Older women face the highest gender pay gap in the UK, with those over 50 paid £7,000 less than their male counterparts on average.
Rest Less, which supports the over-50s at work, found that women between 50 and 59 earned an average salary of £30,603, £7,274 or 24% less than the median gross annual pay of a man working full time. This gap rose to 26% for female workers over the age of 60, it found.
The organisation compared median gross full-time salary data, including overtime, from the Office for National Statistics’ annual survey of hours and earnings for 2022 with the same figures over the past 10 years.
The analysis revealed that while the national pay gap across all groups (including overtime) has decreased from 24% in 2012 to 19% in 2022, it is still highest among those aged in their 50s and 60s.
Workers in their 50s were the only age group not to experience a widening of the gender pay gap since the pandemic, however.
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“Caring responsibilities, the burden of which still falls disproportionately on women, means women can miss out on salary progression during their careers – which compounds as time goes on, widening the gender pay gap as we age,” said Stuart Lewis, chief executive of Rest Less.
“This can have devastating long-term consequences on women’s retirement provision and financial independence into later life.”
Lewis also pointed to the significant gap in pensions savings between men and women, adding that “it’s no surprise when you see decades of the gender pay gap only getting worse in the run up to retirement – a time in life when people are typically trying to save as much as they possibly can into their pensions”.
“Whilst the state pension age for women is now equal with men at 66, the retirement fortunes of men and women remain anything but equal.”
Caroline Nokes, chair of the government’s Women and Equalities Committee, said more needed to be done to address financial inequalities.
“The impact of the gender pay gap will be felt throughout a woman’s life, culminating in a gender pension gap, meaning there is not even equality in retirement,” she said.
Emma Twyning, director of communications and policy at the Centre for Ageing Better, said that a pay gap later in life left women in a weaker position to be saving for retirement.
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She said: “We need to see much greater support for those managing health conditions and people working while also needing to provide care for loved ones, and much more being done to help women to plan and ensure financial security as they get older.”
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