Gender pay gap ‘could worsen’

6 November 2012 Last updated at 19:04 ET

The pay gap between men and women is at risk of widening for the first time on record, a leading pay equality campaign group warns.

The Fawcett Society says that women still earn 14.9% less on average than men for the same job.

But it says this gap could widen as public sector cuts push women into the private sector, where the gap is wider.

The warning coincides with a survey which suggests that a woman can earn £423,000 less than a man in her career.

That average lifetime earnings figure comes from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) 2012 Gender Salary Survey, which also finds that the average pay gap stands at £10,060. This is a drop from 2011, when the difference was £10,546.

Women also lose out when it comes to bonuses, receiving less than half the average £7,496 that men receive, says the CMI.

Ceri Goddard, the Fawcett Society’s chief executive, said the CMI survey should serve as “a wake-up call to government – business as usual isn’t working”.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Far from slowly moving forward, we now face going into reverse”

End Quote Ceri Goddard The Fawcett Society

Minister for Women and Equalities Jo Swinson said: “Pay inequality remains a stubborn obstacle to real fairness in the workplace.

“We have implemented measures in the Equality Act to make pay secrecy clauses unlawful and we are taking through legislation which would give tribunals power to order that employers conduct a pay audit where they have been found to discriminate over pay.”

More still needed to be done, she added.

‘Into reverse’

The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for gender equality, is calling for a dedicated women’s employment strategy and for the government to bring more pressure to bear on the private sector to pay women equally for the same job as men.

It is concerned that the employment trend from public to private sector work is likely to push more women into insecure, low-paid, part-time jobs. The private sector pay gap, at 20.4%, is higher than in the public sector.

Who earns what (average salaries)
	2009	2010	2011	2012
Source: Chartered Management Institute
Male	£42,474	£41,337	£42,441	£40,325
Female	£31,268	£31,306	£31,895	£30,265
Difference	£11,206	£10,031	£10,546	£10,060

“Far from slowly moving forward, we now face going into reverse”, warned Ms Goddard.

Annual figures on pay from the Office for National Statistics to be published next week are expected to indicate that the gap is widening.

“In recent years, progress on closing the gap has slowed, but as the age of austerity bites, we now face the very real prospect of the gap actually widening for the first time since records began,” Ms Goddard said.

The warning comes on Equal Pay Day, marking the point in the year when women effectively start working for nothing compared to men.

As well as earning less for doing the same jobs, women still have to climb a much steeper slope than men to reach the top, the CMI figures show.

For while career women account for 57% of the professional workforce, just 40% are department heads and 25% are chief executives, says the CMI.

Ann Francke, CMI chief executive, said: “This lack of a strong talent pipeline has to change, and fast. Allowing these types of gender inequalities to continue is precisely the kind of bad management that we need to stamp out.”

She wants the government to “name and shame” companies “perpetuating inequality”.

Baroness Prosser, deputy chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, argues that if women are offered more career opportunities, it would help reduce the gender gap.

“The onus is squarely on employers to redress the balance, but female executives should also look to make the most of the practical support available to them,” she said.

The CMI’s National Management Salary Survey, conducted by XpertHR, collected data on 38,843 employees, from junior manager to board level, between August 2011 and August 2012.

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Officials: New mass graves found in Ivory Coast

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — Up to 10 new mass graves have been discovered near the site of a July attack on a camp for displaced people, officials said Tuesday, amid allegations that initial casualty totals were downplayed to mask killings carried out by the national army.

Rights groups claim summary executions were carried out by the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast, known by its French acronym of FRCI. Last month, officials found six bodies in a well close to the former campsite in the western town of Duekoue.

Government, army and U.N. officials toured 10 more graves in the same area on Saturday, said Paul Mondouho, vice-mayor of Duekoue. He said the graves had first been identified by civilians, and that officials did not know the number of bodies they contained because they had not yet been properly exhumed.

“People were suspecting the presence of bodies in these graves because of the smell coming out of them and because of the shoes we saw nearby,” Mondouho said.

Prosecutor Noel Dje Enrike Yahau, who is based in the commercial capital of Abidjan, confirmed that multiple new graves had been discovered but could not provide details. U.N. officials and the local prosecutor in charge of investigating the suspected killings could not be reached Tuesday.

U.N. spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg confirmed that U.N. forces helped Ivorian authorities secure a perimeter around 10 wells “similar to the one in which six bodies were found,” and that “some of those wells are suspected mass graves.”

She stressed that Ivorian authorities were leading the investigation but that the U.N. was able to provide assistance.

Army spokesmen could not be reached Tuesday. The Justice Ministry has previously vowed to investigate the discovery of the initial grave.

