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3 July 2024

By Heather Joshi, Alex Bryson, David Wilkinson, Francesca Foliano, Bozena Wielgoszewska

Unequal pay between men and women is a key driver of social and economic gender inequality. In the 1920s, women’s pay was around 50% of men’s. A hundred years later, the gap is around 15%. It continues to fall but only very slowly. Aside from the push given by World War 2, the factors behind this long-term convergence are the closing of gaps between women’s and men’s education and employment experiences, helped by equal opportunities policies, especially those initiated by Barbara Castle in the 1970s. While the pay gap has been falling historically, within lifetimes it tends to widen as cohorts pass from youth to midlife.

Our ESRC-funded research project at UCL has examined the Gender Wage Gap as reported in the British Birth Cohort Studies, which track (more…)