Great Britain’s Gender Pay Gap is at Its Lowest Since Mandatory Reporting

Great Britain’s gender wage disparity is at its lowest point since reporting regulations went into effect in 2017. According to a study of official government data, women are still only earning 91p for every £1 earned by males, despite these advancements.

Men are still paid more than women in nearly four out of five businesses and government agencies (78.4%), despite a minor decline to the median pay gap to 9.1% in 2023–2024—the lowest since mandatory reporting started in 2018.

Nonetheless, difficulties continue, especially in the public sector where there is still a large gender pay disparity of 14.4%, with men being paid more than women in roughly 90% of public sector firms compared to about 75% of private companies.

By Friday afternoon, 10,380 enterprises with 250 or more workers had broken the previous record by submitting their statistics before the private companies’ midnight deadline.

Protesters are calling for fines for businesses that break the law and more government action to solve pay discrepancies. Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, stressed how critical it is to move quickly to implement action plans in order to address pay disparities and penalize corporations that do not comply.

Even though reporting non-compliance was comparatively low, the Equality and Human Rights Commission observed that certain organizations were still not fulfilling their legal duties.

There were notable variances in salary across multiple industries; the highest median discrepancies were reported by the construction (22.8%), finance and insurance (21.5%), and education (20%) sectors.

The difficulties facing the education sector have been partially ascribed to notable disparities within Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), since academy trusts account for almost all of the public entities that perform the lowest.

Despite these differences, there were lower pay inequalities recorded in other industries, including food and lodging, health care, and social work, where women made just marginally less than men.

It is prohibited by the Equal Pay Act of 1970 to pay men and women differently for doing the same job.

Survey data from the Office for National Statistics showed that the gender pay gap was closing over time, peaking at 7.7% in April 2023 for full-time employees in England as opposed to Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland.

A government representative restated the government’s commitment to closing the gender wage gap while highlighting initiatives to guarantee women have equal access to job opportunities.