers, but that they have children to care for. Women with one dependent child earn on average 12.3 per cent less than men, and women with four or more dependent children earn 35.5 per cent less.'