James Ellaby reviews the latest data on gender pay gaps
The gender pay gap is an issue that shouldn’t still need to be highlighted in 2020, but the statistics are clear. Data from the Office for National Statistics reveals that women earn, on average, 17.2% less than men and forecasts show that unless the rate of reduction, that gap won’t disappear entirely for at least another 60 years, a lasting and shameful legacy of structural inequality and institutional sexism.
Part of the problem with the way the gender pay gap is ingrained into our society is that our perception of it is still very much of men and women in sharp suits in offices like Mad Men, where the women are working harder but getting less reward. That’s still very much a reality in those industries but the gender pay gap is also widespread across many of the jobs that we naturally expect to be dominated by women.
According to new statistics, two thirds of female-dominated jobs see women routinely paid less than men to do the same roles. What explanation can there be for men being paid more than women in professions where they are in the minority? Here’s some of those jobs and the pay gaps that exist for them.
The profession where the gender pay gap is largest even though there are more women than men is amongst dental practitioners. Despite there being 55.6% of women working in the dental industry, their average salary is just under £41,000 a year, compared to £67,000 for their male counterparts, a pay gap percentage of a whopping 39.3%. And you thought it was painful for you to go to the dentists.
Even more shockingly, for cleaners and those working in domestic jobs, where 76.8% are women, the pay gap is almost as large with men doing that work getting on average £4,000 a year more. For receptionists, where only 9% of workers are men, they are still paid 25% more than the women doing the same job.
It’s also notable that the roles that make up the top 10 female-dominated jobs with the largest gender pay gaps are mostly generally amongst the lowest paid, including housekeepers, library clerks and sales assistants. Each of the average female salaries in the top 10 qualify for the ‘Basic Rate’ of income tax, and eight of them are below the national average income of £24,897.
When it comes to looking at the sectors where this pay gap is more widespread, the worst affected includes the healthcare professions, where dentists, nurses and senior care workers are predominantly women but it’s the men who get the greater financial rewards. In the world of education, where men make up only a quarter of primary teachers, library workers, and special needs professionals, senior secondary teachers and librarians, men can on average get paid nearly £10,000 a year more than women.
These findings beg the question of whether female-dominated professions tend to have larger gender pay gaps, but there’s plenty of evidence that the gap exists in all manner of careers, including those where the gender split is more equal. For example, women make up 54.2% of solicitors, but are paid on average £14,000 a year less than men, while the 41% of men who work as financial account managers are paid over £15,500 a year more than the women.
So women can expect to be paid less to do the same job than men in jobs across all sectors, even those where they make up most of the workforce. And this is just one area of inequality, with race, disabilities and class all still likely to result in a pay gap. It’s important to stay aware of these inequalities and to highlight them, so why not find out more about the gender pay gap across all these sectors and jobs?
About the author
James Ellaby is a freelance journalist, content marketer and researcher, writing for Resume.io.