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. |
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on behalf of to force to damage economic prosperity to harm to lock outdated division value request to turn down to raise awareness |
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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. |
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. |
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