Heather Joshi, Alex Bryson, David Wilkinson and Kelly Ward from the Department of Social Sciences, Institute of Education, University College London consider the gender pay gap for people born in 1958 and the effects of unequal pay on financial equality.
Although Equal Pay has been in legal force since 1975, the gap between the pay of men and women in Britain is slow to close. As they move through adult life, men’s and women’s family laos rcs data responsibilities lead to a divergence in employment paths with consequences for their rates of pay. Unequal rates of pay along the way underpin gender inequality in lifetime income. If similarly qualified men and women receive different pay for the same work it is not only unlawful but unfair and inefficient.
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While over the years the national average pay gap has been shrinking, there are strong patterns by age. It is relatively small among people in their twenties and rises over the next two decades of age to reach a peak in the mid-forties, slackening off somewhat for workers in their fifties and sixties. This uphill stretch coincides with the years when people are having families, and many workers, women as well as men, have children at home.