On the morning of July 20, a mob descended on the U.N.-guarded Nahibly camp, which housed 4,500 people displaced by violence in Ivory Coast, burning most of the camp to the ground. Officials said at the time that six people were killed.

The attack was prompted by the shooting deaths of four men and one woman on the night of July 19, according to local officials and residents. In response a mob of some 300 people overran the camp on the morning of July 20 after the perpetrators of the shootings reportedly fled there.

The victims in the July 19 attack lived in a district dominated by the Malinke ethnic group, which largely supported President Alassane Ouattara in the disputed November 2010 election. The camp primarily housed members of the Guere ethnic group, which largely supported former President Laurent Gbagbo.

Gbagbo’s refusal to cede office despite losing the election to Ouattara sparked months of violence that claimed at least 3,000 lives.

Albert Koenders, the top U.N. envoy to Ivory Coast, said one week after the attack that U.N. security forces had been inside and outside the camp at the time but that no Ivorian security forces were present. He said the U.N. forces decided not to fire at a large group of people that were attacking the camp in order to avoid “a massacre.”

Several witnesses have said soldiers and traditional hunters, known as dozos, participated in the attack on the camp. Both military and dozo leaders have denied the claims, saying they had tried to protect the camp.

In a statement released Friday, the International Federation for Human Rights, known by its French acronym of FIDH, said it had information — including the preliminary results of autopsies — confirming that the six bodies found in October were men who had been summarily executed by the army.

“The disappearance of dozens of displaced persons after the attack, as well as confirmation of cases of summary and extra-judicial executions, suggest a much higher victim rate than the official figures report,” said the organization, which counts Ivorian civil society groups among its members.

Duekoue was one of the hardest-hit towns during the post-election violence. The U.N. has established that at least 505 people were killed in and around the town, including during a notorious March 2011 massacre that claimed hundreds of lives and was allegedly carried out by fighters loyal to Ouattara.

Duekoue residents belonging to ethnic groups that supported Gbagbo have long complained about abuses carried out by the FRCI, with some pointing to the direct involvement of the local commander, Kone Daouda. FIDH said in its statement that Daouda had been transferred following the discovery of the grave in October, and called for him to be interrogated over the matter.

The group also said two FRCI members were being “actively sought” after failing to return to their barracks on Oct. 16, noting that they are believed to have fled to neighboring Burkina Faso.

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HANNITY ON TWEET

“I learned a big civics lesson today.” — Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, who tweeted a picture of his filled-out ballot (for Mitt Romney, natch), only to learn that appeared to break the law in New York state.

— David Bauder — http://twitter.com/dbauder

___

EDITOR’S NOTE — Election Watch shows you Election Day 2012 through the eyes of Associated Press journalists. Follow them on Twitter where available with the handles listed after each item.

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Renowned special effects firm is “Star Wars” bonus for Disney

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Star Wars” was the force behind Walt Disney’s $ 4 billion purchase of producer George Lucas’s Lucasfilm entertainment holdings. Not so far, far away is Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, his award-winning special effects shop that will likely save Disney millions of dollars in costs for its big-budget movies.

ILM, started by Lucas in 1975 when he couldn’t find a special effects house he liked for “Star Wars,” has provided computer-generated dinosaurs, space ships and action characters for a roster of films that includes “Avatar,” “Mission Impossible” and the “Harry Potter” series.

As much as one-third of the cost of films with budgets of $ 200 million and more are for special effects, according to Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Tony Wible, who estimates ILM last year generated at least $ 100 million in revenue. Disney uses ILM‘s computer animators for its “Pirates of the Caribbean” series of films and Marvel-inspired characters for films like “The Avengers.”

ILM is among the companies producing special effects for the Disney film “The Lone Ranger,” a 2013 release estimated to cost more than $ 200 million to produce.

By bringing ILM in-house, Disney can shave as much as $ 20 million a year from its films’ special effects budgets, a welcome savings at a time when all major studios are trying to rein in production spending, Wible said.

“It’s one of the underappreciated aspects of this deal,” he said, along with Skywalker Sound, a Lucas sound production company that will also become part of the Disney empire.

Disney executives, in a conference call with Wall Street analysts, scarcely mentioned ILM in explaining the company’s valuation of Lucasfilm, instead describing its estimate of the company’s rights to its consumer products and the declining value of DVD sales.

Chief Executive Bob Iger praised ILM’s work for Disney and other studios. “Our current thinking is that we would let it remain as-is. They do great work,” Iger said.

A Disney spokesman said the company could not comment further about ILM or the rest of the acquisition until it is cleared by regulators.

