Salary gaps… never thought they were so wide!

[Donotfitin]

I always thought our marriage was fairly uncommon in terms of me being the main breadwinner and making 2x-3x as much as my husband

However apparently the average gap is £32k and apparently 23% of women are the main breadwinners!

So my husband was right after all!

AiBU for veins so surprised?

Not surprising at all given many women sacrifice their own careers to raise children - even if remain working they often drop hours to fit around school run or spend more time with young DC before they go to school. They often can’t stay late as have DC to collect, and don’t push towards promotions as they already have a lot on their plate. Their second shift starts when they get home from work.

Whereas many men turn up at home whenever they feel like it, kids bathed and ready for bed and dinner on the table.

Thought the OP was saying her salary was 2x or 3x her husbands… I think the higher you go the more money you get as there is a scarcity of skills but with AI does some of this change?

Isn't she?

But your situation is uncommon. 77% of men then have the higher income. I'm really tired and am not sure I have read the op right!

1 in 4 marriages having a higher earning female sounds about right given the usual impacts for women around raising families and a myriad of other societal factors.

But am REALLY surprised that the average gap is £32k! Would have thought it would be single figures. Where is that data from? Is it skewed by non earners and it’s a mode average so it’s lots of people earning average salary where partner earns nothing?

I wonder what the average gap is for two working parents?

yes that’s what I’m saying!

The average gap is going to be huge when one partner takes a big chunk of time out and generally carries a whole extra job on top. Certainly in my house the gap is huge. My DC couldn’t go to the local school. I had a health crisis.

The gap will only be small if the partners have the same aptitude AND the same opportunities. As soon as one partner’s focus is not on career progression, there will be a big gap.

But considering the median salary is just shy of £40k, that would mean that either

a) a big chunk of the population is homemaker

b) many work very part time jobs

That's a bit more female higher earners than I'd have guessed which is great, the more that's normalised the better for workplaces I think.

I expect the amounts are very skewed by people that don't work or work very little. Depending on husband's self employed income and my bonus the gap between our earnings can be up to £200k and thats not anywhere near the top end of disparities. All those bankers/ law firm equity partners on million pounds plus with non earning spouses will be distorting the averages is have thought.

Women don’t earn more than men op.

Key 2025 Gender Pay Gap Data (Median Hourly Earnings):

• All Employees: 12.8% (in favor of men).
• Full-time Employees: 6.9% (in favor of men).
• Part-time Employees: -2.9% (in favor of women, as women earn more per hour on average in part-time roles).
• Key Drivers: The gap is driven by, among other things, women's overrepresentation in part-time work, lower-paid occupations, and the "motherhood penalty" or time taken out of the workforce for caregiving.
• Office for National Statistics
• +4

Trends and Sector Differences:

• Sector Differences: In 2025, the gender pay gap for full-time workers is 12.5% in the private sector compared to 8.8% in the public sector.
• Age Factor: There is little to no pay gap for full-time employees under 40, but a significant gap emerges and widens for those aged 40 and over.
• Progression: The gender pay gap has been falling since records began in 1997, when it was 27.5% for all workers.
• The House of Commons Library
• +3

Gender Pay Gap by Occupational Group (2025 Data):

• 94% of jobs with over 200,000 full-time employees in the UK have a gender pay gap in favor of men.
• Significant gaps remain in sectors like Finance, where median hourly pay for women is lower than men.
• Ciphr

Low Pay and Bonuses:

• Low Pay: 16.8% of jobs held by women are paid below the real Living Wage, compared to 12.3% of jobs held by men.
• Bonuses: The mean bonus gap for 2025 is 5.5%, showing a decrease from previous years.

I never said that they did!

just said that the gap was wider than I thought, and that there are more female “main breadwinners “ than I was expecting.

Well 23% is still fairly uncommon
and may be influenced by differnt life stages - women marrying older men will mean many work when husband has retired

and pay gaps are influenced by things like part time working for family reasons - so can be larger than you expect

I'm the higher earner by quite a long way - the gap between me and my DH is more than £32k. The same is true for my sister and her DH. I don't think it's that unusual any more, so l am not terribly surprised by the numbers.

You cannot call 23% fairly uncommon. That’s almost 1 in 4.

It doesn’t surprise me. Our salaries leapfrogged each other for years. I was the higher earner for a long time.

At one stage we had a difference of over £400,000. In his favour! I enjoyed his earnings and it was never going to be attainable for me. No issues really.

Many mothers do work part time though. That is largely where the difference comes from, because the income gap for men vs women looking only at full time earnings is actually significantly smaller and around 7%.

Do you have the source? Because that was my original theory. (I was telling my husband that in a dual income (FT employed) family, the income between the two should be similar.

I thibk the big gap when women are the breadwinners actually makes sense. In situations where salaries are fairly equal, it tends to be the woman who is then likely to take a step back or go part time or become a sahp.

At which point, even if the woman was on a slightly higher salary it very quickly becomes less.

Whereas if your salary is always higher , and notably so, probably with much more opportunity, the debate when children come along is dofferent.

St the point at which we had children, i earned 4x what dh did. There was never any question that I would continue to woek and he would take on the sahd and then part time role.

Surely that depends on what they each do, which sector they work in etc.

If my dd stays with her current bf, as per her intention, then she will eventually end up earning a lot more than he does because of their respective career choices.

This is a very fair point.

Slightly less than half of mothers work full time, there’s ONS data for this. The overall gap in income is largely due to this.

A lot of people don’t work at all, OP, or barely.

i thought it might be more. Within my friend group and family the women outearn the men. Perhaps it’s our group, we’re all lifelong friends, attended the same grammar and went to uni. Most of the husbands didn’t go to uni but still do ok.

I earn twice husbands salary despite having part time work and taking 2-3 years out of career. He’s never been that career orientated.

I wonder if you just look at data for professional couples what the statistics would reveal.