The South West is no longer the best place in the UK for women to work, according to a new report by PwC.
The region fell to second place on the accounting giant’s Women in Work Index, having been ranked number one for three consecutive years.
Northern Ireland has moved into first place, with the lowest female unemployment rate and gender pay gap in the country.
PwC said the South West continued to have the lowest gap between male and female labour force participation rates of any region in the UK at 5.5%. It was also second for overall participation with a rate of 77%, while its unemployment for women was 3.2%.
However, the area now has the lowest percentage of women in full-time employment at 59%, and one of the largest gender pay gaps in the UK at 16%.
Sue Morling, partner at PwC in Bristol, said: “It’s disappointing to see the South West lose its place at the top of the UK rankings in the Women in Work Index, but it’s worth noting that the drop is slight - and that the region was still ranked second in the UK, which was itself the best-performing G7 nation.
“But the playing field still isn’t level; exacerbated by the cost of living crisis, childcare costs now represent almost a third of the income of a family on the average UK wage, and that continues to price women out of returning to work.”
Nationally, the UK recorded an absolute decline in women’s employment outcomes in 2021, seeing its relative international ranking fall five places, from 9th to 14th, according to PwC’s annual index of OECD countries.
The UK saw a significant widening of the gender pay gap by 2.4 percentage points to 14.4% in 2021 - four times the average increase across the OECD as a whole.
PwC said that since the Covid-19 pandemic, the UK’s progress towards gender pay parity had been "in reverse”. The firm said UK female labour force participation rate fell 0.4 percentage points between 2020 and 2021, during a time of labour market recovery across the OECD.
The company added that rising costs of childcare threatened to make these results “even worse, with more women being priced out of work altogether”.
Larice Stielow, senior economist at PwC, said: “An 18 year old woman entering the workforce today will not see pay equality in her working lifetime. At the rate the gender pay gap is closing, it will take more than 50 years to reach gender pay parity.
"If the rebound from the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we can’t rely on economic growth alone to produce gender equality - unless we want to wait another 50 years or more.”
Read now:
- Women leaders at Dorset tech firm on how to thrive in 'male dominated' sector
- Pennon tops FTSE Women Leaders Review for second year
- Networking group for working mums expands with five South West hubs
- Women founded 8,255 South West companies in 2022 - Rose Review
Like this story? Why not sign up to get the latest South West business news straight to your inbox.
