In her first statement as Prime Minister, Theresa May said: “If you’re a woman, you will earn less than a man.” While the gender pay gap has not been solved yet, new regulations mean that everyone will know about it. The U.K. government now has the power to regulate the framework for gender pay gap reporting by companies with 250 or more employees after Section 78 of the Equality Act 2010 came into force on 22nd August. Section 78 states that the regulations may require employers to “publish information relating to the pay of employees for the purpose of showing whether, by reference to factors of such description as is prescribed, there are differences in the pay of male and female employees.”
But the gender wage gap can be looked at at a more granular level. A new study from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, The gender wage gap, quotes Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign speech from July this year: “Last year Britain was ranked 18th in the world for its gender pay gap … We can and must do far better.” The IFS report showed that the wage gap is much smaller when comparing young women—before they become mothers—to their male counterparts. It also found that the gap widens consistently for 12 years after the first child is born, by which point women receive an astounding 33 percent less pay per hour than men.
