KEY POINTS:
Former Wimbledon champions queued up yesterday to pay tribute to the decision to offer equal prize money to both male and female winners of the Grand Slam tournament.
Amelie Mauresmo, whose £625,000 cheque was £30,000 less than Roger Federer's last year, declared it a "victory for women in
general".
Maria Sharapova, who lifted the silver salver in 2004, said she was "thrilled", while three-times champion Venus Williams said the annual lawn tennis festival would now be "even greater".
But for the millions of women forced to earn their living in the world outside the hallowed environs of the All England Tennis and Croquet Club, equality of pay is still a distant dream however.
According to the Office of National Statistics the mean hourly gender pay gap for full time work actually increased last year after slowly narrowing since 1997.
Men in Britain are now earning 17.2 per cent more than women.
For those working part-time, the figure is nearly 40 per cent.
In SW19 and the rest of the capital the gap is even larger.
A report by the Greater London Authority published earlier this month found London was way above the mean average for the rest of the UK - with women taking home 23 per cent less than men.
While women were more likely to be at the bottom end of the pay scale, the differences were even more pronounced among the highest salary earners.
Among the top 10 per cent the income gap between men and women was 32 per cent in London, the GLA found.
Kate Bellamy of the Fawcett Society said that while Prime Minister Tony Blair had been happy to weigh into the row over Wimbledon prize money, his Government had stalled in its attempts to narrow the pay gap in society in general.
"Wimbledon has served up an ace but its time employers and government also raised their game and delivered full pay to women," she said.
The All England Club announcement came on the same day that socialist MEPs gathered outside the European Parliament in Brussels to highlight the issue of gender pay inequality.
Declaring February 22 Equal Pay Day - the day that women have to work in order to earn the same as men - they said that despite the goal of equal pay being enshrined in the Treaty of Rome 50 years ago, there remained a 15 per cent gap between across Europe.
Britain has been ranked 12th out 15 European countries for its full time pay gap while women's hourly part time pay was just 42 per cent of the full time average in the UK compared to 76 per cent in other developed countries.
According to the Equal Opportunities Commission complex factors contribute to Britain's poor performance in levelling the playing field between genders.
Despite being outlawed more than 30 years ago, sexual discrimination though significantly reduced by the Equal Pay and Sexual Discrimination Acts, continues.
And while there have been hundreds of thousands of equal pay cases brought before tribunals, the average pay out in successful cases in 2005was just £7,567Women also continue to get caught by their millions in the so-called "mummy trap" - forced to take part time or poorly paid jobs after having children.
They are also disproportionately represented among the worst paid occupations with men dominating the higher echelons of the most lucrative profession such as law.
And, as income levels continue to rise especially for the better off, women are finding the gap growing ever larger.
Campaigners for equal pay are demanding a raft of measures to consign the pay gap to the past.
The Fawcett Society, which has been fighting for the cause since 1866, wants compulsory pay audits, more flexible working and better childcare.
The present Government, which has presided over a 3.6 per cent narrowing of the full time gender pay gap since it came to power in 1997, will in April see its Gender Equality Duty come into force.
Billed as the biggest change in 30 years, it will require all publicly-funded employers to take the lead in reducing the gap.
Supporters say it might not create the kind of headlines generated by equalising the prize money at Wimbledon but it will benefit millions more women.
- INDEPENDENT
