A SURVEY of the pay gap between the sexes across the United Kingdom has named East Lothian as one of the few places where women earn more then men.

The Office of National Statistics says women are paid on average 61p more an hour than men in the county.

This compares to neighbouring Midlothian, where men are paid a staggering £2.86 an hour more than their female counterparts.

Results from 206 local authority areas across the UK show that women are paid more on average than men in only 23 of them, including East Lothian.

East Lothian is one of the most equal areas in the UK between male and female pay, with the gender pay gap equivalent to men working unpaid from December 31 - only one day.

In contrast, the pay gap in Blaenau Gwent in Wales is a whopping £4.53 an hour in favour of men - meaning that women are effectively working unpaid from September 4 in comparison to their male counterparts.

The stats are revealed as today marks Equal Pay Day, identified as the day when the average female salary would now mean the woman was working unpaid until the end of the year when compared to her male counterpart.

Roger Smith from the Office for National Statistics said that women tended to earn more in areas with a higher rate of people working in the public sector, while the age of the workforce also played a part. 

The Fawcett Society, the UK charity for gender equality in wages, said when higher earning jobs, more commonly held by men, were given more weight the average would mean effectively women stopped being paid from November 10.

And it warned that if the progress towards equal pay carried on at the current "snail's pace" it has so far, it would be another 100 years before men and women were paid the same wage for the same job.

Find out the pay gap in your job here.

Anne Milton, UK Govenrment Minister of state for apprenticeships, skills and women, said the government had introduced a legal requirement for all large employers to publish their gender pay and bonus data by April 2018

She said: "By shining a light on where there are gaps, they can take action to address it.
