Pay Inequality

Women in Europe may be better educated or work harder than men, but they are paid substantially less, according to the InternationalLabour Organization.

The gender pay gap in Europe ranges from about 100 euros (£79) to 700 euros per month, the ILO report suggested. In the UK, women earn about 28% less than men on average, the UN body found.

"The actual gap varies from about 4% to 36% across all of the 38 countries we looked at," ILO economist Kristen Sobeck told the BBC World Service.

In all the countries studied around the world, a proportion of the pay gap is unexplained, implying discrimination, it said. The ILO looked at education, experience, seniority, work sector, location and work intensity. It found that in about half of the countries studied around the world women had a stronger or better combination of those characteristics, yet were paid substantially less than men. For example, in the case of Sweden, the overall gap is about 4%, but when you look at the characteristics of women and what they would be paid otherwise, the gap would turn the other way, and women would actually earn about 12% more than men. In the UK, about one-third of the pay gap can be explained by men having attributes such as more experience or more seniority, but there is still a huge gap that could be due to discrimination.

In Europe in 2010, the bottom-earning 10% of women workers earned about 100 euros per month less than the bottom 10% of men. And the top 10% of high-earning women earned close to 700 euros per month less than the top 10% of men.

Meanwhile, women have been hit much harder than men by the tax and benefit changes since the Coalition took office, according to research by theHouse of Commons Library. A study taking account of the measures in George Osborne’s Autumn Statement shows that £22bn of the £26bn of the Treasury revenue raised from tax and benefit reforms since 2010 has been taken from women – 85 per cent of the total, with only 15 per cent contributed by men.

The policies that have had the biggest impact on women include cuts in tax credits, which took £8.3bn from women but only £2.3bn from men, reductions in housing benefit, under which women lost £2.3bn and men £1.5bn, and the three-year freeze in child benefit, which costs women £3.5bn and men £346m.