Equal Pay Day: Beyond The Gender Gap

Equal Pay Day is not picked arbitrarily: it marks the particular day each year when women on average stop earning, compared to men. There are different ways of calculating this, but using the mean average of the figures released by the Office for National Statistics on 26 October 2017, the Fawcett Society calculates the full-time gender pay gap at 14.1%. This means that Equal Pay Day is 10 November – that is, women are effectively working for free from that date to the end of the year. This date has not changed since 2015, so at this rate the gap will take a very long time to close.

The UK is not alone within the EU in having a gender pay gap, but according to Eurostat data from 2015, the UK's unadjusted gender pay gap is higher than 22 other EU countries. Much has been written about gender pay inequality and it has been headline news for much of this past year following the publication of pay data at the BBC and, more widely, within the entertainment sector.