Professor Kate Purcell, of the Institute for Employment Research, discusses the gender pay gap and her latest report Present Tense, Future Imperfect? Young people’s pathways into work.

“Gender pay inequality reflects the different jobs that women and men do, based on different access to opportunities and historically-embedded undervaluing gets of women’s skills and ‘women ‘s jobs’.

However, our research on the graduate labour market over many years has shown three things: that right from the start, organisations pay highly-qualified women less than the men they studied alongside, that this gap gets wider as graduate careers progress - and that despite equal opportunities and anti-discrimination legislation, these trends have persisted.

The current initiative and tonight’s deadline are long overdue, and will reveal which sectors, occupations and organisations have been most resistant to change.

But the big story now is the fragmentation of work and the widening of the opportunity and reward gaps between those in secure, sustainable employment and those in precarious employment.

This is especially the case for young people of both sexes”.

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