15-07-2025
Gender pay gap revealed: England and Wales way down the league table with Belgium top
The Uefa Women's Euro 2025 football tournament enters the quarter finals stage this week as teams fight it out for a place at the final on July 27.
The England team struggled against France in the opening game, but performed well against Netherlands and Wales as they look to repeat the run which enabled the Lionesses to win the trophy three years ago. They play Sweden on Thursday.
But Standard Life has already found a winner for another European cup - it looked at the gender pay gaps of all 16 nations taking part at the football event.
The Uefa nation that wins is Belgium – where women are paid on average 0.9 per cent less than men, data from the pensions firm and life assurance firm shows.
In contrast, England and Wales are among the worst, with a gap of 13.1 per cent on discrimination on work pay.
For other countries at the Union of European Football Associations tournament in Switzerland only Germany, with a gap of 14.2 per cent, and Finland, on 16.1 per cent, treat women worse than men when it comes to salaries.
Belgium have already been knocked out of the tournament.
But by calculating who is best at tackling gender pay discrimination in the workplace, Standard Life believes the final of the eight would be between Norway and France, with Norway winning as the country's pay gap is 4.7 per cent, compared to France, on 6.2 per cent.
Although the Lionesses will hopefully be victorious against Sweden on the pitch, if they were playing gender pay gap rules, they would be unceremoniously dumped out at the quarter finals stage – as the pay gap between men and women in Sweden is much less at 7.5 per cent.
Norway would beat Italy in the quarter finals, as the latter has a pay gap of 4.9 per cent, while the match between Spain, with a gap of 6.6 per cent, and Switzerland, on 12.1 per cent, would see the hosts knocked out before the semi-finals.
The game between heavy weights France and Germany, would see France victorious as it has a lower pay gap between the sexes of 6.2 per cent.
Patrick Thomson, head of research analysis and policy at Standard Life, says: 'Women are still losing out when it comes to having enough money saved for retirement – made worse by the inequalities of our financial systems.
'Despite often contributing a higher proportion of their income into pensions, women retire with significantly less due to their lower lifetime earnings.'
League table: Belgium is the clear winner of the Euro 2025 gender wage gap - while Finland is ranked bottom
Other countries already knocked out are Denmark, with a 5.4 per cent pay gap, Netherlands on 5.8 per cent, Portugal 10.0 per cent, Iceland 10.8 per cent and Poland 10.9 per cent.
The figures come from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The average pay gap throughout Europe is calculated at 9.7 per cent.
