Last week marked 50 years since the Gender Pay Gap was introduced but, as data from The Trade Union Congress (TUC) revealed, working women are still underpaid and undervalued today.
The current climate and lockdown has made it worse for women who are more likely than men to be key workers and earning a pretty low pay. Today, a new study from Resume has outlined the exact jobs and industries that are dominated by women but still pay men more. Sigh.
So, who are the worst offenders?
According to the study which analysed data from the House of Commons Library for 2019, the health and social care sector tops the charts with the highest number of pay discrepancies with 12 predominantly female professions – from dentist to nurse to senior care worker – having the biggest gap.
Dentists had the biggest gender pay gap in the UK with women making up 55.6% of the industry but on average they get paid a whopping 39.3% less than their male colleagues. The average salary for a female dental practitioner was £40,834, whereas for men this figure sat at £67,285.
Next up are cleaners and domestics, where women make up 76.8% of the workforce in the UK. The average salary for women was £7,628 while for men this figure is at £11,764 – a 35.2% pay gap.
The data showed that financial account managers had the third biggest pay gap in the UK, with 58.6% of women in the role earning, on average, £29,606, while for men this was £45,120.
Sales and retail assistants followed, where 63.6% were female employees earning around £9,959 on average, compared to men who earned £14,120 – a 34.4% pay gap.
But the biggest scandal seems to be in the education sector. The report showed that more than three-quarters of nursery and primary teachers, library workers, and special needs professionals are women, yet they are all subject to a pretty hefty pay gap. Female librarians and senior school teachers can expect to earn almost £10,000 less than men.
The report also confirmed how the gender pay gap was affecting the lowest earners the most with eight out of the top 10 jobs with the biggest gender pay gap see women earning below the national average income of £24,897.
We may well be in 2020 but we have a hell of a way to go still.