UK's Gender Gap in Official Records Apparently Misrepresented for Decades, According to Scholarly Findings
In the latest findings published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, it has been revealed that the gender pay gap in the United Kingdom remains a significant issue, with women earning on average 7.0% less per hour than men for full-time work.
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), as of April 2024, the official gender pay gap for full-time employees in the UK stands at 13.1%, with men earning £19.24 per hour and women earning £17.88 per hour. This reflects a slight improvement from 2023, where the gender pay gap was 7.5%.
The study, led by Prof John Forth and colleagues from City St Georges, University of London, suggests that the gender pay gap in the UK has been consistently under-estimated by about one percentage point over the last 20 years.
The gender pay gap is not uniform across all sectors. Higher-paying roles around £30/hour have a lower proportion of women, indicating a gender imbalance in both representation and pay across sectors. Interestingly, among part-time employees, women earn slightly more than men, with a -3% pay gap.
The gender pay gap is highest in skilled trades occupations and lowest in caring, leisure, and other service occupations. Among the five largest European economies, the gender pay gap is particularly high in Germany (14.2%) and the UK, more than double that of France (6.2%), Spain (6.2%), and Italy (4.1%).
The highest gender pay gap is in Estonia, where women earn 24.7% less than men, while the lowest is in Luxembourg at just 0.4%. The UK ranked 8th out of 31 European countries in gender pay gap in 2023, with a figure of 13.3%.
The ONS spokesperson stated that this research raises some interesting questions about the best way to weight their survey data, but the overall impact on the gender pay gap would be small if new methods were used. The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings in the UK has recently undergone improvements to address these concerns.
Median gross annual earnings for full-time employees in the UK were £37,430 (€43,697) in April 2024. Across all types of contracts, the gender pay gap widens to 13.1%, with women earning £869 for every £1,000 earned by men.
The gender pay gap in the UK is higher than the EU and OECD average, and if the gender pay gap is taken as 14.1%, the shortfall for women increases to £5,278. This underscores the need for continued efforts to address this issue and promote gender equality in the workforce.
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