The pay gap

It is now more than 50 years since the Equal Pay Act came into force, but there is still a massive inequality between men’s and women’s pay.

There is a 10%* gap between men’s and women’s average hourly rates, and a 27% gap when you compare women’s part-time average hourly rate to men’s full-time hourly rate.

These headline figures represent a lifetime of inequality for women which contributes to women's higher levels of poverty, children's poverty and women’s pensioner poverty. It also impacts on household earnings, and on men’s earnings when they work in sectors or occupations with high levels of female workers.

There are three main causes of the gender pay gap.

Occupational segregation

Stereotyping about women’s capabilities and skills results in women being clustered into predominantly female occupations that are associated with low pay. These include cleaning, catering, admin, care, and retail. There are also barriers, sometimes called ‘the glass ceiling’, which make women less likely to be found in management and senior positions.

Lack of flexible working

Women also experience discrimination and disadvantage because they are more likely to have caring responsibilities for children, sick relatives, disabled people, or older people. One fifth of women lost their job, or lose out on pay or promotion, simply for being pregnant.

A lack of flexible working in many workplaces means that women are required to look for part-time work in order to balance their many responsibilities. As most part-time work is in low-paid, stereotypically female occupations, this means that women’s pay is likely to go down. Part-time working also has a long-term scarring effect on women’s wages, even if they return to full-time work.

Discrimination in pay and grading systems

There is also widespread discrimination in pay systems, with many women being paid less for work that is the same or similar, or of the same value as male colleagues’ work. This is usually not intentional and there can be many factors within pay systems that lead to inequalities. For example, individuals being appointed to different points on the pay scale; different job and grade titles for virtually the same jobs; male jobs having disproportionate access to bonus earnings; women having less access to high-paid shift and overtime work; performance-related pay being unfairly awarded; women not receiving the same access to training; sex bias in analytical job evaluation schemes grading women’s jobs lower.

Women's experiences vary

While there are commonalities in women's experiences of employment, women are not a homogenous group. Disabled women, Black and minority ethnic women, Muslim women, lesbian and bisexual women, trans women, refugee women, young women, and older women experience different, multiple barriers to labour market participation, and to progression within their occupation. Disabled women, and some groups of black and minority ethnic women are more likely to be underemployed in terms of skills, and experience higher pay gaps. Disabled, black and minority ethnic, and lesbian, bisexual and trans women are more likely to report higher levels of discrimination, bullying and harassment.

The pay gap is bad for business, and bad for Scotland’s economy because many women are working below their skill level. Companies that treat staff fairly are more productive, more innovative, find it easier to retain skilled staff, and ensure that they have a positive corporate image

* 2021 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings