Gender gap closes, but UK falls behind on empowered women

PwC’s Women in Work Index shows that the UK ranks 18th out of 27 OECD countries based on a measure that combines five key indicators of female economic empowerment, the equality of earnings with men, the proportion of women in work, the female unemployment rate, and the proportion of women in full-time employment.

The index reveals that the UK has made progress in narrowing the gender wage gap and increasing female labour participation, but it still lags behind many OECD countries when it comes to overall female economic empowerment.

The Nordic countries continue to lead the index, with Norway still taking pole position, followed by Denmark and Sweden. These three countries have consistently occupied the top three positions in the index since it was launched in 2000.

The UK’s performance has improved since last year’s index. But other OECD countries have also made progress, meaning that the UK moved up by only one place to 18th position in the Women in Work Index.

The UK is down from 14th in 2000 and 17th in 2007.

Since 2000, the UK has reduced the gender age gap from 26 per cent to 18 per cent in 2012. However, this is still higher than the OECD average of 16 per cent.

Katherine Bullock, Yorkshire partner and PwC’s UK head of private client said: “It is encouraging that the UK is making gradual headway on closing the gender pay gap, but there is still a long way to go before we catch up with other countries and fully close this wage gap.

“It is disappointing that women’s pace of progress in the labour market has been relatively poor since 2000. If we want to see a meaningful change to women’s economic empowerment in the UK, we will have to speed up the rate of change, otherwise we risk falling further behind other high income economies.”