The year might be 2017 but apparently society is still stuck somewhat in the Dark Ages, as illustrated by a new study highlighting the gender pay gap.

Yep, if you're a woman and were born between 1981 and the year 2000, it's likely that during your working career, you'll probably earn up to 9%less than guys doing exactly the same job.

While in your 20s the difference between what men and women are paid is around 5%, by the time you reach your 30s, it will likely jump up to 9% less.

While this disparity is actually positive in that it's a drop in the difference in pay seen by previous generations of men and women, it's still a considerable pay gapand according to think tank the Resolution Foundation, who conducted this newresearch, this jumphas a lot to do with the fact that women will need to take time off from working if they choose to have children.

The reactionary response of many to this is, 'Well yeah, if you're not working thenof COURSE you're going to earn less,' but this is actually a total oversimplification of the issue. It's not just about women earning less during this time, but that the nature of jobs mean women returning to workare often not supported in ways that will allow them to progress as far as male colleagues on their return.

If a woman halts her career to have a baby, not only will taking time away from work to give birth to a child-who let's just remember was created by both a woman ANDa man - but she will suffer a "sharp and long-lasting" pay penalty that lasts for the rest of her working career. Because while men can expect to progress and earn more in their 30s, women will likely experience a plateau of earning due to physical and political constraints and the sexism that exists around having kids - and that is even if they were paid exactly the same salaries and experience similar professional progress in their 20s.

"Young women today face relatively little disadvantage in terms of their pay packets compared to what their parents' and grandparents' generation faced,"Laura Gardiner, senior policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation, explains.

"But while many millennials haven't experienced much of a pay gap yet, most probably will once they reach their 30s, when they start having children. What's more this pay penalty is big and long-lasting, and remains for younger generations despite the progress in early careers."

This has a multitude of causes but includes things like societal expectations,discrimination, lack of opportunities to take career breaks and a failure to reward jobs in industries predominantly dominated by women with salaries as high as those predominantly dominated by men. And if you don't think there's proof that lack of potential for career progression does affect women, then why are there still only just five female Chief Executives in the FTSE 100?

Gardiner continues: "It’s...connected to the fact that training, progression and promotion are much harder to come by when working part time, which many women with children either choose to do or feel they have to because of high childcare costs."

Still, women are naturally owning the typical sexist response this news has been getting on Twitter...

While it sucks that we are yet to work out a way to get rid of these inequalities completely, there is an interesting piece of legislation on its way.

While it won't come into effect until April 2018, it will mean that companies with over 250 employees will be required to publish detailed information about the size of the pay gap within their workforces - the idea being that it will create transparency and encouragecompanies not actively working to champion equality yo change their ways.

Only time will tell if this has an effect or not, but in the mean time it's pretty crappy for women to only be earning 95p to every £1 earnt by men, don't you think?

'Now how about watching a video of guys and girls trying to guess what weird sex toys are for? Ok then...'