Abstract
The Labour Force Survey is used to examine the influence of sector on the UK gender pay gap 1997–2015. The assessment is twofold: first comparing gender pay gaps within sectors and second through identifying the contribution of the concentration of women in the public sector to the overall gender pay gap. The long‐term narrowing of the gender pay gap, which predominately reflects relative improvements in women's productivity‐related characteristics, is found to stall in 2010 within each sector. This is considered in the context of claims that public sector austerity represents a critical turning point in progress toward gender equality at work.
Highlights
The public sector plays an important role in shaping the employment opportunities of women relative to men across many Western industrialized economies
The average gender pay gap for the economy over the period 1997–2015 is 0.256 log points and, consistent with previous evidence, it is smaller in the public sector where the gap is 0.219 log points compared to 0.311 for the private sector
The public sector has made an important contribution to progressing gender equality at work through its role as a regulator of employment relations, as a model employer, including providing support in balancing work and care, and by providing support for care outside work (Rubery 2014; Walby 2015)
Summary
The public sector plays an important role in shaping the employment opportunities of women relative to men across many Western industrialized economies (see Anghel, de la Rica, and Dolado 2011; Fulton 2011; Karamessini 2014; Rubery 2014). As expected union members are concentrated in the public sector and, while there is greater variation in the estimates of the unexplained gender pay gap as a consequence of the smaller sample size, the sectoral difference remains evident (see Online Appendix Figure OA6).
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