Decertifying Gender: The Challenge of Equal Pay

Abstract

‘The Future of Legal Gender’ project has assessed the potential implications for feminist legal scholarship and activism of decertifying sex/gender. Decertification refers to the state moving away from officially determining or registering sex/gender. This article explores the potential impact of such moves on equal pay law and gender pay gap reporting. Equal pay and gender pay gap reporting laws provide an important focus for the project because they aim to address structural dynamics associated with persistent pay inequality that women experience across occupations in the United Kingdom. These legal measures illuminate gendering as a large-scale social problem widely understood to operate structurally and systemically.