Career Obstacles, Discrimination and Women’s Independent Networks: Evidence from the UK and Germany

The United Kingdom and Germany are among the most financially powerful countries in the European Union (IMF 2008), with a steadily growing share of female tertiary students and a rising proportion of adult women who are economically active (OECD.Stat 2009). Both countries legislate to ensure equal pay for equal work regardless of gender, and over the last years, new strands of law have come into force, to extend the Sex Discrimination Act in the UK and assemble Germany’s scattered anti-discrimination directives into the General Act on Equal Treatment.