New statistics show slight decrease in overall gender pay gap but rise in part-time figure

Close the Gap has calculated the difference in pay between women and men working in Scotland using the latest Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) tables released from the Office of National Statistics this morning.

2015 has seen a slight decrease in the overall mean average gender pay gap of 0.6 percentage points since 2014, remaining stubbornly high at 14.8%.

Women working full-time now earn 10.6% less than men working full-time, a narrowing of 0.9 percentage points.

The mean part-time pay gap has increased by 1.1 percentage points to 33.5%. The part-time pay gap compares women's average hourly earnings with men's full-time average hourly earnings, and is illustrative of the concentration of part-time work in undervalued, low-paid jobs such as cleaning, admin, caring and retail.

Source ONS (2015) Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings Table 3.6A (Accessed Nov 2015.)

The gender pay gap: at a glance

• The mean average overall gender pay gap is 14.8%.
• Women working full-time earn 10.6% less than men working full-time.

• Women working part-time earn 33.5% less than men working full-time, showing that part-time work continues to be characterised by low pay.

• Jobs held by women were more likely to be paid less than the National Minimum Wage than jobs held by men (0.9% compared with 0.7%). This is consistent with the fact that a women make up three-quarters of part-time workers.

• The mean is calculated by adding all employees’ hourly rates of pay together and dividing by the total number of employees. This includes those on the highest and lowest rates of pay. As those with the highest rates of pay tend to be men, and those who receive the lowest pay are more likely to be women, the mean captures a more complete picture of the gender pay gap.

• The median is calculated by finding the midpoint in all employees’ hourly rates of pay and discarding the lowest and highest rates of pay. The median is not skewed by very low hourly rates or pay or very high hourly rates of pay, but this method can obscure gendered pay differences

While we're developing our updated annual paper on gender pay gap statistics, if you want to know about the key indicator of women's labour market equality, you can find out more from our 2014 paper.