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Closing the Gender Pay Gap:

An update report for TUC Women's Conference 2008

Introduction

This report uses official data and recent research into the gender pay gap to examine the position of women within the labour market and the causes of the continuing pay inequity they experience.

The report shows that, while the pay gap experienced by women continues to narrow, with the full time pay gap now at 17.2% and the part time pay gap at 35.6%, the underlying causes of the pay gap persist. Undervaluation of women's work, a persistent employment penalty for mothers, occupational gender segregation, and discriminatory treatment in the workplace continue to hamper efforts to further reduce the pay gap.

The interconnectedness of part-time work, occupational gender segregation and the onset of family responsibilities hits women in the UK particularly hard - they experience a larger pay gap than many other women in Europe. The UK pay gap is a third higher than the EU average.

Unequal pay doesn't just hurt women - this report also highlights the cost of women's unequal pay for everyone, with strong links between the gender pay gap and child poverty, skills shortages and a cost to the economy of the under-utilisation of women's skills in excess of £11bn a year.

The findings of this report emphasise the critical need to tackle the penalties paid by part-time workers and mothers as well as for widespread cultural change to challenge the undervaluation of women's work.

You can download a full copy of this report at www.tuc.org.uk/extras/genderpayreport08.pdf

Report (300 words) issued 11 Mar 2008