ABSTRACT
Women are less likely than men to be working full time and at all ages there exists a gender pay gap in favour of men. Part-time work is often low-paid work. The size of the pay gap depends upon what formula one uses, but the Fawcett Society estimates it to be some 14.9 per cent. 5 Although there has been a steady decline in the full-time pay gap over the years, its existence remains stubbornly
persistent. The part-time gap (i.e. comparing the wages of part-time women workers to those of full-time male workers) has remained fairly constant. 6 These fi gures hide some striking extremes; for example the Equality and Human Rights Commission reported that men received bonus payments in the City (of London) at a rate that was fi ve times the amount received by women. 7 The result was that women earned 87.4 per cent of the rate earned by men using the median fi gure, and 82.8 per cent using the mean.
