The challenges faced by ethnic minority women

The Equal Opportunities Commission has published early findings from its ongoing investigation into ethnic minority women at work.

The research reveals:

• Pakistani women face a pay gap at least 10 percentage points higher than that of white women, whilst the pay gap for Bangladeshi women is at least 5 percentage points higher.
• A quarter of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women work in wholesale and retail, where the median pay for sales assistants, for example, is £5.15 per hour, £4.61 less per hour than average earnings for women working full time.
• Working Black Caribbean women are 8 percentage points more likely to have a degree than white women. Yet only 9% of Black Caribbean women are managers/senior managers, compared to 11% of white women.
• Job segregation is more of an issue too: almost a third of all Black Caribbean women work in health and social work, compared to less than a fifth of white women.

Jenny Watson, Chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission, said: "The Women and Work Commission has reminded us again of the continuing pay gap that women face. But it is particularly disturbing that this gap is larger for Pakistani and Bangladeshi women than for white women and that they, and Black Caribbean women, also face higher levels of job segregation and fewer opportunities to progress to more senior positions."

More information from the EOC