UK gender pay gap for higher-educated parents has grown since 1970s – study

The pay gap between mothers and fathers with post-school education has increased since the late 1970s in the UK, according to research.

As the world marks International Women’s Day on Wednesday, research from the University of Kent has found that the gap in pay between higher-educated mothers and fathers – the “motherhood penalty” – is greater now than 40 years ago.

Dr Amanda Gosling, a senior lecturer in economics at the University of Kent, argues that the closing of the pay gap between men and women since the 1970s has largely been driven by economic factors such as the minimum wage and falling wages for less educated men, rather than societal progress.

“Barriers to career progression for mothers with some post-school education have hardly shifted,” she said. “The gap in pay between mothers and fathers looks very similar now as it did in the late 1970s. The story for Gen-Xers is the same for boomers and the millennials.”

According to data from the Office for National Statistics, based on the Annual Survey for Hours and Earnings (ASHE), the gender pay gap for full-time employees was 8.3% in 2022, up from 7.7% in 2021. Among all employees, the gender pay gap is 14.9%.

But Gosling said the gap for mothers was considerably larger than the one represented by the official gender pay gap. By her calculations, the hourly wages of mothers is 72% of the hourly wage of fathers, which reflects the fact that working mums are stalled in their career path, and less likely to go into the highest-paid roles.

She said her work, which splices microdata from the Family Expenditure Survey (1978-1999) and the Family Resources Survey (2000-2021), gave a fuller explanation of the extent of the “motherhood penalty”.

The research suggests that for higher-educated women, the gender pay gap has actually worsened since the 70s. Its preliminary findings show that in 1978, mothers aged between 23 and 59 who left school after the age of 18 made about 72% of the wages of equivalent fathers. By 2019 this had fallen to 69%.

This was despite the fact that mothers were now more educated than fathers, added Gosling. In 1978, 10% of fathers and 9% of mothers had any post-school education; by 2019 this had risen to 45% and 48% respectably. “Arguably, then, the current overall gap between the wages of mothers and fathers is understated because is does not control for the fact that mothers are more skilled,” she said.

In contrast, the gap between mothers and fathers without any post-school education has reduced significantly. Using the same datasets, mothers made 57% of the fathers’ wage in 1978, which increased to 70% in 2019.

“The story for mothers without any post-school education from the 1970s until quite recently paints a picture of fast progress, with the percentage gap reducing by almost half. However, over the last eight years the process of catchup has stalled,” she said.

“One possible explanation could be the squeeze in public sector pay, which would affect women more as they are more likely to work in the public sector, and the impact of austerity on women,” she said.

Sarah Ronan, early education and childcare lead at the Women’s Budget Group, said the research was “an indictment of our economy and the structures that underpin it”, adding: “For decades women have been told to ‘lean in’ while we’re actively pushed out. Childcare costs, poor parental leave, and gendered stereotypes about care all conspire to keep women stuck either at home or in low-paid precarious work.”

She called for reform of parental leave, to enable fathers to care for their children as much as mothers, and investment in childcare reform.

Joeli Brearley, the founder of Pregnant Then Screwed, accused the government of failing to take action to improve the lot of working mothers. Recent research from the campaign group showed 54% of women were having to work fewer hours due to the cost of childcare, up from 43% in 2022.

“Three-quarters of mothers who use childcare say that it no longer makes financial sense for them to work,” she said. “It is of little surprise to us that women’s career progression has changed very little since the 1970s when we’ve seen such a lacklustre approach from the government towards women’s equality.”