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?

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear amongst professional women on 40k+, they’re the bigger earners

That is my particular case . Also part of hypothesis was that people tend to marry within their peer group so to speak.

I agree. I have always been the main breadwinner, both in my marriage where I out-earned my then husband by a factor of three and since divorce my partner, who I out-earn but by a smaller margin.

If you start out as a female breadwinner you are less likely to be able to step away from it because the infrastructure of family life is built around your earnings plus the outgoings which you incur to enable you to work to provide for your children (such nursery fees etc). And that’s before you think about housing/food costs etc.

If a man and a woman are roughly at earning parity it tends to be the woman who deprioritises her career. If the woman is a higher earner than the man this usually isn’t an option.

This is partly why so many women end up on the “double shift”: men tend to do less domestic and childcare based work and if the household primarily relies on your income you end up doing the lion’s share of both kinds of work.

No wonder we are knackered…

And in some cases (mine) the man doesn’t want to go part time so you have the guilt of using full time childcare or the pressure of earning the bulk whilst working part time…

Yes. That is the case. How can this be a surprise to you?

In my two professionals marriage with both of us earning over 6 figures, husband still earns double what I do. He is in a high pay sector, I am not. The pay gap between us is over £100k. When we first met, I outearned him, but stopped pushing forward when our kids were small.

Why…? I went to uni and DH didn’t so I’d expect to earn more than him (for the time I graduated, at least)

Because in my immediate friend group (4)

only one is a stay at home parent

the other 3, 2 are the high earners, 1 is about the same (but used to be the higher earner).

im the only “professional” of the group.

20k gap between me and DP, with him the breadwinner. Both full time, both in same industry, he WFH and I'm hybrid so have to commute.

Same for me and my sister, I have been with DH for 25 years and I have always earned more!

If somebody is on £40k, yes a £32k pay gap is massive. If both of you are on over £100k, it isn’t really - I’d say somebody earning £150k and somebody earning £180k were on pretty similar salaries.

And it’s never occurred to you that basis your view on society as a whole on the 3 other couples you know might not actually be reflective or wider society?

Fully agree here!

I’m actually aware that many mothers don’t work, but I thought bit was a regional thing as I live in a “deprived” county.

I earn £30k more than my husband however he has the option to do overtime if he feels he needs extra, I am expected to work the hours required to do the job and my salary remains the same.

@BlatchFord

And in some cases (mine) the man doesn’t want to go part time so you have the guilt of using full time childcare or the pressure of earning the bulk whilst working part time…

Yep. My ex husband refused to go part time and also categorically refused to do any pickups or dropoffs. No coherent reason for this was ever provided because he flounced off when asked, but basically his view was that this was a woman’s job.

So although I out earned him by three to one and had a far far more stressful job I had to leave work every day an hour before my colleagues, incurring the wrath of my bosses, just because he was scared people would take the piss about being under the thumb.

This is one of the main reasons I divorced him. But these sorts of attitudes are still surprisingly prevalent.

There is a Houses of Parliament report from last month (Feb 2026) making this point.

Men in FT work make more than women
Women in PT work make slightly more than men

PT workers make much less than FT workers, and 37% of women vs, IIRC, 14% of men are in PT work. This is the dominant statistic.

The overall gender pay gap, mainly attributable to PT work, is something like 12.9%.

In quite a few couples ove could not be working.
Then the higher earning group over three figures would have quite a few with more normal earning spouses.
Then the higher earning couples.

What overrides me is his it'll change. Minimum wage is not far off that gap. Salaries are not increasing much at the moment, so could see some narrowing of the gap.
But more unemployed and working fewer hours.

People with income outside of salary presumably aren't in this statistic.

PS The gender pay gap is taken on the hourly rate of pay

I don't think it's that unusual tbh, there are lots of pairings where one partner is just more senior/career driven than the other.

Until recently I earned about 40k more than my DH, he only ended up increasing his wage because he was made redundant and the new role he found was better paid - now the gap is about 25k.

It's not for any reason really, just that we met at work in very different roles and he was never bothered about moving on or up, a job is just a job to him and he was comfortable in his, whereas I went into a more niche career and wanted to progress so moved employer a few times in the years since we met.

I would expect any data would be a few years old. Someone doing min. wage work for 30 hours would have only been earning around £16k a couple of years ago. Having a husband earning £48k plus doesn’t sound odd or unusual at all to me. This isn’t my circumstance, but when I look the families around me, I also feel ‘unusual’ as the higher earner.

I work in a professional role in the city with lots of women who are also professionals who earn good money. But it's only the women in these roles who are on part time or flexible wages/roles and those women are women whose husbands have similar jobs to them ie professional, well paid.

So even at this level with salaries that you woudl assume are not hugely different between men and women, the women then start to earn less / go part time.

It's also true that while I have met plenty of other main breadwinner women like myself whose partners work part time or are even SAHD, it is still true that in my broader circle (that includes work, school, friends etc), the men almost all work full time and any part time working is usually the woman. It's also true that on a day to day basis, the vast majority of people I meet, the woman is NOT the primary breadwinner or higher earner. That's not to say it doesn't happen, it does, and I know a good few, but it's a notable exception rather than anywhere near parity.

I currently earn 20k more than DH and have done for decades, but I've always felt we're quite unusual.

I am the higher earner, my salary is nearly 4 times his, over that if I add my bonus. I live in a deprived area though where the vast majority of women become SAHMs or work very part time minimum wage jobs so my situation is unusual in our community. Most of the People I know don’t actually know what my job is, just that i work full time from home, they probably believe my DH is the main earner because that’s the norm. On the few occasions anyone has asked what I actually do for work I just say IT stuff so it’s not something I’ve had any in-depth conversations about.

I was going to say similar, for myself and quite a few of my female friends. And we have nearly all had children. I think it is becoming more common. 1 in 4 sounds about right, and hopefully it’ll grow more and become more common

Info from AI but I asked for things with reliable data but this gives a breakdown of the balance of recently qualified males and females in professional roles.

UK Newly Qualified Professionals: Gender Breakdown (2025/26)
• Primary School Teaching
• Female: 85%
• Male: 15%
• Source: Department for Education (ITT Census 2025/26)
• Veterinary Surgeons
• Female: 80%
• Male: 20%
• Source: RCVS (Workforce Model 2024/25)
• Solicitors
• Female: 66%
• Male: 34%
• Source: Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA 2025)
• Pharmacists
• Female: 63%
• Male: 37%
• Source: GPhC (Registrant Profile 2025)
• Medical Doctors
• Female: 60%
• Male: 40%
• Source: General Medical Council (GMC 2025)
• Dentists
• Female: 53%
• Male: 47%
• Source: General Dental Council (GDC 2025)
• Architects
• Female: 49%
• Male: 51%
• Source: Architects Registration Board (ARB 2025)
• Accountants (Chartered)
• Female: 46%
• Male: 54%
• Source: ICAEW (Student Intake Data 2025)
• Chartered Tax Advisors
• Female: 40%
• Male: 60%
• Source: CIOT / International Tax Review (2026)
• Engineers (Overall)
• Female: 20%
• Male: 80%
• Source: EngineeringUK (Graduate Entrants 2024/25)