Dance is one of the few professions where women are, on average, paid more than men. Image: Miguel Ángel Hernández / Unsplash
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Here’s a fact for you this Gender Pay Gap Day. Female baristas are paid, on average, 1.6 per cent more than men in coffee shops. A win for gender equality you say? Well, male barristers on the other hand earn on average 16.2 per cent more than their female counterparts.
It is well established that women are more likely than men to work in low paid roles, as well as taking on the lion’s share of childcare and other caring responsibilities. But exactly what roles are the absolute worst when it comes to pay equality?
According to gender equality charity the Fawcett Society, the gender pay gap decreased in 2022, when taking into account people working full and part-time roles. Now, women can expect to be paid just 11.3 per cent less than men, down from 11.9 per cent last year.
The charity says that this means from November 20, women essentially stop being paid for the work they do for the rest of the year.
So the pay gap may be decreasing, but if it continues at this rate, it’ll take 30 years to close, the Trades Union Congress has calculated.
“It is unacceptable that the gender pay gap has barely shifted in the past few years,” said Jemima Olchawski, CEO of the Fawcett Society.
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Given the cost of living crisis is hitting women the hardest, “women can’t afford to wait any longer for the gap to close,” Olchawski continued.
The equality charity also calculated that, when taking into account gross annual earnings for full-time and part-time workers, women in Britain take home £564 less than men.
To speed up closing the gap between what men and women are paid, the Fawcett Society is calling on the government to make flexible work the default with a requirement for jobs to be advertised as flexible up front, to enable more women to work.
They also say employers need to stop asking for salary history when offering women a job, as this is a significant barrier to pay equality. Previous research found 58 per cent of women felt they had received a lower salary offer after having to disclose their previous earnings – and yet employers are increasingly leaving salaries off job adverts.
Activists are also campaigning for mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting and action plans, given that women of colour face even higher discrimination.
These are the jobs with the biggest, and smallest gender pay gaps, as reported by the Office for National Statistics.
Top 10 UK jobs with the biggest gender pay gap in 2022
Waste disposal and environmental services managers (34 per cent)
Vehicle technicians, mechanics and electricians (30 per cent)
Other educational professionals – (30 per cent)
Business associate professionals – (28 per cent)
Financial managers and directors (28 per cent)
Health care practice managers (27 per cent)
Newspaper and periodical editors (26 per cent)
Electrical service and maintenance mechanics and repairers (26 per cent)
Water and sewerage plant operatives (25 per cent)
Education managers (24 per cent)
Top 10 UK jobs where women are paid more than men in 2022
And if you’re looking for those professions where women are actually paid more than men, or in other words have a minus gender pay gap, here they are. Good news if you’re a woman and you want to be a secretary, not so great news if you want to be a director, manager, or editor.
Dancers and choreographers (-35 per cent)
Special needs education teaching professionals (-23 per cent)
Welfare professionals (-16 per cent)
Information technology trainers (-15 per cent)
Medical secretaries (-15 per cent)
Personal assistants and other secretaries (-12 per cent)
Chartered surveyors (-12 per cent)
Energy plant operatives (-12 per cent)
Generalist medical practitioners (-11 per cent)
Legal secretaries (-10 per cent)
The gender pay gap is calculated by the ONS as “the difference between average hourly earnings (excluding overtime) of men and women as a proportion of men’s average hourly earnings (excluding overtime). It is a measure across all jobs in the UK, not of the difference in pay between men and women for doing the same job.”
This Christmas, 3.8 million people across the UK will be facing extreme poverty. Thousands of those struggling will turn to selling the Big Issue as a vital source of income - they need your support to earn and lift themselves out of poverty.
