MINI CASE 6.1

Since the introduction in the UK of the Equal Pay Act in 1970, there has been considerable interest in monitoring the difference between women and men's pay. Official statistics, via the Office of National Statistics (ONS), play an important role in this monitoring via the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE). In 2009 ONS published a report based on the April 2008 figures from ASHE and highlighted the pay differences:

The ONS report stressed that like-for-like comparisons should be made, for example the differences between full-time and part-time employees. This advice does not always appear to be adhered to. The headline estimate in Table B for full-time employees indicates a median gender gap of 12.8 per cent, the Government Equalities Offices (GEO) press release on 27 April 2009 in support of the publication of the Equalities Bill quotes 23 per cent - the figure for all employees. The ONS report also stressed that the gender pay gap is a comparison of two skewed earnings distributions and given this skew, the median is thought of as the best estimate of typical earnings. Use of the mean however captures the change at the top end of the distribution.

The media also had interest in the ASHE results. One newspaper headline exclaimed: 'UK gender gap widens'. The report, however, bases its figures on the mean gender gap and quotes the full-time employees gender gap at 17.1 per cent - the difference that captures the higher end of the pay scale. The report also suggests that the part-time gap stood at 36 per cent, whereas the median gender gap was in fact -3.5 per cent, i.e. typically part-time women employees' earnings are 3.5 per cent higher than men's!