UNITED  KINGDOM

Women in full-time employment spend nearly 30% more time on childcare than men in full-time employment.
Women make up 46% of the labour force in the UK.
70% of women are in employment.
40% of women in employment in Britain work part-time, compared with 11% of men.
Women working full-time earn on average 17% less per hour than men, according to Office of National Statistics figures, 2007.

In the UK there are regional variations in the pay gap. In London, men earned an average weekly wage of £790 and women £567, creating a gap of £223. In Northern Ireland, the gap was £85 and in north-east England £105 (Office for National Statistics, 2006).
The Equal Opportunities Commission (2006) worked out that, over her working life, a woman, employed full time, would lose £330,000 on average.
The average hourly wage for female workers before having children is 91% of the male average. That drops to 67% for mothers with young children.
Government data in 2008 revealed that full-time women workers in their forties earn 20% less than men in their forties.

Only 11% of directors of the UK's top 100 companies are women.
The pay gap between male and female directors is widening. It is now 22% – up by 3% on the previous year.

The biggest gender pay gap appeared in the service and voluntary sectors, where female pay is routinely 26% lower than that of their male counterparts.

It is wholly unacceptable in this day and age that women in comparable positions do not receive the same rewards as their male counterparts.


 
Watch the video clip in which Lorely Burt MP, the Liberal Democrats' spokesperson on Women and Equality,
talks about the party's position on flexible working.
                  UK pay gaps
 

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Video clip

British women are working in lower paid and lower status jobs than their male counterparts because they still shoulder the responsibility for housework and childcare.
A "lifestyle divide", in which women take on the burden of domestic duties, creates a vicious circle as they are then less able to work the long hours needed to win top jobs.
Only if the lifestyle divide changes, say researchers, will women have equal opportunities in the world of work.
At the moment any parent with a child under the age of six can ask to go part-time, have flexi-time or work from home. From April 2009 any parent with a child aged under 16 can ask for flexible working.

Part-time working means cutting down on your hours to fewer than a standard working week.
Flexi-time allows you to vary your hours as long as you cover a "core" period defined by your employer.
Many schemes allow you to "bank" extra hours over a period, then take full or half days off.
Job-sharing is where a job is split, usually between two people, so one might work Monday-Wednesday and the other Thursday and Friday.
               
      Lifestyle divide