Gender Gap: women in UK work for free since mid-October

7 years ago - Published in Finance, Fundamental Analysis

The gender pay gap refers to the difference in pay between men and women are paid for doing exactly the same job. In most cases, women are paid less tha their male counterparts.

Women in the UK stop being paid on 15th October whereas the average cut off date for Europe is 30th October. According to Eurostat, the gap between male and female salaries in the UK is 20 per cent. The disparity means that by 16 October men have already been paid the amount it would take a woman doing the same job a whole year to earn.

Across Europe the gender pay gap averages 17 per cent. Lord Sugar says women should ask for more money to close pay gap Britain has the fifth largest gender pay gap in Europe – higher than Slovakia, Portugal and Switzerland.

New laws introduced by the UK Government in April this year will require all companies with 250 or more employees to publish gender pay figures by April 2018. 

The study looked at the gender pay gap across 31 European countries and found that Estonia is the worst for paying women equal to men, and that women are effectively working for free from September 23.

Since last year, Estonia has only managed to close the pay gap by a tiny three per cent, from men typically being paid 30 per cent more than women, to 27 per cent.

Working women in Germany were calculated to be effectively working for free from 11 October, while Nordic countries Iceland and Finland fare little better with women effectively working for free from 30 October.

Italy and Luxembourg have the smallest gender pay gap among all European countries at 5 per cent, but women in both countries will still, in effect, work for free for the last two weeks of year.

“This study brings the devastating effects of the gender pay gap into clear focus. It is absolutely astonishing that in the 21st century women are still suffering such financial penalties merely because of their gender” said Adelle Kehoe, senior researcher at business comparison site Expert Market. “I hope this report encourages women across Europe to continue to campaign for gender equality in the workplace and in society as a whole.”

Grace Garland, researcher at Expert Market, said: “For women to know that the man sitting next to them doing the same job could be getting the equivalent of over two more months pay is frankly insulting and an embarrassment to the UK”.

Wage data in September revealed the UK’s gender pay gap at senior level may be much larger than previously thought, with men in top management positions earning £11,606 more than their female peers on average.

The gender pay gap has created big headlines in recent months. The BBC revealed earlier in the summer revealed two-thirds of its stars earning more than £150,000 are male, with Chris Evans the top-paid on between £2.2m and £2.25m.

Many women TV and radio presenters were earning well below their male colleagues for doing, in effect, the same job. The revelations prompted a number of high profile figures, such as Emily Maitlis, Fiona Bruce, Victoria Derbyshire and Clare Balding, to demand BBC boss Lord Tony Hall act.