Women and men at work

Abstract

Abstract We explore gender inequalities in paid and unpaid work with a focus on the UK. The average working-age woman in the UK earned 40% less than her male counterpart in 2019; sizeable gender gaps in participation, hours worked and hourly wages all contribute to this gap. We explore how these patterns have changed over the past 25 years and conclude that after accounting for women’s rising education, progress has been modest. At the same time, women do far more unpaid domestic work than men. We show how inequalities evolve around parenthood and highlight how the division of labour between parents appears remarkably unrelated to relative earnings potential. We discuss consequences of our findings for material inequality and for the economy at large. We discuss the likely impacts of various current and potential policies, including parental leave, childcare and the tax and benefit system.