Flexible benefits ''can help to close the gender pay gap''

Making flexible benefits more widely available will help UK employers to bridge the gender pay gap in the coming years.

This is the view of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which suggested that offering personally-tailored hours and quality part-time schedules is one of the ways that "significant inroads" can be made into solving the issue.

The organisation made the suggestion in the wake of the recently published Women and Work Survey 2010, which discovered that 30 per cent of females earn more than their male partners.

One in ten of those polled in the survey, which was commissioned by Grazia, revealed that the traditional roles have been reversed and they have a "house husband".

Noting that much has been done to improve equality in the workplace over the past 40 years, a spokeswoman for the TUC said there is still a long way to go.

"With the prospect of a jobless recovery looking increasingly likely, now is the perfect opportunity to make flexible working and family leave rights more male-friendly," she remarked. Back