Dr Wanda Wyporska, Executive Director of the Equality Trust, talks to FiLiA’s Public Policy Assistant Adeline about the 50th Anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, and why more work needs to be done to ensure women are being given a fair deal.

Dr Wanda Wyporska, FRSA, is Executive Director at The Equality Trust, the national charity that campaigns to reduce social and economic inequality. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of York, a trustee of ACEVO (Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations), Redthread Youth, and Equally Ours and Governor of a primary school. She is a regular keynote speaker and sits on or has advised a range of bodies, such as the ACEVO race advisory panel, the Fight Inequality Alliance Steering Group, the Sheila McKechnie Foundation Social Power review, NUS Poverty Commission and the Sex Education Forum Advisory Group.

Wanda has over a decade of experience working in the trade union movement, leading on equalities, social mobility and education policy and is an experienced campaigner. She is a TEDx speaker, has spoken at the United Nations, York Festival of Ideas, and chaired a panel at the Women of the World Festival. She regularly comments in the media, having appeared on Newsnight, BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze, Sky News, and BBC 1's The Big Questions, and written for The Guardian, HuffPo, and The Independent among other outlets.

Wanda was a Starun Senior Scholar at Hertford College, Oxford, where she was awarded a doctorate in European History and subsequently published her first book, Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland 1500-1800 in 2013. It was shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award.

Useful links

• The Equal Pay Act: All You Need To Know (FiLiA resource)

• Equality Trust lifetime earnings loss calculator

• ‘From Pin Money to Fat Cats’ report

• Follow Wanda on Twitter @WandaWyporska