Alex Bryson, John Forth and Nikos Theodoropoulos 

In the last few decades there has been what has been called ‘a grand gender convergence‘. Women now outperform men in educational attainment and are closing the gap in labour market experience. 

These trends are common across much of the developed world. Yet a gender wage gap persists, with women earning substantially less than men. While the gap has been closing the rate of convergence is slow. Britain’s 1970 Equal Pay Act came into force in 1975 yet in 2017 the raw gender wage gap in median hourly pay was 18.4 per cent.

What can be done? In our study we ask: