Gender pay gap narrows thanks to more women in boardroom-level jobs, official survey finds

The gender pay gap narrowed sharply last year – largely thanks to more women moving into boardroom-level jobs, an official survey said yesterday.

It found that on average a woman working full-time is now paid 7.4 per cent less than her male counterpart, a fall from 9 per cent the year before.

The margin has more than halved since the start of the millennium.

The biggest boost for women workers in the year to April was in pay rates for company directors, managers and senior officials, the Office for National Statistics said.

These roles saw the pay gap narrow from 16.3 per cent to 9.9 per cent, reflecting ‘some signs of more women holding higher-paid managerial roles’.

Although the ONS offered no explanation for this, one reason could be legislation introduced in 2017 by Theresa May’s government requiring companies with more than 250 employees to report their gender pay gaps. 

While there is a ‘close to zero’ gender pay gap for all workers under 40, the gulf widens to 10 per cent after that age, when many successful women are raising a family.

The ONS said there was a ‘lower incidence of women moving into higher-paid managerial occupations after the age of 39, at which point pay in these occupations increases’.

The report, based on the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings involving 180,000 people, said that among all employees the pay gap fell from 17.4 per cent to 15.5 per cent.

This figure is higher because it includes low-paid and part-time work, which is more likely to be carried out by women.

The ONS report, which covered the first month of lockdown, said the pandemic appeared to have had little or no effect on the gender pay gap.