Women and men at work
This report analyses the differences between women and men at work in the UK and in other high-income countries. It underlines a deep, but not surprising, gap. Indeed, men do more paid jobs outside the house, while women do most of the unpaid jobs inside; moreover, women are paid less than men even when they get a job outside the house.
For instance, the average working-age woman in the UK earned 40% less than her male counterpart in 2019. This gap has improved by 13 percentage points in 25 years, mainly thanks to the improvements in female education. However, the gender gap remains deep in the three main elements of labour market earnings: employment, working hours and hourly wages. These factors are interrelated and the gap increases in all of them in case of parenthood.
The authors link the inequalities in paid work to a not equal division of unpaid work, that makes it hard for women to achieve the same goals as men. In addition, there are some preferences and spread beliefs about the division of roles inside the family: in the UK, two women in five (and the same percentage of men) believe that a woman should stay at home if she has children under school age.