The effects house is headquartered in San Francisco at the Letterman Digital Arts Center, a Lucasfilm campus where a statue of Yoda perches atop an outdoor fountain. The effects company employs about 1,000 people between that location and sites in Singapore and Vancouver.

The studio provides effects for as many as 18 projects per year, working with all the major Hollywood studios that compete with Disney. That outside work beyond “Star Wars” will give Disney another revenue source from ILM.

“We can handle quite a slate of films,” Lucasfilm spokesman Miles Perkins said of ILM. “We look forward to continuing that.”

ILM also generates money by supplying effects for commercials by big-name brands Coca-Cola, Budweiser and others.

For Disney’s Iger, who prides his company as being among Hollywood’s most forward thinking on new technology, the Lucasfilm buy might also provide another front for the media giant. Its computer-wielding artists could work with Disney’s Imagineering unit, which creates many of the technologies the company uses at its theme parks.

Lucasfilm engineers created THX, which was designed to help theaters create the best sound for movies through a system that the Lucas company certifies meets its technical standards. THX, which was spun off from Lucasfilms in 2001, also certifies home entertainment systems, consumer electronic products and automobile sound systems.

Hollywood studios have a generally poor record owning effects companies, said Scott Ross, a former general manager of ILM and one of the founders of effects company Digital Domain.

Disney bought Dream Quest Images in 1996 and shuttered it five years later. Warner Bros. also has shut or sold off effects companies it acquired. Only Sony Corp has found success with its Imageworks effects unit.

Studios usually discover that running an effects business is costly and foreign competitors can do the job cheaper, Ross said. “They come to the conclusion that running a visual effects company is not a profitable business,” Ross said.

Iger, in announcing the deal to Wall Street analysts, praised ILM’s work and said he had no immediate plans to change it. “It’s been a decent business for Lucasfilm and one we have every intention of staying in,” he said.

(Reporting By Lisa Richwine and Ronald Grover; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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Human enhancements at work pose ethical dilemmas

LONDON (Reuters) – Retinal implants to help pilots see at night, stimulant drugs to keep surgeons alert and steady handed, cognitive enhancers to focus the minds of executives for a big speech or presentation.

Medical and scientific advances are bringing human enhancements into work but with them, according to a report by British experts, come not only the potential to help society and boost productivity, but also a range of ethical dilemmas.

“We’re not talking science fiction here, we’re talking about advances that could impact significantly on the way we work…in the near future,” said Genevra Richardson, a professor of law at Kings College London and one of the authors of the report.

The report was published after a joint workshop involving four major British scientific institutions which looked at emerging technologies like cognitive enhancing drugs, bionic limbs and retinal implants that have the potential to change workplaces dramatically in future.

Richardson said while such developments may benefit society in important ways, such as by boosting workforce productivity, their use also had “significant policy implications” to be considered by governments, employers, workers and trades unions.

“There are a range of technologies in development and in some cases already in use that have the potential to transform our workplaces – for better or for worse,” she said.

Human physical and cognitive enhancements are primarily developed with sick or disabled people in mind, as medicines or therapies to help them overcome mental or physical disorders.

But experts say drugs and other forms of enhancement are being used increasingly by healthy people who want to benefit from the boost they can give to performance.

Barbara Sahakian, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at Cambridge University who contributed to the report, said for example that modafinil, a generic drug prescribed for sleep disorders such as narcolepsy, is often used by academics or business leaders travelling to conferences who need to be at the top of their game when delivering a speech.

“They take (sleep) medications on the plane to fall asleep, and take modafinil to wake up when they get there,” she said.

Other stimulants such as Novartis’s Ritalin and Shire’s Adderall, prescribed for conditions like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, are also used by healthy people to increase focus.

One issue with this kind of use is the lack of long-term safety studies of such drugs in healthy people, the experts said, so there may be unknown risks ahead. Other problems include whether cognitive enhancers are fair. Is it cheating to go into a job interview or exam having taken a drug to boost your mental focus?

Research from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in the United States has estimated that up to 16 percent of students in America also use cognitive enhancers to improve performance in exams or for particular essays or projects.

The report also pointed to visual enhancement technologies, such as retinal implants, that could be used by the military, by night watchmen, safety inspectors or gamekeepers.

Technologies to enhance night vision or extend of the range of human vision to include other wavelengths such as ultra-violet light could become a reality relatively soon, it said.

Sahakian suggested that for drivers or pilots, such enhancements could reduce fatigue and lower the risk of fatal accidents.

But she also raised the question of whether employers keen to squeeze more productivity out of a workforce might coerce workers into using enhancements against their will.

