Women in the UK will not receive the same pay as men until 2056 if progress continues at the current slow pace, according to a Trades Union Congress (TUC) report. The report reveals a gender pay gap of £2,548 a year, meaning women have effectively worked for free for the first month and a half of 2024. Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, stated, "Women have effectively been working for free for the first month and a half of the year compared to men." He added, "Imagine turning up to work every single day and not getting paid. That’s the reality of the gender pay gap." The overall pay gap stands at 12.8%, but is higher in some industries. Women in education earn 17% less than men, while in finance and insurance, the gap rises to 27.2%. Nowak also highlighted the Employment Rights Act, introduced by Labour last year, as a tool to help close the gap. He said the act "will ban exploitative zero-hours contracts, which disproportionately hit women and their pay packets." Employers will have to publish serious and ambitious action plans to tackle gender pay disparities. However, Nowak warned, "These plans must be tough, ambitious and built to deliver real change, otherwise they won’t work." Additionally, research from the British Journal of Industrial Relations suggests the gender pay gap might have been underestimated for over 20 years. The Office for National Statistics failed to consider that it gathered more data from larger employers when reporting on pay surveys. This new insight calls for more accurate measures to track and close the pay gap faster.