If you were looking for a rousing update to fuel your working week, you won’t find it in today’s papers, where it’s reported that the UK gender pay gap won’t close until 2056. That means children born this year will be 30 by the time women earn at the same rate as men. And, more miserably, Millennial women like me who are already in their 30s will be nearing retirement by the time the gender pay gap finally closes.
There are plenty of digestible stats: millions of British women are effectively working almost 50 days a year for free, and female workers lose around £2,548 every year compared to their male colleagues. The thought that has been churning in my head, though, is that for my entire working life, I will have earned less than my male colleagues. I think back to a job I had pre-pandemic as Womenswear Editor at a luxury retailer, while my male colleague, in a typically old-school setup, was Menswear Editor. We had mirror roles, yet I knew he was earning more, though I was too afraid to ask just how much. When I discovered that our previous Menswear Editor, a good friend, was being paid more, I took it to my (female) boss, only to be told curtly that discussing salaries was against company policy.
