Yupina Ng
South China Morning Post
21 January 2018
There was quite a commotion in Hollywood when it was revealed that Michelle Williams was paid less than 1 per cent of what her male co-star received for reshooting scenes of crime thriller All the Money in the World...
Although the Sex Discrimination Ordinance, which came into force in 1996, prohibits discrimination against either men or women on the basis of sex, marital status and pregnancy in seven public domains including employment, a lack of transparency in some companies’ pay scales has made it extremely difficult for complainants to establish their claims, according to Puja Kapai, an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong.
“The legislation itself provides the scope for this kind of claim, but it’s about the practical implementation,” she says. “You really need a lot of transparency to be able to confidently say that any difference in pay is purely on the basis of gender.”
Kapai adds that the legislation’s requirement of attempting reconciliation poses challenges. “It puts a lot of claimants in a very difficult position because oftentimes they don’t necessarily want to confront their very powerful employers.”...
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