The UK’s gender pay gap has widened as sharp increases in the cost of childcare has worsened a “motherhood penalty”, pricing many women out of work altogether, according to a new report. The nation’s average pay gap widened by 2.4 percentage points to 14.4% in 2021, accountancy giant PwC found in its Women in Work index.
It means that the gap between what the average man and the average women is paid in hourly pay has got bigger, indicating UK companies have taken a step backward when it comes to gender parity. At the rate the pay gap is closing, it will now take more than 50 years to reach gender pay parity, PwC said.
Furthermore, the UK dropped five places in the firm’s annual index of women’s employment outcomes, across 33 countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and included in the analysis.
