Call to improve pay for care workers by leading women’s rights charity

Research by the Fawcett Society among more than 2,000 adults found overwhelming support for carers to be better paid.

Seven out of 10 Conservative supporters said they would back a rise in income tax to fund a pay rise, said the report.

The research, in the week of the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, showed that half of adults polled did not believe that the Government prioritised care homes enough at the start of the pandemic while three out of four respondents said care workers were underpaid.

Sam Smethers, Fawcett Society chief executive, said: "This crisis has revealed how much we rely on frontline workers, particularly low-paid care workers, yet how poorly they are treated.

"The truth is Government did not prioritise the care sector at the start and the public are clear on that. This must change. As a minimum it is time to properly protect them, give them decent terms and conditions and start paying them a living wage.

"Fifty years on from the Equal Pay Act it is time to go to the heart of why women are still undervalued, and that is because we do not value care work, whether it is paid or unpaid.

"The Chancellor could give care workers a pay rise tomorrow if he chose to and our poll shows that the wider public, including the vast majority of Conservative voters, would support it."

The society is the UK’s leading membership charity campaigning for gender equality and women’s rights at work, at home and in public life.

It is named after Millicent Fawcett, a suffragist and women's rights campaigner who made it her lifetime’s work to secure women the right to vote. At the age of 19, she organised signatures for the first petition for women’s suffrage, though she was too young to sign it herself.

She became president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (the NUWSS) from 1907-19. With 50,000 members it was the largest organisation agitating for female suffrage at the time. Her powerful and peaceful mass campaign was instrumental in securing the first extension of voting rights for women in 1918.

Frances O’Grady, general secretary of Trades Union Congress, said: "Care workers have been on the front line of this pandemic, putting their own health on the line to care for the elderly, sick and vulnerable. Many have lost their lives.

"Public support for action is overwhelming. Ministers must get serious about fixing our care sector and giving care workers the pay and respect they deserve".

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