Gender pay gap widens for top earners

Women who want to earn as much as men doing the same job should become checkout assistants, rather than investment bankers.

This is the implication of a report by Incomes Data Services (IDS), a UK research body, which found that the gender pay gap (in men's favour) widened last year for the top 5% of earners - a group which includes many people in the City of London.

At all other income levels, the gap between pay for men and women narrowed, as women's pay increased faster than men's.

Sally Brett, a researcher at IDS, said pay inequality between men and women was greater in financial services than any other sector.

In 2002, women working in financial services received average hourly wages equal to only 54.4% of those paid to men in the sector. This compared to a national average of 81.2% in all sectors.

Brett said the discrepancy was partly related to the structure of the workforce in financial services. Women were more likely to be in low-paid administrative positions.

But she said women in senior finance-related jobs also suffered greater than average pay discrimination. Treasurers and company financial managers experienced the greatest pay gap by occupational type, with average wages only 59.9% that of men.

The most equitable results were for retail cashiers and jobs in agriculture, hunting and forestry. Female cashiers' wages were 99.4% of males'.

Brett said the widening pay disparity for top earners implied there were too few opportunities for women to reach top levels.

"Women tend to get stuck in low-paid jobs because they want to work part-time or spend time out of the labour market to look after children. They then find it hard to reenter,' she said.

The 2001 Employment Bill, which is expected to become law in April this year, will give women the right to be told by their employer how much men are paid for doing an equivalent job. Employers are braced for a lot of enquiries.