Gender pay gap hitting Fife women

Recently, all companies with 250 or more staff were required to report their gender pay figures, with more than three-quarters of companies nationally showing a gap in pay favouring male employees.

In Fife, Office of National Statistics figures show that women in work earned an average annual salary of £19,353 in 2018 – 31 per cent lower than the average man’s salary of £28,074.

It means that, in effect, women in Fife worked for free from Sep 2019 last year.

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The average pay figures are calculated using a median, rather than mean, average, to stop them being skewed by particularly small or large pay packets.

The difference in pay can partly be explained by the number of women in part-time work. An estimated 28,000 women in Fife were in part-time work last year, around 42% of the female workforce.

Of the 61,000 working men, 8,000 (13 per cent) were in part-time work.

Despite that, the difference in pay was still evident in full-time roles: men in Fife earned an average of £29,590 last year, and women £24,887 – 16 per cent less.

Across the UK, the average gender pay gap was 36 per cent across all roles and 18% for full-time.