{"id":1982,"date":"2025-10-03T16:35:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T15:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.redstarwealth.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1982"},"modified":"2025-10-05T14:42:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T13:42:48","slug":"is-the-gender-pay-gap-higher-than-ons-figures-suggest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redstarwealth.co.uk\/blog\/is-the-gender-pay-gap-higher-than-ons-figures-suggest\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the Gender Pay Gap Higher than ONS Figures Suggest?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The gender pay gap was reported by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) to be 7% in 2024, but is this completely accurate?<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Causes of the Gender Pay Gap<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nowpensions.com\/app\/uploads\/2024\/02\/gender-pensions-gap-report-24.pdf\">Now: Pensions<\/a> found in a 2024 report that women are 60% more likely to carry out unpaid work and take on primary care roles than men, taking an average of 26 hours a week compared to 16 hours for men. This can lead to women having less time for paid work, and can be more likely to move to part-time employment<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Career breaks due to caring responsibilities meaning less opportunity for promotion<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An over-representation of women in lower paying sectors, such as care or education<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Under-representation of women in higher-earning positions<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The motherhood penalty \u2013 this encompasses some of the above factors. Find out more about the motherhood penalty by clicking on our blog link at the bottom of this page<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gender Pay Gap Underestimated in ONS Data<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ucl.ac.uk\/news\/2025\/aug\/gender-pay-gap-underestimated-official-statistics\">A study<\/a> from UCL, Bayes Business School, the University of the West of England and the University of Stirling reviewed the ONS\u2019s Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), which is what is used to calculate the gender pay gap in the UK. They discovered that the gender pay gap has been consistently underestimated over the last 20 years by a margin of around 1%. This is because smaller private sector firms were less likely to respond to ONS\u2019s survey, whereas larger public sector employers, where the pay difference between men and women within jobs is generally smaller, were more likely to respond. This has led to a weighting of the figures based on which firms have actually responded.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This research found that despite responding being mandatory, only 63% of employers responded to the survey between 1997-2019, dropping to 46% since 2020. They discovered that the response rate from the largest firms was around 50% higher than the smallest firms. They also found that response from public sector employers was around 15% higher than private sector employers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Given that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ons.gov.uk\/employmentandlabourmarket\/peopleinwork\/earningsandworkinghours\/bulletins\/genderpaygapintheuk\/2024\">the ONS reported<\/a> the gender pay gap to be 7% in 2024 for full-time employees, this report suggests that the true figure could be closer to 8%.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This 1% underestimation is a \u201csmall but noteworthy\u201d margin, particularly since the ASHE provides many of the UK\u2019s official earning statistics and is used to help decide changes in pay for doctors and nurses and to help set the minimum wage.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong><em>\u201cWe welcome ONS\u2019s recent accouncement that they will be conducting a wide-ranging review of methodology behind the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. As part of the review, we encourage them to look at how the data can be made more representative of jobs in all types of organisations, so that the issues we observed can be addressed.\u201d <\/em><\/strong><em>\u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ucl.ac.uk\/news\/2025\/aug\/gender-pay-gap-underestimated-official-statistics\">Lead Author, Professor John Forth<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h2 style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fancy some further reading? Why not check out one of our other blogs:<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.redstarwealth.co.uk\/blog\/what-is-the-motherhood-penalty\/\">What is the Motherhood Penalty?<\/a> \u2013 where we discuss the impact of parenthood of parenthood on women\u2019s careers<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.redstarwealth.co.uk\/blog\/gender-gap-pensions\/\">Gender Gap Pensions<\/a> \u2013 where we delve in to the reason why, on average, men\u2019s pensions are 33.5% higher than women\u2019s<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.redstarwealth.co.uk\/blog\/under-representation-of-women-in-financial-services\/\">Under-representation of Women in Financial Services<\/a> \u2013 where we discuss how only 18% of UK financial advisers are women, why this is, and how this is changing<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.redstarwealth.co.uk\/blog\/breaking-the-stigma-menopause-at-work\/\">Breaking the Stigma: Menopause at Work<\/a> \u2013 we discuss how menopause can negatively impact working women and their earning potential, particularly due to the stigma surrounding talking about menopause and periods at work<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The gender pay gap was reported by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) to be 7% in 2024, but is this completely accurate? Causes of the Gender Pay Gap Now: Pensions found in a 2024 report that women are 60% more likely to carry out unpaid work and take on primary care roles than men, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1647],"tags":[328,341,639,1746,597,145,1238,146,1229,1230,241,1745,1743,1744,144,288],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Is the Gender Pay Gap Higher than ONS Figures Suggest? - Red Star Wealth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The gender pay gap was reported by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) to be 7% in 2024, but is this completely accurate?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redstarwealth.co.uk\/blog\/is-the-gender-pay-gap-higher-than-ons-figures-suggest\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is the Gender Pay Gap Higher than ONS Figures Suggest? 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