Catalina Espinosa
Research expert covering society, economy, and politics for Europe and the EU
Gender inequality in the UK - Statistics & Facts
The United Kingdom ranked fourth on the global gender gap index, in 2025 placing it just behind Iceland, Finland, and Norway. 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 executive power. In the House of Commons, there were 263 female Members of Parliament, elected in 2024, 190 of which were members of the Labour Party. Indeed, the proportion of female MPs in the House of Commons has been increasing in almost every election since 1979, when it was just three percent, compared with 40.5 percent in 2024.
Gender pay gap
Only 9.4 percent of FTSE 100 companies and four percent of FTSE 250 companies had female CEOs in 2024, while the share of female executive directors was 22 percent at FTSE 100 companies and 12 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 13.1 percent for all workers in 2024, and seven 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 above the age of 49. 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 29.0 percent, the widest gap of any sector in the UK in 2024.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 75 percent of women in 2025 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.
