Private sector companies may have to publish details of any gender gaps in their pay grades, the Guardian reports.
The government's equality office is attempting to address the gender pay discrepancy with a bill due to be published early this year.
Currently only public sector companies have to 'fess up to gender pay inequalities. And private sector business leaders are not happy.
"The Confederation of British Industry complained that forcing companies to produce "meaningless statistics" would do little to tackle the underlying causes of inequality, while the Federation of Small Businesses said the response was "over-prescriptive".
More over the jump...
But Lady Prosser, deputy chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, disagrees:
That's not painful or arduous for employers because most of them would have that information on their pay systems anyway."
According to government figures, men in full-time employment get 17.1% more than their female counterparts. If the details of unequal pay are published in league tables, those companies found wanting would be offered help from agencies, unions and other groups on training and promoting female staff.
The Vatican. Not big fans of the contraceptive pill. We all know this. There's probably even a graphic novel about it in circulation somewhere.
But Carl Djerassi, a chemist who had a hand in the development of the first ever oral contraceptive, opined in an Austrian newspaper that the pill was behind a "demographic catastrophe", triggering a population decline of epidemic proportions.
And of course the Vatican has jumped all over that, also blaming the pill for "devastating ecological effects" by releasing into the environment "tons of hormones" that had impaired male fertility.
The president of the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, José María Simón, said his association's research showed the pill "worked in many cases with a genuinely ... abortive effect".
However, says the Guardian, "a leading gynaecologist and member of the New York Academy of Science, professor Gian Benedetto Melis, called Simón's claims "science fiction", saying that the pill blocked ovulation only."
In other news, Dollymixers, I have insomnia. In the last three nights I've had a total of ten hours' sleep, and I am in a kind of grindy-jawed, tension headachey limbo.
Any kindly tips from your ladybrains?
Image courtesy of Nullalux's Flickr stream.
