Pay Equity & Discrimination

With women having more equality in the workplace than ever before, it would be expected that they are paid the same as their male counterparts. However, research is showing that women are consistently being paid less than men who are doing the same job.

Understanding The Extent Of Pay Disparity

In many reports, you’ll see the statistic of female workers earning around 82 cents to every dollar that a man makes. That’s the extent of what the general public will know, but there is evidence that the issue is worse than this. 

At the moment, women are earning less on average than men in every occupation where data can be collected on earnings. When it comes to middle earning occupations, women are earning only 66% of what their male co-workers are earning. 

There is evidence that the wage gap is closing for female workers, but it is doing so at a pace that is too slow to keep up for them. The Institute For Women’s Policy Research has found that it’s going to take around 40 years, up to 2059, for the pay gap to fully close. 

For women of color, that rate is going to be even slower. The research has found that for Hispanic women, they will need to wait until 2224, and Black women will need to wait until 2130 for their pay gap to close too. 

That rate of growth has been slow for decades, too. Research in 2022 showed that the pay gap was very near what it had been in 2002. With the rate of growth so slow, women are still going to be facing this discrimination for decades to come. 

It’s worth considering how the pay gap is affecting women globally, too. In the EU, the highest gender pay gap was recorded in Estonia, at 20.5%, and the lowest in Luxembourg, at 0.02%. 

A large feature of the pay gap appears to be discrimination towards women, especially women of color. The research done by the IWPR shows that it’s still a common feature of their working life. 

As such, the gender pay gap is a serious issue that still needs to be addressed. While the gap is closing slowly, more work needs to be done to speed up the process and help women get the pay that they’re entitled to. 

Reasons For The Pay Gap

So, why is the gender pay gap still happening? There are several factors that are considered to play a part in this. 

Occupational segregation: One of the biggest reasons why progress hasn’t been made is because of occupational segregation. Over the last few decades, women have been making strides to come into occupations where women hadn’t traditionally worked before. As such, we’re seeing women now in roles that have always traditionally belonged to men. 

Even though women have made these strides, their pay isn’t reflecting the work that they are doing. In some industries, there has been very little work made to ensure they are fairly compensated. In construction, for example, the pay gap hasn’t made any significant progress in 40 years. 

Family responsibilities: While women have been moving into roles that have always been considered to be female, their roles in family dynamics hasn’t shifted as far. Around half of women questioned in a survey said that they felt pressured to focus on their responsibilities in the home, rather than in the workplace. They’re more likely to leave the workplace in order to care for children, and becoming a mother can decrease their earnings. 

Compare this to men, and their experiences. In the same survey, men were more likely to say they felt that their place was in the workplace, rather than caring for a family. Indeed, men are more likely to see their earnings increase if they become fathers. 

When it comes to supporting the family financially, it’s men who say they feel the pressure to do so, with 60% of them in the survey expressing this opinion. However, it is worth noting that 77% of single women with children say they feel a lot of pressure when it comes to financial support. 

With attitudes still leaning towards women being the home makers and caregivers, you can see why in some workplaces they will be earning less overall. 

Gender differences in job roles: When it comes to the top roles, such as management or higher, you’ll see than men tend to be the people at the top of the chain. In the above study, men were more likely to be in a higher role. 28% of men would be in those roles, compared to 21% of women. 

Men who were fathers were seen to have more ambition to make their way to the top of their companies, with 35% of men questioned saying they had this ambition. 

For women, there are more of them making their way into these roles, but they still lag behind the numbers set by men. They are less likely to say they are in the top roles in the workplace, and additionally they’re more likely not to aspire to those roles, either. 

Comparing this data to the other factors above, it can be surmised that less women aim for those top roles, as that will take them away from their family and their responsibilities in the home. When there are higher expectations for women in this regard, they are less likely to go for roles that would take them away from that. 

What The Data Shows

With all this data, what can you take away from this about the gender pay gap? As we’ve seen, the pay gap is closing, but more slowly than we need it to. Women are going to have to wait around 50 years at the current rate to get equal pay, and for women of color they’ll have to wait even longer. 

Even with more women moving into the workplace, you’ll find that less of them are going into higher roles, thanks to the reliance of them in the home. 

With all this in mind, there is a lot of work that needs to be done, so that gender pay gap can close faster.