, in 2023 placing it behind other European countries such as France, Germany, and Ireland. In terms of political leaders, the UK has had three female Prime Ministers. Liz Truss,who was in power for a short period in 2022, Theresa May who was in the position between 2016 and 2019 and the first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who ruled the country throughout the 1980s, at a time when women were far less likely to hold the highest position of
. In the House of Commons, the heart of legislative power in the UK, there were 220
, elected in 2019, 104 of which belonged to the Labour Party. Indeed, the
in the House of Commons has been increasing in almost every election since 1979, when it was just three percent, compared with 34 percent in 2019.
Gender pay gap
Only eleven percent of FTSE 100 companies and four percent of FTSE 250 companies had
female CEOs in 2023, while the share of female executive directors was 19.4 percent at FTSE 100 companies and 11.9 percent at FTSE 250 companies. The low share of women in top positions certainly contributes to the overall
gender pay gap in the United Kingdom, which stood at 14.3 percent for all workers in 2023, and 7.7 percent for full-time workers. The pay gap is even more pronounced among older
age groups, and was in double figures for every age group that was above the age of 39. Certain
industries and sectors also had a greater gender pay gap than the overall average, with the financial and insurance sector having a gender pay gap of 27.9 percent, the widest gap of any sector in the UK in 2023.
Views on gender equality
Attitudes towards gender equality have also changed considerably in recent decades. As recently as 1987, 48 percent of people in the United Kingdom
agreed with the following statement "a man's job is to earn money: a women's job is to look after the home and family." Unsurprisingly, the share of people of who agree with this sentence has declined considerably, to only eight percent in 2017. In relation to
household responsiblities in general however, approximately 73 percent of women in February 2024 thought that more should be done to achieve gender equality in this area. In 2019, 55 percent of men agreed that
achieving equality between men and women was personally important to them, while a further 29 percent identified themselves as being a feminist.
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