Equal Pay 5k

The Fawcett Society nominate Equal Pay Day every year as the day after which, on average, women start to work for free, this year it is November 10th. I did my first 5k on Sunday 6th November, I'd challenged myself to do the cross country route in under 30 minutes and just managed, coming in at 29 minutes, nearly 4 minutes faster than my previous best. I'm doing a second 5k on Equal Pay Day, 10 November, will colleagues and students from the University of Northampton, setting out from just outside the Park Campus library at 1:15pm. Both runs are for Northamptonshire Rights and Equality Council (NREC), my local equality champions. Equal pay isn’t just a gender issue, which is why I'm supporting NREC, there is a national BME pay gap, an LGBTQ+ pay gap and a disability pay gap, and if you look at all of these gaps, for older employees they are higher. Ending the pay gap isn’t about saying that everyone’s the same and can and should make the same contribution, it’s about recognising difference and different contributions but valuing those contributions equally. As the gender pay gap closes Equal Pay Day gets later and later in the year - I pledge to run my 5k every year in the week around Equal Pay Day until I’ve ran it on New Year’s Eve!