The study also found that the gender pay gap has “not improved since 1993” for graduates – though the gap has narrowed for non-graduates.

This means that lack of wage progression is a particular issue for graduate women, as they are the women for whom “continuing in full-time paid work would have led to the most wage progression” – as in the case of a graduate featured in the report who worked for nearly ten years before having her first child. If she’d continued in full-time work for an extra year, she would have “on average see[n] her hourly wage rise by 6%” – something she’d experience “none of” if she switched to part-time work to look after her child.

“Traditionally it has been lower-educated women whose wages were especially low relative to similarly educated men,” said Robert Joyce, associate director at the IFS and co-author of the report. “It is now the highest-educated women whose wages are the furthest behind their male counterparts - and this is particularly related to the fact that they lose out so badly from working part-time.”

Businesses with more than 250 employees have been set a deadline to report their gender pay gaps by 4th of April as part of a governmental plan to tackle pay inequality.

Images: Pexels / iStock

Women are most likely to be hit by the gender pay gap at this point in their lives