I’ll Be Retired Before the Gender Pay Gap Closes, Yet Millennial Women Like Me Are Told to Have Kids Sooner. How Are We Meant to Afford That?

If you were looking for a rousing update to fuel your working week, you won’t find it in today’s papers, where it’s reported that the UK gender pay gap won’t close until 2056. That means children born this year will be 30 by the time women earn at the same rate as men. And, more miserably, Millennial women like me who are already in their 30s will be nearing retirement by the time the gender pay gap finally closes.

There are plenty of digestible stats: millions of British women are effectively working almost 50 days a year for free, and female workers lose around £2,548 every year compared to their male colleagues. The thought that has been churning in my head, though, is that for my entire working life, I will have earned less than my male colleagues. I think back to a job I had pre-pandemic as Womenswear Editor at a luxury retailer, while my male colleague, in a typically old-school setup, was Menswear Editor. We had mirror roles, yet I knew he was earning more, though I was too afraid to ask just how much. When I discovered that our previous Menswear Editor, a good friend, was being paid more, I took it to my (female) boss, only to be told curtly that discussing salaries was against company policy.

About a year later, the UK introduced mandatory gender pay gap reporting under the Equality Act 2010. Employers with 250 or more employees had to publish annual figures on their website and a government portal. I thought this would change everything. “Name and shame!” became a rallying cry among my female colleagues. When the data was published, I remember crowding around a co-worker’s laptop to see just how bleak the discrepancy was (spoiler alert: men were being paid considerably more), and then… we went on about our jobs, literally. Yes, there were protests and outcry — this was pre-Me Too, and activism fatigue hadn’t yet set in like a thick fog — and yes, moves were made to close the gap, but I assumed, perhaps naively, that it would happen not only in my lifetime but within my working lifetime.

Now, when I hear politicians fret about falling fertility rates and suggest women should be having children sooner, all I can think about is 2056. For my entire working life, I will have earned less than my male colleagues, yet the message seems to be: focus on having kids, not securing equal pay. Motherhood remains one of the single biggest predictors of lower lifetime earnings for women, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). So when we’re told to “start earlier,” I think what that really means is accepting the financial hit sooner. It’s hard not to see the contradiction.

Then there’s the recent suggestions that people without children should pay higher taxes to incentivise parenthood. One of the UK’s most talked-about by-election candidates proposed a so-called “negative child benefit tax” on childless people, and even floated removing personal income tax for women with two or more children.

All this and at a time when roughly a full generation of women are still set to earn less than men for doing work of equal value. Regardless of education or experience, ONS stats show that men still dominate high-earning roles. And that’s before we even consider the decades-long impact of motherhood penalties, part-time work, or career breaks, often necessitated by caregiving responsibilities.

Even more concerning is that part-time work, which is often the only realistic option for parents juggling sky-high childcare costs, hits women’s pay just as hard as long-term illness or unemployment. Every year spent in part-time work shaves around 3% off hourly wages. Whether it’s raising children, caring for elderly relatives, or running a household, this invisible labour is still landing mostly on women’s shoulders and comes with a real economic cost. Time spent outside full-time paid work now accounts for nearly 30% of the gender pay gap.

Meanwhile, men can work full-time, uninterrupted, enjoying the compounding benefits of steady pay and career progression. Even when all other factors are accounted for, like education, job type, full- or part-time status, women still earn less. And yet, here we are: decades from equal pay, still being told the real problem is that women aren’t having enough children.