Female employment has reached its highest level in four decades

New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that the proportion of women in work during the last trimester of 2013 was the highest since record began in 1971.

According to these data, in fact, the female employment rate reached 67.2 per cent last December, with 14 million women at work.

One of the reasons behind this important milestone is the extraordinary recovery in the service sector, which has been extremely important in bringing the number of women in full-time job to a record high of 8 million, while those in part-time work dropped by 28,000 to 5.91 million.

Meanwhile, economists have highlighted two political factors that led to record numbers of woman in the work place.

On one side there have been significant cuts to benefits, a measure taken to activate people who were previously on inactivity benefits, such as single parents.

On the other side, the Government’s moves to equalise the pension ages by lifting the female state pension from 60 to 65 by 2018 and to 66 by 2020 in line with men, is another important explanation for the rise in female employment.

According to the Trades Union Congress, the high number of working women is also due to those grandparents who are gradually stepping in to provide free childcare.

Despite such historic achievement, however, there is still a gender pay gap, which even widened last year for the first time since 2008.

According to the ONS, in fact, the gap was 15.7 per cent on average at the end of 2013.