Reasons For The Gender Pay Gap

Gender pay gap

The gender pay gap is the percentage difference between average hourly earnings for men and women in the workplace.

The pay gap isn 't the same as equal pay. Equal pay means that men and women doing the same job should be paid the same. This has been a legal requirement which was established in The Equal Pay act of 1970.

Across the UK, men earned 18.4% more than women, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).The gap between men and women 's earnings for both full and part-time work has fallen from 27.5% in 1997 to 18.4% in 2017.

Reasons for the gender pay gap :

1. Men are proportionally more likely to work full-time than women. At younger ages (16 to 21) men’s jobs are split almost equally between full-time

Having children may also change what women want from a job.Women often care for young children or elderly relatives. women are more likely to want the ability to work flexible hours, or to work at home, or to complete a project outside a tight schedule which are often lower paid or have fewer opportunities for progression.

3.Discrimination is another cause of the gender pay gap. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (ECHR) has previously found that one in nine new mothers were either dismissed, made redundant or treated so poorly they felt they had to leave their job. This can create a gap in experience, leading to lower wages when women return to work.

4. Men also tend to take up the majority of the most senior roles at a company, which are the highest paid. Men dominate the higher-paying occupations, accounting for 72.8 percent of chief executive officers and senior officials and 70.2 percent of managers and directors. They also hold a high proportion of the lowest-paying elementary occupations, and process plant and machine operatives roles, the preliminary data for 2017 shows.The the top occupations in which women are the majority of employees being, general administrative occupations (79.4%), personal assistants (97.7%) and receptionists (89.2%) according to the living wage

Benefits in kind

Benefits in-kind are those services, such as healthcare and education, that are provided free or heavily discounted at the point of consumption. These benefits can make a considerable impact on final income, increasing it considerably for the poorest, and narrowing the gap between rich and poor.

Criticisms of progressive taxes and benefits

Taxes and benefits clearly compensate for the failure of labour markets to provide sufficient original income for all citizens. However, such intervention can be criticised because:

It may create a disincentive effect, which occurs when individuals are discouraged from working hard because they pay more of their income in taxes.

It may create moral hazard, where some individuals may not look for ways to improve their own position because the state provides insurance against poverty, unemployment, and disability.

For information on Welfare Reform

The National Minimum Wage

The long-term aim of a minimum wage is to remove the problem of poverty pay, which exists when the earnings from paid work do not result in a living wage and fail to push people out of poverty.

See also: National Minimum Wage

Policies to reduce