The salary survey was carried out by online finance tool, MySalaryCalculator.co.uk and the results analysed by Dr David Fishwick, head of maths at Bradford Grammar School. It found that the gender pay gap in the UK is typically over £4,907. The results showed that the median salary was £29,120 for men and £24,000 for women.
In its 2011 annual survey of hours and earnings, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that the pay gap had been reduced to less than a 10% difference and said it demonstrates gender pay equality was still an important issue.
Fishwick commented on the survey: "Although men are generally better paid, they also have a wider range in salary. There is less variety in women's salaries."
Dr Catherine Hakim, Professor of Social Science at the Social Science Research Centre in Berlin, confirmed this across Europe: "It is well-established that women work in a narrower range of jobs than men. Now we know that their earnings are also heavily clustered around the average, whereas male workers include lots of high-earners and also lots of low-earners."
The EU recognises the problem of workplace gender inequality, which plans to enforce gender quotas in a bid to increase the number of women on boards of business, as reported by HR magazine last week. The proposals, however, have faced strong opposition from the UK. Four days ago it managed to gain enough support from EU member states to block the proposal to impose a 40% female quota on company boards.
MySalaryCalculator.co.uk collected online salary data from 4,578 participants between July and September 2012.
