Women in Work Index 2023

Published On - 30th March 2023 Thought Leadership

PwC

If progress towards gender equality at work continues at its historical rate, an 18-year old woman starting work today will not see pay equality in her working lifetime. PwC’s Women in Work Index shows progress towards gender equality at work across the OECD has been exceedingly slow over the last 10 years, with a persistent gender pay gap of 14%, down only 2.5 percentage points since 2011. Improvement in the Index this year is a symptom of economic recovery in post COVID-19 labour markets, and does not demonstrate genuine progress towards gender equality.
The motherhood penalty – the loss in lifetime earnings experienced by women raising children – has become the most significant driver of the gender pay gap. Prompted by the underemployment and slower career progression women experience on returning to work after childbirth, it is perpetuated by the unfair share of childcare women take on in almost every country around the world.In the UK, the childcare affordability crisis and low take up by fathers of shared parental leave threatens to exacerbate gender inequality, and is pricing a growing number of women out of work. The shared parental leave system was introduced to encourage fathers to take more parental leave. However, it has had very low uptake from families, estimated at just 2-8% in 2019.

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