In a complete reversal of the usual circumstances surrounding inequality in gender pay, the Office of National Statistics’ figures on part-time working in the UK reveals that women are earning higher rates of pay than their male counterparts.

The UK’s Office of National Statistics has just issued its latest figures from the 2011 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. These reveal that although the gender hourly pay gap (excluding overtime) for all employees stood last April at 20.2 percent the differential between male and female earnings was only 11.7 percent for full-time workers and was actually reversed for part-time employees. The median hourly earnings of part-time women was 4.8 percent higher than for part-time men. This gap was entirely due to earnings with in the 22-39 age range.

Speaking about these findings Robin Chater, the Secretary-General of The Federation of European Employers (FedEE), said: “This shows how the overall figures for the gender pay gap are highly misleading. The size of the gap is largely because a much higher proportion of women work part-time than men and part-time earnings for both genders are lower than for full-time work. Where women compete on equal terms with men, in the part-time jobs market, they actually earn more than men.”