The Gender Pay Gap: A Briefing

Abstract

While the official gender pay gap figure is 9.1% for full-time workers, the pay gap between men and women aged 22-39 is negligible. The gap widens later in life, often as a result of women taking time out of the workplace to raise children, and returning to work in a part-time capacity, reducing future earning potential. Calculations that put the pay gap above 9.1% are achieved by moving away from like-for-like comparisons between men and women in the work place. The Equal Pay Day campaign calculates a figure five percentage points higher, or 55% higher, than the official figures by using the mean rather than the median of the ONS data, thereby including outlier salaries.