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For nearly 20 years, equal treatment of men and women in the labour market has been enshrined in British law. This was due to the twin acts supporting this: the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act. There were amendments in 1983 to allow equal pay to be claimed in comparable, rather than identical, jobs. By the 1990s, therefore, pay discrimination against women ought to have become a thing of the past. Investigates whether this is so, taking evidence on men and women in their early 30s at two points during this period.

This paper analyses gender wage differentials in full‐time employment using recently released data from the National Child Development Study and the British Cohort Study 1970. The paper compares the situations of individuals in their early thirties in 1991 and 2000 and the position of full‐time employees in NCDS as the cohorts aged between 33 and 42. The distribution of individuals' experiences of unequal pay is emphasised by comparing distributions of gender differentials of an “index of unequal treatment”. Passing from age 33 to 42, unequal treatment increased substantially, across the whole distribution.

The recent increase in unemployment has been accompanied by much discussion of the structure of unemployment. Many have occupied themselves by trying to allocate the increase between the conventional categories of frictional, structural and cyclical and in trying to separate the voluntary and involuntary components of the problem. Others have investigated the nature of the problem in terms of job turnover or duration, while a number have busied themselves with the issue of whether the published unemployment figures are an accurate measure of the pressure of demand or of social distress.

Introduces a collection of papers originally presented at the 79th Applied Econometrics Association Conference which was organised with the specific aim of stimulating discussion on the “econometrics of wages”. Topics of particular focus include gender wage gaps and wage discrimination. The papers provide insight into the magnitude and sources of gender, racial and sexual orientation earnings inequalities.

Volume 6 Number 2 of Employee Relations contains two articles of interest. In the first Cary L. Cooper writes on “Where Women are Going” in which he outlines some of the problems facing women managers, along with more optimistic evidence from a company known as F International which employs 90% women, and has been very successful in financial terms. In the second article, Elizabeth Goodman and Derek Torrington discuss “The Equal Pay Act (UK) — The State of the Law”. The decision of the European Court against the UK led to the introduction of the Equal Pay (Amendment) Regulations 1983, which came into effect in January 1984.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief summary of a series of papers presented at the gender, class, employment and family conference, held at City University, London, in March 2008.

The conference involved 25 papers presented by invited speakers, and the report is based on summary notes, observations and conference abstracts.

This report summarises a range of contributions, theoretical and empirical, to the continuing debates on gender and class inequality in Britain, Europe and the USA. The evidence presented not only demonstrated the persistence of gender and class inequalities, but also provided a critique of the “individualisation” thesis. The contribution of both normative and material factors to gender inequality was extensively explored. The discussions focused upon a series of tensions and contradictions – between “sameness” and “difference” feminism; choice and constraint; capitalist markets and the human requirement for caring work.

Many of the papers drew on original empirical research, both quantitative and qualitative, using sophisticated methodologies. Longitudinal findings (cohort studies) were well represented, as were cutting‐edge theoretical contributions.

Volume 15 Number 4 of Industrial & Social Relations includes an article by Catherine O'Regan and Clive Thompson entitled “Collective Bargaining and the promotion of equality for women in South Africa”.

Data from a 1989 survey of over 600 middle‐level managers in a large Canadian corporation were analysed to examine the characteristics of jobs held by career‐family and career‐primary men and women. Hypotheses were developed based on human capital theory, statistical discrimination theory, and gender role congruence theory. Examining career outcomes suggested that participation in household labour had a significantly more negative association with men's hierarchical level than with women's. Implications for theory and suggestions for research are discussed.