Luxembourg is a leader across the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries on the gender pay gap, with a negative gap of -0.2% between 2021 and 2022, meaning average earnings are higher for women than men, according to the latest Women in Work 2024 report by PwC.

Luxembourg’s strong performance was driven by an improvement across all five indicators on the Index between 2021 and 2022. The five indicators include the participation rate gap, full-time employment rate, labour force participation rate, unemployment rate and gender pay gap.

The report found that while women’s participation in labour markets is increasing, they continue to face pay disparities compared to men.

The gender pay gap widened between 2021 and 2022 in 20 of the 33 OECD countries. This includes the UK, which experienced the largest annual fall on the Index of any OECD country, dropping four places from 13th to 17th place.

PwC noted that the UK’s Index score fall was driven by a widening of the gender pay gap in the UK from 14.3% in 2021 to 14.5% in 2022 and the fact that the UK is being outpaced by other countries in terms of progress made towards achieving gender equality at work.

Greece had the second-lowest gender pay gap at 1.1% but ranked 29^th on the list due to its higher unemployment rates and participation rate gaps.

Overall on the Index score, Luxembourg ranks first, followed by Iceland and Slovenia.

Australia experienced the largest annual improvement in rankings, rising seven places from 17th place in 2021 to 10th place in 2022.

“Across the OECD, progress towards gender equality at work remains slow. At this pace, it will take over 50 years to close the gender pay gap,” the report stated.

“Closing the gender pay penalty could also unlock significant economic gains. We estimate that if women in the UK no longer faced a gender pay penalty, the potential increase in women’s earnings could be up to £55 billion per year,” the report added.