“Imagine you’re a bus driver bringing children back on a journey to the UK overnight and your boss says you have to take cognitive-enhancing drug because there are risks to the children if you don’t stay awake. Is that acceptable?,” she said. “These are the kinds of things we have to grapple with.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Springsteen Sandy telethon raises $23 million, ABC more than $10 million

(Reuters) – Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Mary Blige and dozens of other musicians and celebrities helped raise some $ 23 million for victims of Hurricane Sandy on NBC television, while a Day of Giving on ABC TV networks raised more than $ 10 million.

The American Red Cross said the one-hour NBC telethon on Friday, featuring performances by celebrities with strong New York and New Jersey connections, generated a record number of individual donations by phone, text and online for victims of Sandy.

The preliminary amount raised was nearly $ 23 million, the Red Cross said in a statement.

On ABC on Monday, viewers and celebrities had raised more than $ 10 million, also for the American Red Cross, midway through a day-long fundraiser for victims of last week’s storm, which devastated the U.S. Northeast and killed more that 100 people.

Journalist Barbara Walters made a personal donation of $ 250,000 and manned phone lines during breakfast show “Good Morning America” along with Katie Couric, actor Ben Stiller and “Jersey Shore” star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, ABC said. Donations are expected to rise further during the day-long event.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant in Los Angeles; Editing by Richard Chang)

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Donated stem cells may work best for heart patients

(Reuters) – Stem cells culled from the bone marrow of healthy donors work as well or even better as cells harvested from patients themselves as a treatment for damaged hearts and are more convenient to use, according to new research.

The 13-month trial was the first to compare the safety and effectiveness of so-called mesenchymal, or bone marrow-derived, stem cells taken from patients themselves versus those provided by donors.

Such adult stem cells that renew themselves and mature into specific cell types have been used for 40 years in bone marrow transplants.

Scientists are now exploring their use as treatments for ailments such as heart disease and inflammatory conditions, some of the biggest markets in medicine.

The rationale behind using patients’ own stem cells to treat disease is that they do not trigger an attack by the body’s immune system. Mesenchymal stem cells, however, are also not recognized as foreign tissue.

Researchers from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, funded by the National Institutes of Health, found that previously prepared cells from a healthy donor were comparatively safe and may offer the most convenience since it takes up to eight weeks to grow the amount of stem cells needed for the treatment.

The study involved 30 patients whose hearts were damaged by an earlier heart attack. Half received heart-muscle injections of their own cells, while the other half received donor cells.

Scar tissue was reduced by 33 percent in both groups, a result researchers called “very, very significant.”

Improvements in heart function were seen in 28 percent of those receiving donor cells, and in 50 percent of patients receiving their own cells.

After a year, five patients in the donor cell group and eight who received their own cells suffered serious adverse events.

“The trials so far have very small patient numbers,” said Stefanie Dimmeler, director of the Institute of Cardiovascular Regeneration Center of Molecular Medicine at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. “I think this early work in cardiac stem cells look very promising.”

The trial results were presented here at the annual scientific meeting of the American Heart Association and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Companies working to develop off-the-shelf stem cell treatments include Celgene Corp, Pluristem Therapeutics Inc, Athersys Inc and Mesoblast Ltd.

(Editing by Bernard Orr)

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Asian shares ease on caution before U.S. elections

TOKYO (Reuters) – Asian shares fell on Monday, tracking a sell-off in global shares late last week, as investors continued to shed risk ahead of the closely fought U.S. presidential election and looked past a strong U.S. jobs data to fragile economic growth worldwide.

The MSCI index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.MIAPJ0000PUS> fell 0.3 percent after climbing to its highest since October 23 on Friday.

Australian shares <.AXJO> were down 0.4 percent and South Korean shares <.KS11> opened down 0.7 percent.

“There is an absence of upward momentum, but economic data such as U.S. jobs were better than forecast last week, so the main index is expected to remain boxed in range before the U.S. elections,” Cho Sung-joon, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities, said of Seoul shares.

Japan’s Nikkei average <.N225> opened down 0.6 percent after closing at a one-week high on Friday. <.T>

The political uncertainty in the world’s largest economy made investors wary of holdings risk assets, and their safe-haven bids buoyed the U.S. dollar to two-month highs against a basket of major currencies <.DXY> on Monday.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney were neck-and-neck in opinion polls in the final 48 hours before Tuesday’s vote.

Obama’s re-election is perceived as negative for equities, while markets see Romney as stock-friendly, analysts have said.

After the U.S. election, Congress must deal with a “fiscal cliff” – up to $ 600 billion in expiring tax cuts and spending reductions that are set to kick in next year – which threatens to hurt the U.S. economy.

