Do Women Get Paid Less than Men?

By: Chua Le En & Maizatul Marshitah Zulkifli

It's the end of the year! Guess what is currently the most exciting thing for all employees worldwide. Earning the year-end bonuses, that’s right! End-of-year bonuses are computed as a percentage of an employee's salary. Men and women who work the same hour typically earn different amounts of pay, though. Why? This is due to the fact that the gender pay gap still remains in the so-called contemporary era of the twenty-first century.

Gender Pay Gap

The gender pay gap refers to the difference in earnings between female and male. According to the Global Gender Gap report 2022, the pay gap difference still stands at 17%, meaning that females earn almost $20 less than every $100 male makes. The pay gap calculation is not based on comparison of both doing the exact same work or task, but instead the ratio of earnings across all industries. Although the gender pay gap is projected as “paying women less”, however, it is not as simple as that. The gender pay gap reflects inequity but does not necessarily imply prejudice. Moreover, it serves as a gauge of inequality and encompasses ideas that go beyond the idea of wage equity. Different types of pay gaps exist, for instance, national gender pay gap, industrial and occupational gender pay gap, and also the organisational gender pay gap, and these exist for a variety of reasons.

Factors contributing to gender pay gap

What then are the factors for the gender pay gap? One of the main causes of the difference in pay between men and women are the differences in industries or types of jobs. Researchers can observe the impact of occupational segregation, or the division of labour between men and women based on gender norms and expectations, by calculating a holistic wage difference. Home health aides and child care providers are examples of "women's jobs," which traditionally have had a majority of female employees. These positions typically have lower pay and fewer benefits than "men's jobs," which historically have had a majority of male employees. All industries and the great majority of vocations, at all levels, from front-line employees to mid level managers to senior leaders, exhibit these gendered inequalities.

In addition, the contributing factor of gender pay gap also includes difference in hours worked. Women put in fewer hours at work to accommodate childcare and other unpaid responsibilities, which means they are more likely to work part-time because they often. As a result, they earn lower hourly pay and fewer perks than full-time workers.

Other than that, it can also be seen that differences in years of experience contribute to this matter. To accommodate caregiving and other unpaid duties, women are disproportionately forced out of the job, and as a result, they typically have less work experience than males.Women are more likely to return to work sooner and with greater likelihood when they have access to paid family and medical leave. Only 19% of civilian employees have access to paid family leave through their employers as of March 2019, while only 40% had access to short-term disability insurance benefits to cover their personal medical expenses.

employees have access to paid family leave through their employers as of March 2019, while only 40% had access to short-term disability insurance benefits to cover their personal medical expenses.

Last but not least, as much as this should not exist anymore, it still does discrimination. Despite being prohibited since 1963, gender-based pay discrimination is nonetheless a common and pervasive practice—particularly for women of colour. It can flourish particularly in organisations that forbid open discussion about pay and where workers worry about retaliation. Employers may discriminate in pay in addition to making explicit decisions to pay women less than males when they base hiring and compensation decisions on prior salary history; this can result in pay decisions that may have been impacted by discrimination following women from job to job.Closing the gender pay gap—global solutions

Closing the gender pay gap — global solutions

Most developed and developing nations have implemented work-life supports as well as creative measures to address the gender pay gap. These remedies have given rise to a few current political tendencies. They include, but are not limited to, safeguarding workers from retaliation from employers when they raise the subject of pay, enhancing efforts to collect employer pay data, implementing equal pay for work of equal value standards, utilising genderresponsive budgeting, offering credits for caregivers, and bolstering damages for pay discrimination victims.

Firstly, by prohibiting pay secrecy and employer retaliation. In the States, workers have varying legal rights against pay secrecy on a national basis. The National Labour Relations Act protects nonsupervisory U.S. workers from retaliation from their employers if they discuss their own pay with co-workers. In other nations, protecting employees from retaliation from employers may just seem like common decency. For instance, Iceland strengthened its rights for employees who reveal their own earnings in 2008. 21 Additionally, the Equality Act 2010 in the United Kingdom took the role of the Equal Pay Act 1970, strengthening existing equal pay provisions while also providing protection for workers who discuss their own earnings.

Furthermore, the gender pay gap can be closed by the implementation of pay data collection and pay data reporting. For years, many nations have enforced the reporting of pay data to government officials or the general public. Examples of countries that have implemented their own variations of this approach include Austria, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal. The process of forcing or rewarding employers to gather and transmit their pay data to governmental agencies is generally known as pay data reporting, but the specifics might vary widely from nation to country. Employers are held responsible for reviewing and improving their own pay policies due to reporting requirements.Another initiative to get pay information and other information from employers is gender audits. Employers must voluntarily assess their own policies using a gendered lens in multiple countries, including Spain, Denmark, and Belgium.

Conclusion

This procedure, known as a "gender audit," is frequently connected to the reporting of pay data. Instead of focusing exclusively on finances, gender audits are a sort of social audit that seek to assess the success of gender equality measures. In order to verify that nondiscriminatory procedures have been implemented, government contractors in the United States are required to undertake internal audits. However, other firms have not been exposed to these regulations, and there are often issues with compliance and enforcement.

The gender pay gap is real and affects women across the world, negatively. Too frequently, it is considered that this gap is not a sign of discrimination but rather a statistical anomaly caused by failure to compensate for significant determinants of gender-based pay gaps. However, gender bias itself has an impact on these determinants. To comprehend the gender pay gap seriously, we should not place the blame on women, but instead, we should examine how our economy gives women less accessibility to chances at every stage of their education, training, and career decisions. The Global Gender Gap Report 2022 estimates that it will take around 132 years to close the gender pay gap worldwide. Despite the fact that it’s still a long way to go, the pay gap has fortunately lessened with time and many people are now more aware of this issue.