Light in the other side of tunnel.....

In my previous blog, I showed light on the definition of gender pay gap and its critical reasons. However, in context to my previous findings, I would now like to focus on whether or not the gender pay gap have been lessen in these years?

In these ten years of time, lot of things have been changed. Life is much more convenient because of the emerging technologies, global warming is at high risk, redundancy rates and criminal rates are rising like the sea level, Cheryl Cole and Ashley are on the process to get divorced, Simon Cowell ultimately found his “soul mate” and at long last a female director has been acknowledged at the Oscar Awards, 2010(yippee!!! Well done woman!).And it seems like I just celebrated my 10th birthday yesterday (when I got a beautiful tiara!) but sadly I am 20 this year. Time is flying like never to return! However, the question is, Are we flying with time? Have we changed or improved our perception towards our society and our so called traditions? Have we started believing in equality and respecting each other despite of our gender, caste, culture and age?


As I mentioned in my previous research, the gender pay gap have many causes. Women are compelled to choose over the family and parenthood to their career. Due to which women are inclined to do part time jobs than full times. However, there has been a drastic change in these differences over the years. The gender pay gap has moved from 24% to 19% over the decade. (BHPS data, E,F,G (corresponding to 1995,1996 and 1997) and waves N,O,P and Q(broadly corresponding to 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007)).Well, it seems like the other half of the glass is still full. Now lets see the factors that has affected in changing the demography of the gender pay gap over the decade.


The gender pay gap can be analysed on the basis of hourly pay rate. One standard measures ,compares women’s overall earnings by men working as a full time by which pay gap is 21% (2004-2007).The overall pay gap has decreased by 4% since 1990’s from 29% to 19% or 25% to 21% depends on which denominator has been used. Men’s full time pay was £12.71 per hour and women’s was £10.85 per hour in 2004 – 2007.

In some cases, “being a female” becomes the main reason for the differences in pay gap. The overall difference in wages was 12% in 2007 and was 16% in 1997. The pay gap still existed even after the control over education, age, firm, size and region. Still today, men are seen as the “bread winner” of the family. Therefore, women are more pushed towards family responsibility. The gendered stereotypes at workplace also affect the differences in pay gaps.

The occupation segregation is another key factor. There was 15%-17% of pay gaps in periods, 90’s and 2000. Each individual’s occupation is classified into a standard occupation classification job heading, and then percentage of workers in UK who are male for each occupational category is calculated. The highest male segregation is in industry and primary sectors whereas high percentages of women are still found working in caring work or customer services- where there is lowest percentage of male segregations.


The Industrial sector also plays an important role in gender pay gap. There was 8% pay difference in this sector in 1997. However, it has been reduced to 5% by 2007. Women in these sectors still get much low pay than men. Women earn 17% less wage per hour than men.

Gender pay gap leads to poverty as well. The gender pay gap plays a key role in this difference as the inequalities between men and women’s salaries over a lifetime can have a significant impact on women’s earnings and pensions. This leads to older women having a higher risk of poverty (22%) compared to men (16%).(European Commission, employment social affairs and equal opportunities, 18/03/2010)

Thus, after my research over the changes in gender pay gap over the decade, I can say that, there have been incredible changes in the differences in pay gaps. However, there are still some gaps that we need to fill in. As we all know, there is always a light in the other side of the tunnel, lets be positive and hopefully, in next couple of years the term “glass ceilings”, gender pay gap would be removed from our day to day life dictionary.