“Investors hate uncertainty, so there will be a sigh of relief when the election is over. Provided there is a clear election result and no change in the divided Congress, then traders and investors will see it as ‘business as usual’,” said Craig James, chief economist at CommSec.

Other key events this week include the Chinese congress starting November8 that will usher in a generational leadership change and policy decisions by the Reserve Bank of Australia and the European Central Bank.

The dollar was also bolstered by a report showing U.S. employers added 171,000 people to their payrolls last month, far above forecasts, and 84,000 more jobs were created in August and September than previously estimated.

Demand for U.S. factory goods also rose in September by the most in over a year, but a gauge of business investment plans showed lacklustre momentum.

The dollar steadied at 80.50 yen, near a more-than-six-month high of 80.68 yen scaled on Friday.

Bullion was undermined by the strong dollar. Spot gold ticked up 0.3 percent to $ 1,680.54 an ounce on Monday after a 2 percent plunge to a two-month low of $ 1,673.94 on Friday.

“For now, the liquidation in gold is likely to leave investors licking gaping wounds rather than focus on the benefits of a gently growing economy especially as it is currently set back in the shadows of the fiscal cliff,” Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co said in a note to clients.

Hedge funds and other big speculators shed U.S. commodities by $ 8 billion last week, the biggest weekly drop in nearly six month, with gold seeing the largest outflow of net long money for a second week running.

U.S. crude futures eased 0.1 percent to $ 84.82 a barrel and Brent was down 0.2 percent to $ 105.48.

The euro edged up 0.1 percent to $ 1.2823. It hit a one-month low of $ 1.2816 early in Asia on Monday, undermined by not only the U.S. data but also Friday’s survey showing euro zone October manufacturing shrank for the 15th straight month as output and new orders fell.

Finance chiefs of leading economies gathering in Mexico urged the United States on Sunday to avert a series of spending cuts and tax hikes that could hurt global output, though some countries saw Europe’s debt crisis as the No. 1 danger.

China offered some comforting news on Saturday, with an official survey showing the country’s services sector rebounded in October from a two-year low in September on stronger activity in the construction and retail sectors.

(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee in Seoul and Ian Chua in Sydney; Editing by Michael Perry)

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Newspaper discloses new Cameron text messages

LONDON (AP) — A British lawmaker says he’s asked the country’s media ethics inquiry to consider newly disclosed text messages sent between Prime Minister David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks, the ex-chief executive of Rupert Murdoch‘s British newspaper division.

The Mail on Sunday newspaper on Sunday published two previously undisclosed messages exchanged between the pair, who are friends and neighbors.

Brooks is facing trial on conspiracy charges linked to Britain’s phone hacking scandal, which saw Murdoch close down The News of The World tabloid.

In one newly disclosed message, Cameron thanked Brooks in 2009 for allowing him to borrow a horse, joking it was “fast, unpredictable and hard to control but fun.”

Opposition lawmaker Chris Bryant has asked a judge-led inquiry scrutinizing ties between the press and the powerful to examine the messages.

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Bulgarians use Facebook to expose slipshod police

SOFIA (Reuters) – Fed up with ineffective law enforcement, thousands of Bulgarians have flocked to a Facebook page showcasing images of police breaking rules or failing to do their duty.

The “Photograph a Policeman” group includes pictures of badly parked patrol cars, including one in a disabled spot and another on a pedestrian crossing, and a police motorcyclist pulling a “wheelie” – on the wrong side of the road.

In another image, a uniformed policeman holds an open bottle of beer while sitting at the wheel of a patrol car.

It highlights frustration among many Bulgarians with a justice system that is subject to special monitoring by the European Union and a country where corruption and organized crime remain major problems five years after joining the bloc.

Created only this week, the group already has nearly 6,500 followers, including several well-known local politicians, journalists and businessmen.

It started after Boyan Maximov, from the Black Sea city of Varna, took a picture of three policemen apparently asleep in a patrol car and posted it on social networks.

Police then questioned Maximov, who complained of harassment and fines for petty offences like taking the rubbish out without an ID card, which under Bulgarian law must be carried in public at all times.

Last week police spokeswoman Kalinka Pencheva called Maximov “a red neck idiot, who has nothing to do and is bored” on local channel bTV. Pencheva has since been sacked but the Facebook page – and the number of pictures – continues to grow.

The interior ministry said it was aware of the page and most of the pictures were old.

“The Interior Ministry’s inspectorate obtained information about the creation of this group and is checking the photos and the comments that have been published,” a spokeswoman said.

(Reporting by Angel Krasimirov, editing by Paul Casciato)

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