Despite decades of progress, the gender pay gap remains a persistent feature of the UK labour market. Currently women in the UK earn approximately 11% less than men.

VISION researcher and Reader at City St George’s UoL, Vanessa Gash, writes in her article, The gender pay gap looks different depending where you are on the income ladder, for The Conversation, that the gender pay gap is not just because of differences in education or job type, but due to deeper inequalities in how work and care responsibilities are distributed.

Based on a study investigating barriers to equal pay, Vanessa and colleagues examined different predictors of the gender pay gap at the mean and for different income groups. Using the United Kingdom Household Panel Survey (UKHLS), the team provided a detailed analysis of the effects of individual work histories, with up to 40 years of retrospective data to uncover how these inequalities play out across income groups.

Findings

• Equal pay policies must be tailored to the needs of different income groups. For wealthier households, policies that support full-time work and chip away at sex segregation may be effective so that women can more readily access better-paid jobs. But for poorer households, the focus should be on improving access to stable and better-paid jobs, while reducing discrimination and supporting flexible work arrangements.
• Efforts to close the gender pay gap must avoid pitting the gains of high-earning women against the losses of low-earning men. In an era of rising political populism, this could undermine support for equality.
• Promotion of good-quality employment for all and supporting equalised caregiving responsibilities is necessary.

By failing to address the barriers that prevent men and women from participating fully in both paid work and unpaid care work, reductions in the gender pay gap are unlikely any time soon.